Album Reviews

While Lu Watters was the leader of the pioneering and highly influential Yerba Buena Jazz Band starting in 1941, he retired prematurely in 1950 to

The CD notes tell us that Dick Hyman made partial arrangements of these pieces, setting up a platform for improvisation. When clarinetist Ken Peplowski arrived

Jazz is powerful word, so powerful that the decade 1919/1929 was held in its grasp, known as the Jazz Age. Yet it has a strange

The mere announcement of a new Fat Babies album should inspire most readers of The Syncopated Times to run out and buy it. They are

While Dick Hyman has often concentrated in recent decades on playing classic jazz, stride and swing, he is a very rare pianist in that he

I haven’t been this excited about discovering a new band in a long time. I mean T-shirts and bumper stickers excited. Part of my interest

Clancy Hayes was a unique figure in jazz history, one of its first singer/songwriters and an underrated and versatile musician. He was part of the

I can thank drummer Hal Smith for sending this great little album my way. Without his endorsement I might have easily skipped over it in

While the classic Red Nichols and his Five Pennies sessions are in the Brunswick series, Nichols was so prolific during the 1920s that there is

The Funkrust Brass Band is a 20-piece “post-apocalyptic disco-punk brass band playing all original music with megaphone vocals, heavy tuba bass lines, thundering percussion and

Russell Welch is a name that comes up again and again as I explore the new crop of New Orleans musicians. I’m delighted to cover

In Jan. 1934, trombonist Jack Teagarden, in what he thought was a very good move that would let him ride out the Depression, signed a

When one listens to the 27 selections on Grey Gull Rarities, it is easy to conclude that Grey Gull was one of the top jazz

The Jazz Oracle label can always be depended upon to reissue and repackage excellent hot jazz from the 1920s. Quite a few New Orleans jazz

At 62 Tim McInnes felt pursuing his musical ambitions had become now or never. He revisited his childhood Schaum method piano training and began to

The long awaited third album from what can only be called a swing revival supergroup is finally here. Recorded last summer at the Minneapolis Uptown

Despite the name The New Orleans Swinging Gypsies aren’t a Hot Club group, but they are more influenced by Django than most of the local

Have you noticed Hollywood counts on European actors when they need a pitch perfect American accent? Christiane Beinl, who leads Vienna’s Stompin’ Lickers hones in

The Jazz Oracle label, which was recently purchased by Upbeat, has a very valuable catalog of 1920s jazz that fortunately Upbeat is making widely available.

Martin Wheatley is a London born master of all string instruments with a specialty in the banjo styles of the ragtime and early jazz era.

Francis Joseph Spanier was better known as “Muggsy,’ a nickname he took for himself from John “Muggsy” McGraw, manager of the New York Giants baseball

Normally in this column I limit the reviews to prebop music, but trumpeter Bruce Adams and altoist-clarinetist Alan Barnes are such versatile musicians that I

Three of the greatest and most popular British trad jazz bands were led by trombonist Chris Barber, trumpeter Kenny Ball, and clarinetist Acker Bilk. Each

The Swingsations, a quintet based in Southern California, was founded in 1995 by its leader trumpeter-singer Jim Ziegler. The group originally consisted of Ziegler, Phil

New Orleans is the only American city seemingly impervious to the natural fading in popularity of musical styles. Jazz had a thirty year reign nationally

Don Vappie has had quite a career as a banjoist, guitarist, bassist, singer, arranger-composer, educator, lecturer, record and event producer, and expert about all aspects

Eubie Blake had such a unique career that he fits into his own musical category. A near-contemporary of Scott Joplin, Blake was a ragtime composer

Throughout his career, clarinetist George Lewis was a bit of a chameleon. His sound and New Orleans jazz style were virtually unchanged from the time

Phil Napoleon was one of the important jazz pioneers. The trumpeter was among the very first musicians based in New York who knew how to

On this, their fourth, CD, the Golden Eagle Jazz Band demonstrate that they have not strayed from their founding tenet as stated on their on-line

From the 1920s into the 1950s it was not unusual for two skilled pianists to perform duets of arranged music that, while inspired by the

On my infrequent visits to the U.K., I have always tried to take in a jazz festival or two, and each time tried to hear

One of the hottest bands of the late 1920s was the Missourians. The nine-piece group, which had earlier been Andy Preer’s Cotton Club Orchestra and

As the traditional jazz revival got under way in the 1950s and beyond, the impetus to record the various groups, especially those in New Orleans,

One of the top ragtime orchestras of the past decade, the Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra is a 12-piece ensemble conducted and led by Andrew Greene

When a performance is recorded on location rather than in a studio, certain hazards with the sound quality loom, and they are not completely mitigated

Bob Scobey (1916-63) was a solid trad jazz player who initially gained some recognition for his playing as second trumpeter with Lu Watters’ very influential

