Swing Music

If you only buy one CD of Muggsy Spanier or even if you never thought about buying one, this is a must. It contains "The Great l6" from his Ragtime band,a legend, plus some other sides from the Sidney Bechet-Muggsy Spanier Big Four. "Lonesome Road" is my favorite of the Great l6 numbers and "Sweet Lorraine" is truly super with Sidney Bechet on soprano sax. Muggsy was a mentor in Chicago Jazz and used to play at Jazz Limited in Chicago. George Brunis made fun of him, when I used to hear him in Chi, but that was because Muggsy always upstaged him.

I'm one of those "wet behind the ears" types who caught on to Cab Calloway after the 90s swing revival craze (Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Cherry Poppin' Daddies and other scenesters kept pointing to him as an influence). I already owned "Are You Hep to the Jive? (ASIN:B0000029FN) and wanted to check out some of his other material, so I snagged this at my local library.

The recordings here come from two separate live dates in 1940 (a radio broadcast from Meadowbrook, Cedar Grove,NJ,7/27/40) and 1945 (another radio broadcast, this time from Club Zanzibar,Los Angeles, CA, 7/30/45). The sound quality is good for the vintage, though the 1940 tracks sound cleaner. Another interesting note here is very early performances by Dizzy Gillespie (he takes a solo on "Hard Times").

The bad news,if you're mostly a fan of Calloway's hepcat slang and loose vocals, is that there are only 4 vocal numbers on here and one of them is the saccharine ballad "I'll Pray for You" (slow numbers aren't really Cab's bag..) But the band is smoking hot on many of the instrumentals, making it a worthwhile investment.

Highlights here are the rollicking "Limehouse Blues" with some fantastic stickwork from Cozy Cole, "15 Minute Intermission"...a snappy call and response with the band begging leader Calloway for a quick R&R, and I loved Cab's take on "St. Louis Blues".

The low spots are few. "I'll Pray for You" I've already mentioned. I felt the moody instrumental "Cupid's Nightmare" was overlong and not that interesting. "Boog It" was chockablock with scatting, and that's something personally I only enjoy in moderate doses (though I'm sure some will be ecstatic).

This one is definitely not for the Cab novice..I'd say "Are you Hep to the Jive?" is that disc. But once you've bought that one and loved it, you'll find some more of that Calloway magic here.

Casual Cab Calloway fans might be somewhat put off by this collection of radio broadcasts from the 1940s, but there's a lot to like here for the serious Calloway devotee. Tracks 1-6 are from a 1940 radio broadcast, while tracks 7-12 were recorded in 1945, with very good sound quality from both dates. At first I was disappointed that only five of the twelve tunes feature Calloway on vocals. However, the more I listen to it, the more I appreciate the talents of Calloway's sidemen (including Dizzy Gillespie, Chu Berry, J.C. Heard and Cozy Cole). Among the vocal tracks, highlights include "Hard Times," "15 Minute Intermission" (featuring a call-and-response vocal with the band) and "Boog It." Instrumental highlights include "Limehouse Blues," "Cruisin' with Cab" and "Russian Lullaby." The band swings in high gear throughout this disc, proving that Calloway was not only a great singer and bandleader, but also a fine judge of talent.

If you could only have just ONE CD in your collectino, this would be THE one to have. This is DE at the peak of his peak with one fanstatic track after another. My favorite is Dusk but they are all outstanding. This may sound a little strange, but the opening track sounds more like Glenn Miller than DE. Here and there in DE's work of this period you can hear a little of GM's reed sound, but on this track it's the entire arrangement. I'm not saying this is bad or anything negative. Rather I think it's quite interesting. Anyway, I've had this for less that a year and I can't tell you how many times it's been played. For most of that time it's been the only CD in my car and my drive to work is between 50 and 60 minutes. I just found a pair of these new in Paris for less than original retail, so I'm quite pleased. I do wish that Classics would reissue this entire series. They are hard to find and usually quite expensive when you do get lucky.

Don't get me wrong: I love Charlie Barnet. But I love the instrumental Charlie Barnet. I think the only vocal number of his band that I like is 'Deed I Do,' which I actually love. The majority of numbers on this album are vocal or vocal-enhanced, and the result is plebeian. The songs just don't have the drive of his instrumentals, except in little pieces, which defeats the purpose, since the drive of a song is built up over its entire length. These vocals act like unwelcome interruptions. If I didn't enjoy Charlie Barnet as much as I do, this wouldn't bother me, but I feel like I got robbed on this album. I feel the same about most of Tommy Dorsey's albums; he had an absolute crackling band, and even Frank Sinatra ruined the sound. I like to hear the horns!

If you could only have just ONE CD in your collectino, this would be THE one to have. This is DE at the peak of his peak with one fanstatic track after another. My favorite is Dusk but they are all outstanding. This may sound a little strange, but the opening track sounds more like Glenn Miller than DE. Here and there in DE's work of this period you can hear a little of GM's reed sound, but on this track it's the entire arrangement. I'm not saying this is bad or anything negative. Rather I think it's quite interesting. Anyway, I've had this for less that a year and I can't tell you how many times it's been played. For most of that time it's been the only CD in my car and my drive to work is between 50 and 60 minutes. I just found a pair of these new in Paris for less than original retail, so I'm quite pleased. I do wish that Classics would reissue this entire series. They are hard to find and usually quite expensive when you do get lucky.

Fine, mellow and warmly nostalgic music. I would buy this CD.