Reviews: CDs
COMBO DE LUXE: SOME SUNNY DAY (No label or number), 55:03 min.
Undecided; I'll Be a Friend (with Pleasure); Some Sunny Day; About a Quarter to Nine; My Heart; I've Got My Fingers Crossed; Georgia Cabin; My Monday Date; Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams; Love Me or Leave Me; My Bucket's Got a Hole in It; It's Been So Long; St. Louis Blues; My Blue Heaven.
Reviewed by Bill Mitchell
Combo de Luxe is a quartet consisting of cornet, clarinet/soprano sax, guitar/banjo, and string bass, featuring, respectively, Chris Tyle, "Gentleman Jim" Buchmann, Candace Brown, and Dave Brown. This isn't your usual chamber jazz instrumentation by any means, but on the other hand, it isn't quite unique in the history of jazz. You may recall the Bechet-Spanier Big Four with Sidney, Muggsy, Carmen Mastren and Wellman Braud. They recorded some noteworthy sides with the same unorthodox line-up back in 1940. To mention this precedent is not to imply that Combo de Luxe is attempting to recreate or emulate the Big Four, however, because they are not. They have their own sound, style, and repertoire.
Chris Tyle (cornet, clarinet, and vocals) is well known in the jazz world as a multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, scholar/historian, and instructor at jazz camps. He began his career in Portland, Ore., where his father, Axel Tyle, was a member of the Castle Jazz Band, a trad outfit contemporaneous with San Francisco's Yerba Buena Jazz Band. Young Chris got his start in Portland with Don Kinch's band, The Conductors, in the late 1970s. Later, he moved to New Orleans, where for a number of years he led his Silver Leaf Jazz Band. He has been recorded extensively (50 sessions at a recent count). After returning to the Pacific Northwest, he has been busy on the festival/jazz party circuit, recording, instructing, and leading Combo de Luxe.
The reed man, "Gentleman Jim" Buchmann, also has an illustrious resumé, having worked as a member the Climax Jazz Band, the Black Dogs, and several other bands. He has been a guest star at festivals and, like Tyle, an instructor at jazz camps. Some Sunny Day is his 39th recording.
The rhythm section consists of Dave Brown and his wife, Candace. Based in the Seattle area, they work as a duo called Jazzstrings, with Dave on string bass and Candace on banjo and guitar. Each one has also worked independently in various festivals and on cruises.
Combo de Luxe offers us an eclectic spread, including several gems from the Great American Songbook and a few classic jazz and blues items. The program is admirable. Here are some highlights: "Some Sunny Day' is a delightful Irving Berlin song, and it is surprising that so few musicians are familiar with it. Tyle takes a vocal on this one, as he does on three other numbers. Dave Brown vocalizes on Jimmy McHugh's "I've Got My Fingers Crossed," which appeared in the 1936 movie musical, King of Burlesque. "My Heart" is, of course, the tune Lil Hardin Armstrong wrote for the Hot Five. "My Monday Date," the Earl Hines tune recorded by Jimmy Noone's Apex Club Orchestra, features a two-clarinet frolic by Tyle and Buchmann. "Georgia Cabin" is a melodically appealing number composed and recorded by Sidney Bechet in 1941.
In short, this CD displays tasteful playing with a high order of musicianship. The music swings and provides easy, rewarding listening. To order, send check or money order for $15 payable to Candace J. Brown, P.O. Box 6887, Tacoma, WA 98406. Website; www.combodeluxe.net
EDISON HOT DANCE OBSCURITIES, Vol. 2 (Jazz Oracle BDW8048)
Ev'rything's Peaches; Thinking of You; Hello! Swanee-Hello!; I'm Looking Over A Four-Leaf Clover; High Hat Harry; Rosy Cheeks; She's Got "It!"; Eyeful of You; I'm Walkin' on Air; When the Morning Glories Wake; Danger!; Lila: Borneo; Anything You Say!; Where the Shy Little Violets Grow; Cross Roads; Me and the Clock.
EDISON HOT DANCE OBSCURITIES, Vol. 3 (Jazz Oracle BDW8052)
Cornfed; State and Madison; Bye-Bye, Pretty Baby; Gold Digger Stomp; Rolling Around in Roses; Make My Cot Where the Cot-Cot-Cotton Grows; Don't Forget When the Summer Rolls By; Someday Sweetheart; What'll You Do; Feelin' Good; I'm Riding to Glory; You're Just a Great Big Baby Doll; If You Don't Love Me; Wang-Wang Blues; Where the Butterflies Kiss the Buttercups Good-Night; The Boomerang; Beale Street Blues.
Reviewed by William J. Schafer
Two more CDs explore the old catalog of Edison Records, cut by the old hill-and-dale method the great inventor used to oppose the standard Berliner records, one of the early battles of competing media systems (like 45 rpm. vs. 33 1/3 rpm., BetaMax vs. VHS, Blue-Ray vs. the other HD DVDs). These sides have been out of circulation (largely) since the Edison system went to dinosaur-land in the late 1920s, so it's nice that Jazz Oracle has launched a treasure hunt to retrieve them.
EHDO Vol. 2 is devoted to 19 sides by a single, local New York orchestra, Oreste and His Queensland Orchestra. The group led by Oreste Migliaccio at the Queensland, a Brooklyn nightclub, was typical of local hot dance groups across the U.S. Since Art Hickman and Paul Whiteman came out of the far west in the early 1920s and really standardized the modern hot dance band, vast numbers of groups sprang up wherever folks wanted to dance, to go to cabarets, roadhouses, lakeside dance pavilions, speakeasies and other lively venues for hotcha in the 1920s. Publishers ground out boxcar-loads of stock arrangements. While Thomas Edison never had much of a brief for jazz, blues and the other forms of African-American-derived pop music, he did want to sell whatever he could on his thick, tough shellac platters. He recorded Oreste's band between 1926 and '29.
August 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag
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