End of a jazz era?

All This And Many A Dog. By Jim Godbolt.
Northway Publications £12.99. order this book

TRADITIONAL jazz was arguably one of the most important cultural movements of the 20th century: without it, would we have had blues, rock’n’roll and the styles that sprang from these movements?
What is more worrying is that the bands who still play the music well are not young. Many of the exponents are the people who first made the genre popular back in the 1940s and 1950s.
Jim Godbolt, whose work with trad jazz bands as an agent and journalist makes him well-placed to recognise this, says he fears trad jazz as a live experience is rapidly disappearing. His re-published autobiography tells the story of how he discovered the music as a young man in 1930s. This 70-odd years of jazz infatuation puts Jim, who lives in Parliament Hill Fields, in a perfect position to consider the genre today. His book is a timely piece of social history.
“The people who are playing it are diminishing year by year,” he says.
“It could be on its way out as something to be played in the flesh. That is an incredible shame, but it was an incredible thing to happen in the first place.”
The battle between the different styles of jazz is put into its historic context against the backdrop of the civil rights movement in America. As well as different musical styles there were also differences in dress. Trad jazzers, who were found at the 100 Club in Oxford Street, wore beards, Shetland jerseys, corduroy trousers and sandals. “They drank beer,” says Jim.
“The modernists were the opposite. They were sharply dressed, wearing neat suits from Cecil Gee and pencil thin ties.” This sub-group could be found at Ronnie Scotts.
“There were terrible disputes between the two as to what was good or bad.”
The trads went back to true jazz, but the modernists wanted to move on.
Jim Godbolt’s eye for the absurd and the colourful non-conforming characters he has met through his work in the jazz world makes All This And Many A Dog a fascinating read.