Not meaning to start a spat:
New styles were being born after WW II, eg., rhythm 'n' blues and be-bop. So revisiting a music which had never died out could be called a "revival". Real New Orleans jazz hadn't died out but, unlike the Condon gang, it was was largely unheard at the time. Then Bill Russell's label American Music and a few others spread the music among collectors, which lead to interest in Bunk and in the George Lewis band, which eventually toured Europe successfully.
The Watters bands honored the New Orleans connection, using the two cornet front line of Joe Oliver's band, altho rhythmically they often tended to plod rather than swing (one man's opinion).
Did the Watters bands have a worldwide impact? I respectfully disagree. Think of Ken Colyer and all the other British, Scandinavian and Australian bands which followed more closely George Lewis, with more emphasis on collective improvisation.
This doesn't mean I didn't like them and their progeny (eg. Murphy, Scobey and Mielke).
One moldy fig's 2¢.
Dave Radlauer wrote:
> But the size of the social movement worldwide associated with the
> Watters-initiated traditional jazz movement in the 1940s and 50s is
> consistently underestimated today. Dixieland was a cottage industry
> precisely because it was *alternative.*
>
Doug Pomeroy
Audio Restoration and Mastering Services
193 Baltic St
Brooklyn, NY 11201-6173
(718) 855-2650
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