Dixieland Music

This is a must have for Teagarden fans. I love jazz, play trombone and enjoy Teagarden. I purchased this on a whim. What a find! This is a period when Big T was struggled to run his own big band. While the band was not a rousing financial success at the time (booze, women, you know)this disc is a great listen. The style is varied, and progresses from dixie to straight forward big band. Jack's dynamic, emotional trombone playing shines through from beginning to end. The energy level varies from frantic rag/dixie to slow, meloncholy blues. The musicianship is great throughout, but particularly impressive in the Chicago sessions in 1946. (songs 9 - 14) Trumpet player Andy Marchese, (who wrote "Saving you for me") is phenominal.
You can feel Teagarden's blues as his dream of having his own band is slipping away in the radio spot "Body and Soul".
Jack's folksy, bar room voice is charming. There are other, more stereotypical Teagarden disks you can purchase. If you are going to only have one, however, this is it!

This is the sixth volume in Classics series covering the complete recordings of Jack Teagarden in chronological order. Sessions include a handful of V-Disc dates, a Commodore session (12/11/44), a Victor date (3/10/47), and two Teagarden Presents dates. Major highlights include the slow and gorgeous IF I COULD BE WITH YOU ONE HOUR TONIGHT done for V-Disc, with Bobby Hackett on cornet, and the up-tempo JAM SESSION AT VICTOR with Max Kaminsky (tp) and Peanuts Hucko (cl). These years were good ones for Teagarden, especially when he was involved with small groups: the Commodore and Victor dates featured 7 and 8 piece bands, and both sessions are wonderful. But even the big band sides are jazzier and more swinging than previous big band sessions had been. If you could get or wanted just one of Big T's Classics discs, I'd recommend this one.

This is a must have for Teagarden fans. I love jazz, play trombone and enjoy Teagarden. I purchased this on a whim. What a find! This is a period when Big T was struggled to run his own big band. While the band was not a rousing financial success at the time (booze, women, you know)this disc is a great listen. The style is varied, and progresses from dixie to straight forward big band. Jack's dynamic, emotional trombone playing shines through from beginning to end. The energy level varies from frantic rag/dixie to slow, meloncholy blues. The musicianship is great throughout, but particularly impressive in the Chicago sessions in 1946. (songs 9 - 14) Trumpet player Andy Marchese, (who wrote "Saving you for me") is phenominal.
You can feel Teagarden's blues as his dream of having his own band is slipping away in the radio spot "Body and Soul".
Jack's folksy, bar room voice is charming. There are other, more stereotypical Teagarden disks you can purchase. If you are going to only have one, however, this is it!

This is the sixth volume in Classics series covering the complete recordings of Jack Teagarden in chronological order. Sessions include a handful of V-Disc dates, a Commodore session (12/11/44), a Victor date (3/10/47), and two Teagarden Presents dates. Major highlights include the slow and gorgeous IF I COULD BE WITH YOU ONE HOUR TONIGHT done for V-Disc, with Bobby Hackett on cornet, and the up-tempo JAM SESSION AT VICTOR with Max Kaminsky (tp) and Peanuts Hucko (cl). These years were good ones for Teagarden, especially when he was involved with small groups: the Commodore and Victor dates featured 7 and 8 piece bands, and both sessions are wonderful. But even the big band sides are jazzier and more swinging than previous big band sessions had been. If you could get or wanted just one of Big T's Classics discs, I'd recommend this one.

The sixth volume in the Classics series on Red Allen, and the second best of the six. There are a couple of Victor sessions from 1946 that are excellent, including the brilliant "The Crawl" from one of them. The Apollo date from 1947 is also here, which is only slightly below the Victors. J.C. Higginbotham (trombone) and Don Stovall (alto sax) are in fine form, both men going back quite a ways with Allen. A very enjoyable CD.

This is not a CD for Bud Freeman fans, or even tradtional jazz fans. These recordings are merely popular numbers recorded for the public and you can hardly hear Freeman's sax. The five DeMarco sisters sing on some of these! I want my money back.

This is a good Bechet disc, again featuring some longer tracks of over 4 mins. duration. Worth having.

This cd is notable for the appearance on the final six tracks of vocalist Stella Brooks. Brooks was from the West Coast, became popular as a jazz singer in New York's Greenwich Village in the 1930s and 1940s, and then returned to San Francisco and ultimately lived a humble quiet life until she died recently at 90 years of age. She was known to be the spunky sidekick of Billie Holliday, and also befriended Woody Guthrie and Marlon Brando. Smithsonian Folkways also has these six tracks on a cd of vocalists of the 1940s, actually a split cd with Greta Wright, an Austrian diva of the day. Stella's trademark song was "I'm A Little Piece of Leather" ('...very well put together...') although this song seems to be credited variously to her or other composers. (It appears on a Peattie Wheatstraw cd which makes me want to guess that it's an old blues and predates them both...the Beatles covered about 45 seconds of it in some early unreleased BBC tapes...)

Stella Brooks seems too interesting to disappear completely into history. (She's also on some re-released Stuff Smith sessions...)