Words of Wisdom from Big Joe Burrell Winter 1995

Friendly competition is essential to the development of a great musicianship. Friendly competition can challenge an artist to continue creating. 

Personally, I deplore seeing musicians looking down on other musicians: backbiting and cliques. This is already a competitive business.

Sure, some musicians may be better than others, but growth comes from playing and the more players we have playing out, the better the music gets. 

First off…ideas - as well as inspiration - come from playing with folks better than you are.

But, The reverse is also true: it makes for a bigger and stronger music industry when musicians inspire one another with their playing. All you have to do is pay attention to what other players are doing in your community. Listening to the younger players is important - new blood, fresh concepts - sometimes this is just as good as practicing alone. Sharing what you know and listening to other players. In other words, it makes good, music business sense to let the musician experience go both ways. Otherwise, there can be problems and young players get the idea that they can’t approach the older more experienced players.

Of course, the way we resolved it in the early years was we used to sit around and just play together. We had jam sessions. It’s not that way anymore, but it should be. It would be good to see ham sessions happening like when I was younger. We jammed. We’d put up a sign - say at a festival. It simply said “Jam Session” which meant “everyone plays.” No matter how badly they played. Then if they got blown off the stage, they’d go back home, work on getting it together and come back to the next jam session and try again. 

Very seldom is this done anymore where any player will feel welcome to sit in. What I’m saying is that I want to see more opportunities, more real jam sessions. Not the kind of situations where the different groups get up and perform. It's not a real jam session, where different bands just take turns. It needs to get mixed more, otherwise it’s just these cliques. In this way, young musicians shouldn’t feel scared to approach the bandstand and talk to me or any accomplished player. 

Jam sessions should be open to everyone, where everyone changes places, takes turns, has a good time, blowing each other away with their best playing, with no-one putting down other groups and other players - this is the way to go.

This is the way music gets better, more interesting and brings more folks out to listen, where more original work gets written and played. New material comes out of it. Bands can begin to play each other’s pieces from within the community.

All you need to do is love one another. Don’t look down on one another. 

My mother used to say to me, “It doesn’t cost you one dime to get along with one another.”

Let the new musicians come on out into the music community and play and challenge us older players with their ideas. Let’s resurrect real jam sessions.

                                                                                           Big Joe Burrell is Big Joe Burrell.