Word: mcpartland
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Gems of Jazz, Volume 5 (Decca; 10 sides). Latest addition to Decca's excellent historical anthology. Selected tidbits of the best small-scale Chicago and New Orleans style playing by such immortals as Jimmie Noone, Zutty Singleton, Eddie Condon, Jimmy McPartland. Notable items: Liberty Inn Drag and Get Happy, by the orchestra of famed Pianist Art Hodes, who has not made a recording since...
...previous albums, and brings out the first batch of all-improvised jazz in over six months. This time, however, there are no big names like Hawkins, or Berigan. As a matter of fact, it is very probably that you've never heard of Jimmie Noone, Art Hodes, or Jimmy McPartland. Fame in jazz, as elsewhere, has little to do with the quality of the product, and this time is no exception...
...Jimmy McPartland, trumpeter in the Bix style, you've met before in the Decca Chicago Jazz Album. His two sides here, made four years before the Chicago album, are even better. Jimmie Noone, clarinetist, is known to most people only as the man who taught Benny Goodman how to play. You won't hear much Goodman, how to play. You won't hear much Goodman, but you will hear the best work Noone has ever recorded...
...then Nick's isn't the place for you, because you'll be saying "Why that's old-fashioned stuff. It's corny, nobody plays that way any more. Give me the Andrews Sisters!" Well, there's a lot of truth that. Very few bands play the way Jimmy McPartland plays today, and more's the pity. Certainly it's an old-fashioned style; and if you prefer the stereotyped, lifeless riff tunes of Glenn Miller, Les Brown, and Artie Shaw, that's your prerogative. Me, I'll take the old stuff, and if you're on my side...
...section led by George Wetting's drums and Eddic Condon's guitar, is giving the boys a wonderful beat to work around. It's the climax, now, and you think it's all over. They can't play any better than this, but at the end of the chorus McPartland raises his hand signalling for one more, and everybody comes in and they really take the finish a part, and you say It's Too Much and start throwing chairs at people. Then they sign off with a slow blues, and it's intermission. You walk across the street...