JAZZ CLASSIC OF THE MONTH
Cornetist Wild Bill Davison (1906-89) recorded prolifically during his career from 1940 on, whether with Eddie Condon, all-star groups, or as a leader. While most of his recordings can be found without too much of an effort, his collaborations during 1957-58 with the Spree Coast Stompers are both very obscure and exciting. All of the music deserves to be reissued on CD but few have probably heard of these sessions.
The Spree Coast Stompers was a German Dixieland-oriented sextet. While the group did not boast any major names, each of the players was excellent and had a real feeling for the classic music. In fact, they could pass for top-notch American trad players of the era.
Davison and the Spree Coast Stompers joined up for three albums and a four-song 45 during their brief period together. Spree-Coast-Jazz features the musicians performing eight standards (including “Original Dixieland One-Step,” “Indiana,” “When You And I Were Young, Maggie,” and “China Boy,”) plus the ballad “Nevertheless,” two otherwise unknown numbers from a German songwriter, and a collaboration by Davison and trombonist Hans-Wolf Schneider called “Wilhelm The Third Blues.”
Wild Bill Davison is in typically exuberant form, the other musicians (including trumpeter Werner Geisler) sound inspired, and the ensembles are consistently stirring. It will take quite a search to locate a copy of Spree-Coast-Jazz (an LP put out by the German Ariola label) but it is worth the effort.
The Spree Coast Stompers • Spree-Coast-Jazz
Ariola 61162K
Amazon or eBay (if one is lucky)
Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings.
Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.
