Bands Music

Known mainly as an arranger (Hines, Goodman, etc.), Jimmy Mundy led a few sessions under his own name, and these are those. And those/these are excellent! Small band and big band, very swinging but in a definite bebop-ish direction (not to mention just a touch of the blues), these recordings are superb, and not to be missed ... though many have. (What a shame.) (Get it, before you have to pay sixty bucks for a used copy.)

Known mainly as an arranger (Hines, Goodman, etc.), Jimmy Mundy led a few sessions under his own name, and these are those. And those/these are excellent! Small band and big band, very swinging but in a definite bebop-ish direction (not to mention just a touch of the blues), these recordings are superb, and not to be missed ... though many have. (What a shame.) (Get it, before you have to pay sixty bucks for a used copy.)

In Sudhalter's flawed but informative book Lost Chords, much is made of this band. However, listening to their studio recordings next to tracks by Duke, Basie, Lunceford etc. one can easily be forgiven if one accuses Sudhalter of having an agenda, They seem fine, but not that exceptional. But here - and especially on the first 7 tracks - one can hear what the fuss was all about. Bob Haggart's Dogtown Blues is one of the finest Big Band blues charts of all time. In its uncut version, it flows effortlessly and inexorably, and receives a superlative performance. Ditto for Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Bob Zurke shows why his piano playing was admired by none other than Jelly Roll Morton and the whole band plays with admirable fire and purpose. Those first 7 tracks were part of a benefit for pianist Joe Sullivan, who was hospitalized at the time, and the sense of occasion is audible.

This is an interesting CD. It sounds to me as if the songs recorded in "1938" are much more in the typical sound of the big bands of that day, that is to say, that this sounds more like "jazz" as was performed by swing bands across the country. The first tune on this disc is "Begin the Beguine." This would become Mr. Shaw's best known work and it would also force him into a completely different sound. I believe that his music post-1938 is much more tempered to commercialism than this CD is. But either way, this CD and practically every other Artie Shaw CD sounds terrific.