This is the Off The Beaten Tracks column as it ran in the December 2018 issue of the print edition. Beneath each review is a link so you can share it as an individual post.
Tex Wyndham and The Rent Party Revellers
At the Jazz Band Ball: The Sources of Dixieland Jazz
Just a Little While to Stay Here: A Guide to Dixieland Jazz
Tex Wyndham has played, studied, and written about Dixieland Jazz for over 50 years. He has won awards for his writing and his bands, the Red Lion Jazz Band, and The Rent Party Revellers, have been popular at major festivals for decades.
The three discs in this set contain two educational performances recorded at Dixieland festivals in the late 1980s. This educational series was unique in trying to give casual fans and non-musicians a foundation for listening to Dixieland so that they could expand their appreciation of the music and ultimately enjoy it more. They were also, of course, as lighthearted and fun as the music they covered.
The recordings were made by the late Dixieland advocate Dan Polin, and for one show the band was unaware that they were being recorded or what would come from those recordings. Despite that primitive set up the sound quality is good and importantly the listener is able to recognize in each track what they have just been told to listen for.
In the early 90s the shows were released on cassette tapes, and in that form
