Chicago Stompers • The Greatest Hits

The Chicago Stompers celebrate 20 years together on their new album Greatest Hits. Rather than your typical hits album, collecting previous recordings, these are new studio recordings of titles from their two previous albums and tunes that are successful at their live performances. The Stompers are the best known of the Italian groups playing early jazz, certainly the largest. Counting guests, there are over 20 musicians on this record. I won’t list them all here, as nearly none are familiar to our readers aside from Philadelphia’s own Drew Nugent, who provides excellent guest vocals on two titles. A specialty band focused on the orchestrated hot dance music of the later 1920s and early ’30s, they are one of several European outfits filling a similar space. Their rivals include the Prague and Bratislava Syncopators, and Alex Mendham’s UK group. Aside from ragtime orchestras like the Peacherines and River Raisin Ragtime Revue, there is no real American equivalent to the large and hyper-realistic stage recreations these groups aim for. Supporting a group this large takes a civic attitude towards jazz and the performing arts in general that is lacking Stateside. Their mission statement strives for authenticity. They are “specialized in the philological execution of the repertoire of orchestras operating in the USA, and in Europe between 1924 and 1933” through “the use of