That Jim went on from popularising "Trad" online to "Ivy" is telling. "Natural Shoulder" is his next move he says which will rip into both "Trad" & "Ivy".

Chenners original name for his blog was " Natural Shoulders. Hard Bop & Soft Shoulders"  but Jim insisted that it should be "Ivy Style" because he wanted to use NS for later. Not that Chenners was ever privy to that.

Gee I'm really "Trad", or I'm really "Ivy".  Fuck Off.



Droog.

A great story - John Simons & Ian Strachan used to stay over at the Metropole in Brighton, down from The Smoke on the weekend, back in the day, & watch all the goings on down on the beach as they sat back with their drinks & Talked Ivy inside...

Jim.

The first time I ever found the term "trad jazz" was in 80s British sociological studies of popular culture in 1960s England. Took me a while to figure out what the hell it meant.

Yeah the Wikipedia-level story is that the West Coast traditional jazz revival of the late 40s "revived" dixieland/New Orleans jazz.

However, I'm an anthropologist and it is my job to overthink these questions:

1) Did it really need reviving or were old cats in N.O. still jamming in that genre, possibly with later developments? Does "revival" mean recommercialization?

The notion of revival seems more focused on the newfound interests of the West Coast players and having the balls to try to play old styles in public again, rather than the reincarnation of a dead musical form. If they themselves used the term "traditional," I'd call it an attempt to gain respectabilty

2) If it was traditional, it should have been ongoing. Fads need reviving....traditions are by definition persistent and enduring.

I think that 1920s New Orleans jazz had a lot of traditional African American elements but what we heard on 78s was a timebound slice of it. It was a fad, albeit based in musical performance traditions that go back to Africa in many cases.

Oddly, the recording process created an unnatural situation where people wanted to hear what was on the original records, thus giving it a dead, timeless aspect. In the case of black music, this sort of frozen style is distinctly untraditional.

What made Armstrong and those cats special is that they were mad innovators and always taking it higher. They would have considered it an insult to be called traditional....they no doubt thought they were wild inventors.

3) What is the relationship between "trad jazz" as a living art and recorded 20s jazz. Quite often, recorded music is different in style as well as duration from the way such music is played live. Quite often the live stuff is more unruly and the players put their cleanest act forward in the studio, a la "classical music." None of this was concert music in original context, it was party music.

What were the revivers reviving but the recorded forms? They were taking recorded styles and playing them out of the original context. Even the frame of "revival" totally rules out the question of traditional.

That being said, I think the Andy trads are reviving or shall I say, reproducing, themselves.  There are aspects of historical truth in some of the style points but the "culture" is whacked.

I spent much of my life in the real East Coast penny loafer land and I am still in it. It ain't that "Trad" by Trad Forum rules.

What I see here on FNB Ivy Talk is people trying to look good within certain chosen parameters with some retro tinge, and often succeeding, but not much talk about which dog breed or soft drink is "more trad" or other such simpleton pseudo concerns. Ivy Talk is an unusual hobby, but it seems healthy, tasteful, and thoughtful in comparison.

Me, I'm into classic American dress but I often wear 3.75" ties and darted Brooks jackets. I think I am more traditional than the Trads because I lack the fantasyland fetishes that the people who the trads think they are emulating never dreamed of.

The real tradition was/is  to look sharp and classic and in the accepted manner for the occasion/context and gain distinction in that manner, not to wear thrift shop sack suits, bowties, and AE Strawfuts to work or play in flyover states where everybody else is wearing black Hugo Boss slacks and Aldos.

The risk in this argument is that we become embroiled in the semantics of “Trad”. It is after all, only a moniker and you can call me chief spud peeler or Ishmael if you like, it’s the actual actions of the sartorial trad that delights the gentleman sociologist in us. We should not consider the motives and twisted passions behind the sartorial trad practitioner the same as the experience and art behind trad jazz. Nor is trad a preppy form of Ivy. Trad is one of the manifest forms, if not the manifest destiny of a once great nation whose cultural influence and wealth is in relative and absolute decline. What we are experiencing is blighted youth, the squeezed middle man, the Willy Loman’s of this world taking refuge in the splendid isolation of a gilded vision of a golden sartorial age. That’s why morning dress, spats and two tone spectators go so well in the Walmarts of Gary, Indiana. It is an alienating experience, and so it should be, because they are alienated and disaffected.

