i thought i heard

"buddy bolden would say, 'simmer down, let me hear the sound of them feet.' the new orleans bands, you see, didn't play with a flat sound. they'd shade the music. after the band had played with two or three horns blowing, they'd let the rhythm have it. that's what buddy bolden meant when he said that. the rhythm then often would play that mixture of african and spanish syncopation--with a beat--and with just the rhythm going. they'd let the people use their imagination for the other sounds." that's guitarist danny barker in "hear me talkin' to ya," the oral history of mostly early jazz by shapiro and hentoff. obviously bolden did not record, and i don't think there's any recorded document of such an approach, which makes one think of much later rhythm passages from basie to monk. it seems the earliest example of a downtime rhythm chorus does involve basie, "squabblin'" by walter page and his blue devils, recorded in late 1929. that's in kansas city, not in new orleans, of course, and within the busy uptempo and the tight three-minute time constraint there's not much space for simmering (it feels more like an attempt to bring something that works great at the live gigs to the studio, where it doesn't make the same sense), but starting at 1:05 they let the rhythm have it: