Note: some of these letters were in reply to Is the term Dixieland Jazz Racist?, which was printed in September 2019. Most of them are in reply to Reconsidering "Dixieland Jazz": How The Name Has Harmed The Music which appeared in October 2019. Further replies received on this topic may be added here but they are unlikely to appear in print.
Charles Suhor:
I appreciated Joe Bebco’s thoughtful views on the term “Dixieland Jazz” and the exchanges that followed. I totally agree with Bebco that musicians who don’t want that tag applied their music should be respected. I fact, no practitioners of any art should be saddled with labels that they don’t approve of.
But we’ve been dealt a confusing, stilted hand as we inherited the “Dixieland Jazz” term, with its racist associations. I was born in New Orleans in 1935 and grew up when the term was simply functional--the coin-of-the realm name referring to a style that arose after early New Orleans jazz. To oversimplify, musicians had moved away from rapid vibrato and ricky-tick phrasing of non-jazz (and some early jazz) musicians. The “Dixieland” style was being wonderfully realized in New Orleans, Chicago, New York, and elsewhere by Sharkey Bonano, the Bobcats, Art Hodes, Eddie Condon units, Ben Pollack, Armstrong’s All-Stars, and innumerable other groups.
The music wasn’t “revivalist” in intent or style bu
