Album Reviews

Among the Jazz Oracle CDs that are now being made available by the Upbeat Company is Jack Teagarden’s 1930 Studio Sessions. In a parallel universe

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

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