A Walk On The Wild Side

New York’s 52nd Street, nicknamed “Swing Street,” was renowned as a legendary center for jazz during 1935-46 with quite a few nightclubs housed within a small area. Los Angeles counterpart, Central Avenue, is less known but actually had a longer prime period as a major black entertainment area, lasting from the early 1920s until the mid-1950s.

The LP A Walk On The Wild Side gives one a sampling of the type of music heard during the final decade of Central Avenue’s peak years. With the end of the ruinous musicians’ recording strike of 1942-44, many new independent and small record labels based in Los Angeles were formed. Most did not last long but they recorded swing, modern jazz, early r&b, and blues-oriented performers who might otherwise have not been documented during this period.

A dozen different groups covering a variety of styles are represented on A Walk On The Wild Side. One gets to hear a few hits (the honking tenor Big Jay McNeeley’s “Deacon’s Hop,” Jimmy Witherspoon’s “Ain’t Nobody’s Business,” and Cecil Gant’s “I Wonder”), some popular performers (Roy Milton, Joe Liggins’ Honeydrippers, Pee Wee Crayton on “Blues After Hours,” and Percy Mayfield), bluesy singing from Helen Humes, and jazz performances by Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Buddy Collette, and Charles Mingus.

The one fault to this otherwise enjoyable and well-rounded album is that a personnel listing is not included, an inexcusable omission. One has to guess who the sidemen are (including many of the horn soloists), or consult discographies, so that is a bit frustrating.

But otherwise, A Walk On The Wild Side gives listeners a fine cross section of the music that one could hear on a nightly basis in Central Avenue clubs during the second half of the 1940s.

A Walk On The Wild Side
Shanachie 5533
www.shanachie.com

Scott Yanow

Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings. Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.