POOR OLD JAZZ

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 14 July 1925, Page 3

POOR OLD JAZZ

IS GOING TO REST

A FALLEN MON.AHCII

SL EJECTS BEGIN TO TIRE

King Jazz a) on (ho (iodine. His 1-hrono is beginning to wobble His s»ub |(H'tu aro getting tired of him (says the Auckbird St.irb

And, strange- tbougii it in'iv bcemjazz lias killed itself. Slowly but surely, during the years that it has been in favour, it has been working out its own downfall. There has been so much of it, that the output has stifled the demand.

lint what triumphant years it has had ! A product of the after-war period, if has swept the younger generation into its golden net. whirled them about and set them crazy for more. "Life was just one (kirn jazz after another, as the flap per said. Away went the. old-time dances, including the wait/ and this new idea Hooded the dance halls, the public balls, the private receptions. It was grabbed eag'eilv, petted, shrieked over, mutilated. It has been blamed for much of the so-called social and moral laxity of the day. It was responsible for those bands in which most of the musicians use utensils instead of instruments. It wore its spell about old and young. And now it is slowly dying on its twinkling feet. It is like a king whose subjects are beginning to tire after years of pleasure at his, rourt.

MILLION’S OF “TUNES”

Music sellers tell us this and they

s'hnuld know. Think of the thousands upon thousands of copies, of difterenf- jazz tunes that they have handled during the veto's when ja//. was in the ascendant all those tunes with tlie peculiar names'Tin (ionna Take a Watermelon to my i Jirl to night." "It Aain't Gmma. Rain No Mo'." "Chili bom Horn.’’ “Every Night 1 Ci v Mvwlf to Sleep Over You,” and the n-t ' of them- songs about "liaby' 'and going back to Dear Old :)i.\ie and the Little Mother Units 'wait mg there fur me. I hev came out. m multitudes, poured on the market like water from a runaway river. Nothing could stop them. .Men who had never made a penny in their lives got funny ideas and thought, out insane, tunes, which sold like- hot. cukes tbe miuldei the better. Someone heard the bawl of a cow that had lost her calf and made a time out of it. Ihe cocks crow, the eat',i meow, the duck s cackle, the pig s grunt, the baby's howl, the traincnr s clatter, the liner's siren, and the. Hoi Oievist's shoutings, were taken and put between a paper cover, given a name and sold. And the dear, jazz-mad public bought, them and. like, Oliver l wist, came hack fm more. They loved to hear the saxophones moan like lost souls - ,, the banjos prank-a prank, and the various nerve wracking noises made by a. man wlm. I’m want of a better word, was called a drummer.

OUTPUT GREATER THAN DEMAND

Hut the inevitable, happened. _ The "jazz-smiths" m America started to compete with each other, each trying to turn out. three “tunes'’ to the other man s one. All the sounds of natuio and birds, animals and other ordinary things, were eaten up, so the started “jazzing” classics, a crime for which no music lover, no matter how tolerant he is regarding modernism, will ever forgive 'them/ Frenzied “jazz merchants necamo more frenzied, and so did the music. Their productions were grabbed by the publishers, for you could never tell what atrocity would not become the va"e.■ Earlv in the jazz era it, was the custom tor one piece— Whispering, fee instance —to hold the public fancy for months. Tbit as the. output increas* ~,1, the life of each succeeding tune, no matter how tailoring if was, was shortened. until to-day a week or two is. quite a good time for one tune, to remain in grace. In short, the output- is greater than the demand. The moral is, “Don t feed a child on too much sponge cake, or it will become ill.';

THE END IS COMING Such is tin; evolution ot the jazz. It. if, not finished yet, but seems that trie last. pO'.'t is looming in the distance, it. may be months or it. may be years before the end comes, but the .strangle-hold is now beginning to tighten on the throat of the noisy old king who, has kept the world in a whirl. He has. had the longest reign of them all -ragtime and the red of them. Instead of ashing for him, the public are beginning to buy a sort of song, which is it cross between the jazz and the old-fashioned ballad. And it is whispered that, oven in ,i,>me of tiie. dance halls which were brought before the public not long ago, "jazz" lari been dethroned, and the old waltz, the Lancers and the sehottiscTie, arc reigning in his stead. Who knows that some enterprising ‘jazz-monger" in America is not already writing the fallen king f..' obituary notice in the .shape of "Good-bye, Jazz." or “How Can L Live Without You, How Can I Let You Cm?"