I wasn't going to review Ted des Plantes' latest because I'd already covered several of his releases and thought I'd give our other reviewers a crack at it. I ripped it to my computer mindlessly and a few minutes later my ears perked up, "what hot young band is this?" The sound was familiar to me as a somewhat gothic art style that emerges when alt country bands take a hot jazz turn, right down to the "too silly" vocal. It was exactly the thing I was going for in the decade or so before I began working for this paper, back to my days in New Orleans.
But this wasn't a group from 2021, or 2005, it wasn't Squirrel Nut Zippers or whatever the kids are listening to now, it was Hal Smith's Down Home Jazz Band, from 1974! Yes that Hal Smith, young as he must have been, joined by Everett Farey, Bob Mielke, Larry Wright, Robbie Rhodes, Vince Saunders, and of course Ted des Plantes. Those old guys can cook!
A few years ago Ted des Plantes launched the TdP label to release CDs of Stomp Off! LPs that were no longer in circulation and great tape he had collected during a long career. This is the fourth, and final, career retrospective album Ted des Plantes is releasing, and as with the three previous the tracks are presented chronologically. The first two came with the initial launch of his label, one covering his early career into the 1980s, and the second covering "From Then Till Now".
