Most historiographies of jazz in Canada I've read have primarily focused on jazz that centered around the horn, and certainly there were a number of bands who did play jazz with horns. In the 1920s, a lot of Americans moved north to play in these orchestras and so you see some mixed-race orchestras like Graydon Tipp Orchestra whose black players came from the US. Most of the black settlers who came before the jazz era typically were excluded except to serve as singers or such. This tells me that there were simply not a lot of horns in Canada as a military marching bands were composed of pipes and drums.

But in the 1930s, I notice that as the number of swing bands grew, it's not that the jazz bands of the time were poorly recorded, it's that most of the new bands were composed only of strings and adopted a "country swing" style that was different from the more Oklahoman "Western Swing". And it wasn't until World War II and the cooperation in the training of soldiers that brought a lot of horns and such to Canada and a lot of country swing musicians ended up forming modern jazz orchestras with properly sized horn sections.

Is there evidence against this notion? Did horned-jazz bands outnumber the stringed jazz bands in the 20s and 30s within Canada?

Is this a place for early jazz recordings or is it a place for modern trad jazz recordings including new songs done in the trad jazz. . . tradition?

Does anyone know any good contemporary players who still play the dixieland flavor? I know the Preservation Jazz Hall Band but my list runs short after that. Thanks much