Of course, the above is in its extreme manifestation, there’s a whole spectrum of trad dressing that is a popular reaction against the bland off-shored crap of Far East sweat shops and should not necessarily be scoffed at. The desire to return to the sturdy well fitting shoes and securities of the 20th century company man is not a perversion in these insecure times where production capacity and ability to create wealth and a future for your children has been transferred to the East.

As for jazz history, one needs only consult the “auto”-biographies of Art Pepper, Hampton Hawes and Charles Mingus to get a flavor of what the experience was at grunt level. Hipster histories are valid too, along with those William Claxton photographs, Contemporary and Blue Note album covers that now seem almost belonging to the realm of myth. Even such works as March’s The Wild Party, evokes the gangsters, molls and hot jazz of the 1920’s. It is indeed adventure and play, but for the real extreme hard core sartorial tradster, it is about time travelling escape and has nothing to do with aesthetics beauty or musical delight. The Ivyist, soft shoulder practitioner is engaged with the present and this is where the mods got their “clean living under difficult circumstances” from.

I agree that the West Coast revivalists were not innovators, instead they were participants of a style of hot jazz that they considered more authentic and more danceable than the prevailing swing and emerging bop scene. Much of what they were playing was unavailable at the time on records and there must have been some nostalgia experienced by the listener who had not heard this style of music for fifteen years or so. It was hip, underground and mainly for whites.

If you haven’t listened to this music, then Les Koenig’s Good Time Jazz record label is an excellent place to start. He was also behind the modern West Coast jazz label, Contemporary. What you’re not going to find here is the innovations of ‘Trane, Miles and Mulligan, but what you will find, in such bands as the Fire House Five Plus Two is the revivalist cause culminating in a peak of easily accessible and foot stomping hot jazz for middle class white guys. I’m not being patronizing, but that’s what it is and this music has much more soul than Wynton Marsalis’s bland explorations in the old New Orleans style jazz.

Welcome Philly Joe, from a Baltimoron. And drawing out premium content from 4F Hepcat hisself already!
My worlds collide as I also was in New Orleans (80-85) and Yale (86-91).
If you want to talk about the context of Trad or Ivy, then the Tulane General surgery residency program was creole Ivy. Starting from the feet, cordovan penny loafers for comfort and durability, yet easily buffed for rounds.  Socks or no socks depending on weather and rotation. ER rotation- no socks in of case a lot of blood or body fluids all you had to do was remove shoes, rinse feet, dry, continue. Cowboy boots were an acceptable substitute in ER rotations for the same reasons.
Khaki chinos- heavy twill because jeans were not allowed and khakis are made to be abused. Blood comes of easy with hydrogen peroxide, the rest with bleach so no problems with presentability. Shirts- button down because you can partially loosen the tie and take off the shirt/tie as a unit when changing into scrubs for the OR. Very practical for getting dressed again in a hurry, just slide the knot up. As for the coat, just a white coat. There was a bar, Joe's bar sandwiched between Tulane Medical Center and Charity Hospital, and there you took your white coat off, but not the tie, lest you be called back in. Unless, of course, dysfunctionally intoxicated in which case the tie was usually taken off by a nurse as in relax, already! For faculty affairs, a Blue blazer was in because most of us only had one or two sport coats and Navy Blue + Kakis =any shirt/tie combo.
The funny thing is, Uptown society (and yes, uptown is called Uptown) also dressed very preppy, which was a surprise to me. As a matter of fact, if I have to think of a place where preppy or Trad or whatever, never died it's the genteel south.
As far as the music, New Orleans has always had a lot of experimentation going on in a lot of different directions, it's just that some iterations caught on nationally and people then freeze them and codify them. But while Preservation Hall played embalmed "Trad Jazz" there was plenty of live and kicking trad jazz at Tyler's or Tipitina's. And other stuff too, half of which I'll never hear again. Unlike New York, LA and Nashville that have a living and thriving music BUSINESS, New Orleans has a real living and dynamic music CULTURE.