With this double CD, Kit Johnson and the Black Swan Classic Jazz Band are on solid ground by aiming the contents at dancers, as is suggested by the album’s title: Dance Hall Favorites. From its earliest days, it seems, traditional jazz has been danced to, although in the UK in the 1940s many devotees frowned upon such activities, preferring to sit listening only, brows furrowed in studious concentration.
When Graeme Bell and his Australian Jazz Band visited Britain in 1948, they encouraged dancing (again) to the music (somewhat to the dismay of the intellectuals). Traditional jazz never lost its appeal to dancers in the US, if the Dawn Club in San Francisco is any indication, where Lu Watters’ Yerba Buena Jazz Band was filling the floor with dancers in the 1940s.
The tempos at which the tunes are taken are eminently geared toward dancing. While I might question if all of the titles are favorites, exactly, they are definitely appropriate for dancing. New to me were several, such as “Papa, What Are You Trying to Do to Me?”; “Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go?”; “When You Leave Me Alone to Pine”; or “Bullfrog’s Melody.” The first and third of these Louis Armstrong had a hand in, and the last is an original by the band leader, Kit Johnson. I am always delighted to find “new” (to me, at least) tunes. All of the others in this album should be to some degree familiar t
