Jazz on Downton Abbey


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I was watching a 'Downton Abbey' episode last night where a jazz band was playing in the mansion of an ultra-rich British family in 1914. About 90 seconds into one of the tunes, the snooty grande dowager snorted, "I wonder if each of them know what the others are playing". I howled!!

A hundred years later, a lot of people still don't get it.
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128x128mitch4t
The point taken.
The dixieland jazz is just like that. Everyone's playing their own piece chaotically based on simple 1...2 scale improvisation. Not the best quality music indeed.
This was at the London Jazz Festival in 2011. I like to play this for diehard Downton fans. They are always amazed. And, when you listen carefully, you can still hear Lady Mary. She also sang at the 50th Anniversary of Ronnie ScottÂ’s Jazz club in London.

Now, who do you think the lead is in Sadie and the Hotheads?

Sadie and the Hotheads

Like mother, like daughter.
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Get outta here!! Who'da thunk it!

Obviously a well kept secret from Lord Grantham.
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His Lordship has not clue, but Rose would love it. What do you think the Dowager Countess would say?

Cora's group just released a new album, Stilling Waiting. Lock at the Sadie and the Hotheads website. The album is on iTunes and Amazon UK.
Oddly dismissive comments about dixiland simply highlights an ignorant, elitist, and racist point of view that is as tasteless, idiotic, and innacurate now as it was then. I suppose there's no point not worth missing...
I don't know about the racist part, but I have to agree with you. To relegate Dixieland to "chaotic playing" shows a serious lack of understanding of the building blocks of jazz. It is a highly interactive form of ensemble playing with logic, structure and defined instrumental roles; albeit in a simpler harmonic language.
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