Having recorded with various jazz bands and orchestras over the years, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was well-known to jazz fans. In addition to her appearances with

Since 2002, pianist Mike Jones, a virtuoso with a forward-looking swinging style that would easily appeal to fans of Oscar Peterson, has been the warm-up

It seems only natural that someone with the name of Eliot Reinhardt Kenin would someday grow up to be a swing guitarist. The leader of

Australian trombonist Chris Ludowyk has loved and played New Orleans style jazz since at least his debut recording (with Lachie Thompson’s New Whispering Gold Orchestra)

The Bums at Fagan’s has been reissued in tribute to the namesake of Toledo’s annual GrugelFest, Ralph Grugel, who is credited with bringing the Dixieland

Luckey Roberts (1887-1968) was one of the greatest of all stride pianists but he barely made it onto records. Other than backing singer Eddie Hunter

Tongue In Cheek is a fine trad band that is based in Baltimore and Washington D.C. The core of the group is banjoist-leader Zach Serleth,

The British trad movement (which roughly covered 1949-63) found freewheeling British bands inspired by New Orleans jazz not only gaining unexpected popularity in the United

The usual complement of the Pete Allen band is six or seven pieces, but on this disc we have subsets of the usual number, some

Sidney Bechet was not only the first significant soprano-saxophonist in jazz but the most significant one during his lifetime. Arguably one of the two top

The performances on this CD were taken from recordings made at several concerts during the band’s tours of Germany in the early seventies and from

A major performer from Australia, George Washingmachine is an actor, a comedian, and has played guitar and string bass. However it is as a swing

After Hurricane Katrina clarinetist Evan Christopher spent two years in Paris exploring the legacy of Django Reinhardt. The result was a band joining Christopher’s classic

All of the New Orleans jazz pioneers stressed that the music they played was for dancing, not just for listening. The group on this CD

Bria Skonberg, who made her recording debut back in 2002 and has led her Mighty Aphrodite Jazz Band (a fine classic jazz band) since at

Composer Frederick Loewe (1901-88) and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner (1918-86), who met in 1942, wrote the music for such Broadway hits as Brigadoon, Paint Your

At 41 reedman David Lukács has already been playing the classic jazz circuit internationally for over 20 years. In 1998 he won the Kobe Jazz

Together since 1971, The Galvanized Jazz Band has had an amazingly stable line up but they’ve also enticed many friends to join them on stage.

David Horniblow, clarinet, Andrew Oliver, piano, Nicholas D. Ball, percussion. If you’ve been reading my reviews for the last few months you’ll know that this

What would the music have sounded like if Sidney Bechet and Django Reinhardt (who were both in France in the early 1950s) had recorded together,

The Dime Notes is a young group based in Great Britain although its leader-pianist Andrew Oliver is originally from Oregon. Comprised of Oliver, clarinetist David

Ken Colyer was an important force in British jazz for decades. Inspired by George Lewis and Bunk Johnson, his trumpet playing and his band were

The names of Peter Bocage and Emilé Barnes are not as well known as those of others who figured more prominently in the New Orleans

All eras of jazz are being played somewhere. Swing is very much alive in certain pockets of the world. Austin, Texas, is the home for

The Dutch Swing College Band, which was founded by Peter Schilperoort in 1945, is still in existence, having recorded as recently as 2015. The versatile

Sometimes record labels do not realize what they have. The outside of this two-CD set says “Edmond Hall with the Ralph Sutton Quartet ‘Live’ At

Allan Vaché is a veteran of the Jim Cullum Jazz Band and appeared for years on the Riverwalk Jazz radio show. He is known for

The British trad movement of the 1950s and ’60s found dozens of jazz bands popping up throughout England. The music they focused on fell into

The British trad movement of the 1950s and ’60s found dozens of jazz bands popping up throughout England. The music they focused on fell into

Bing Crosby loved New Orleans jazz and Louis Armstrong throughout his long life. He began his career as a jazz-oriented singer and, while modest about

Is Ragtime in its second golden age? After its quick fade-away during 1915-17 (with Scott Joplin’s death being the final straw), ragtime was difficult to

Eastern Europe, and Poland in particular are crazy about jazz. Joanna Morea, a Polish singer and instrumentalist, is publicly recognizable in a way that just

No, the music on The Unheard Artie Shaw does not contain new recordings by the great clarinetist. Instead, the set released by the Hep label

The Peanuts Gang Trio is perfectly situated to play comforting yet titillating festive music. They’ve been together in the Reno Nevada area since 2015, initially

Of all of the New Orleans pioneers who spent the Depression years home in the Crescent City, George Lewis had the greatest commercial success in

When early pre-1923 jazz recordings are discussed in history books, one encounters the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, sometimes the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, and perhaps