This month is the second entry in my occasional series “To ______ or Not to ________” where I examine musical practices to try to find an answer to rhetorical questions. I failed to arrive at a definitive conclusion with my first topic (“To Quote or Not to Quote,” TST May 2025) and anticipate the same result this time. This exploration is designed to invite you the reader to examine your thoughts regarding the subject, anyway.
Topic #2 is “To Sit or Not to Sit.” When a band plays traditional (or classic) jazz, should the front line sit or stand? When I was getting into this music as a kid in the 1970s-1980s, all the bands I encountered had a standing front line, and sometimes the banjo players also stood. By the late-1980s, when the Great Connecticut Traditional Jazz Festival was an annual event in Essex, Connecticut, bands from all over the country performed on high stages in large tents, and the front-lines stood. The only three bands I remember unanimously sitting (excepting the double-bassist) were S. Frederick Starr’s Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble, The New Leviathan Oriental Fox-Trot Orchestra, and the Fenix Jazz Band. The first two groups were reading bands, so sitting was reasonable; the third was from Argentina so I figured that was simply how they did things there.
As I tuned more into the history of jazz, I learned about some of the conventions of early New Orleans music. Sometimes the gigs the jazz musicians were playing went on for hours and hours, and if the dance floor was filled, a tune of a certain “Funky Butt” tempo could conceivably go on for twenty minutes. Many of these events were casual dances or social club get-togethers; it was hot; it was late; a good number of the musicians in the groups also had “day jobs”: sitting made sense. The handful of times I attended a concert by one of the traveling Preservation Hall outfits, the musicians playing horns were sitting (of course, many of them they were in their 70s and 80s, so again, sitting made sense).
In the early 1990s, I started performing on the festival circuit and saw some bands sitting down. One notable example at a West Coast festival was a group from Pennsylvania called the Boilermaker Jazz Band. These guys were emulating New Orleans clarinetist George Lewis’ aggregations down to wearing black trousers and white socks while they sat playing hot music. For the uninitiated (me at the time) this looked weird!! At that same festival, I also heard for the first time the Grand Dominion Jazz Band and the Golden Eagle Jazz Band. Both groups also played in a New Orleans Revival style and, although with members perhaps twice as old as the Boilermakers, their front lines played standing!
Later, I encountered the Cakewalkin’ Jass Band from Toledo, OH, led by Ray Heitger (famous for that band and for siring and mentoring his son, the internationally revered trumpeter Duke Heitger). That front line was sitting.
So now I was getting a bit confused. Should the horn players stand or sit? Was my earlier East Coast experience or what I was now seeing as my travels expanded the “correct” way to play this stuff?
I played with a few ensembles paying homage to the revivalist New Orleans band styles and conventions and noticed that often they signaled the final ensemble by rising out of their chairs. I have to admit, if a band chooses to play with the front line sitting down, standing for the final chorus is an effective way to increase the audience’s excitement. After all, if you’re already standing, what do you do? Start jumping up and down??
I discussed this topic with my old friend, Hal Smith, and he had some great perspectives to share.
Hal Smith: Banu Gibson’s husband Buzzy heard Bob Scobey’s band when they played in Chicago in the 1950s. He described it as a “‘stand-up’ Dixieland band.” All the San Francisco bands stood: Watters, Turk, Scobey, Bay City, the Mielke and Oxtot bands, the FH5+2, and later in Southern California, El Dorado and South Frisco. Last year in Sedalia [at the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival], I had my San Francisco Jazz All-Stars play standing up: It infused the performances with so much more energy!
Jeff Barnhart is an internationally renowned pianist, vocalist, arranger, bandleader, recording artist, ASCAP composer, educator and entertainer. Visit him online atwww.jeffbarnhart.com. Email: Mysticrag@aol.com
