Continued: CD Reviews

These two keepers of the flame have buffed these memorable numbers to a high shine and worked up a deep understanding, so it is sad that a Grosz family move from New York to Philadelphia makes it less likely that they will get together again. It therefore gives added value to the importance of this release. There might never be another in this format.

Guitarists of all grades should latch on to this master class, and I recommend it also to serious jazz fans everywhere. However, heed should be taken of Marty Grosz's liner-note warning: "Do not listen to more than four tracks at one time. Over-exposure to guitar duets can result in a condition known as Plunkitis for which no known cure exists."

This antagonist of amplification and defender of the acoustic faith should know that I first played this CD flat, but after a little twiddling of knobs to bring out the best from my electrostatic loudspeakers, I got an even better sound -- thanks to my good old amp!

Available from Sackville Recordings, Box 1002, Station O, Toronto, Ont., Canada M4A 2N4, phone/fax: (416) 465-9093.

KEITH NICHOLS & THE BLUE DEVILS: KANSAS CITY BREAKDOWN (Stomp Off CD1387) 73:56 min.
Kansas City Breakdown; The Jones Law Blues; Baby Dear; Sugar; Kater Street Rag; New Vine Street Blues; Kansas City Shuffle; Terrific Stomp; Trouble in Mind; Moten Stomp; Loose Like a Goose; Rhumba Negro; Blue Devil Blues; She's No Trouble; Pass Out Lightly; New Tulsa Blues; Thick Lip Stomp; Prince of Wails; Ding Dong Blues; Harmony Blues; 18th Street Strut; Oh! Eddie.

Reviewed by Bill Mitchell

In the middle of World War II, an anachronistic instrumental began popping up in the jukeboxes amid the current big band favorites. It was called "South," a waxing from 1928, played by Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra. It provided a bouncy, jazzy respite from the otherwise rather ho-hum fare of that time, and quite knocked me out (if I may be permitted a dated idiom). Whether it was a reissue or had never gone out of print I never discovered.

Later I learned that Bennie Moten (1894-1935) was a pianist/bandleader who had taken lessons as a youth from several teachers, two of whom were pupils of Scott Joplin. His territory band was popular in Kansas City, a wide-open metropolis under the sway of the Pendergast machine in the 1920s and 1930s. Moten began recording with a six-piece band in 1923 on the Okeh label. The band grew in size, and from 1926 to 1932 it recorded prolifically for Victor. In 1929 Count Basie joined the outfit. A contemporary photo shows Basie and Moten at two grand pianos in the 15-piece band, which included Harlan Leonard, Hot Lips Page, Eddie Durham, Walter Page, and Jimmy Rushing, who, with Basie, contributed so much to the Kansas City jazz style of the 1930s.

British pianist Keith Nichols has successfully undertaken an ambitious project of emulating the Moten band with an international line-up of musicians in London. After three years in preparation, involving arrangements/transcriptions by Claus Jacobi, Des Bacon, Keith Nichols, Bent Persson, and James Dapogny, the musicians were assembled: trumpeter Bent Persson from Sweden; saxophonists Claus Jacobi and Matthias Seuffert from Germany; trombonist Rene Hagmann from Switzerland and slap-bassist Jim Ydstie from the U.S.A. The British musicians included trumpeters Enrico Tomasso and Mike Daniels; saxophonist James Evans; banjo and guitarist Martin Wheatley; sousaphonist Malcolm Sked; drummer Richard Pite and pianist and vocalist Keith Nichols.

Keith Nichols and His Blue Devils have done a commendable job of reviving the music of Bennie Moten for 21st Century listeners. While the studio recordings of 1928 were fairly well recorded, they cannot, of course, compare with today's technology. I played the original recording of "She's No Trouble" and immediately followed it up with the Nichols rendition on CD for comparison. I was startled by the brightness and clarity of the latter, hearing things that were missed or muffled in the former. The section work is clean and tight, and the solo work is exciting. Of the 22 cuts 16 are Moten originals, although some were co-composed by his sidemen, such as Basie, Durham, Thamon Hayes, and Jack Washington. There is only one strictly popular song, an up-tempo "Sugar." The liner notes are by Nichols and include three informative mini-essays: 1. KayCee-the Paris of the Plains, 2. The Kansas City Orchestra, and 3. Keith Nichols' Blue Devils. There is commentary on each selection, plus a listing of the soloists on each.

Moten's piano style was ragtime based. In his liner notes, Nichols includes Count Basie's comment on Moten's pianism: "He was a hell of a good piano player -- could play all kinds of stuff." This comment could well apply to Keith Nichols also.

Kansas City Breakdown is a highly successful enterprise that should appeal to lovers of the hot dance style of the Prohibition Era.

You may order this CD from Stomp Off, P.O. Box 342, York, PA 17405 or online at www.stompoffrecords.com. Phone: (800) 678-8863.

PAUL WHITEMAN "KING OF JAZZ," 1920-1927 (Timeless CBC-1-093) 75:53 min.
Wang-Wang Blues; Everybody Step; I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise; Way Down Yonder in New Orleans; Nuthin' But; Just One More Chance; Learn to Do the Strut; San; Dixie's Favorite Son; Hard Hearted Hannah; Charleston; Footloose; The Rhythm Rag; Charlestonette; Bell Hoppin' Blues; St. Louis Blues; Wistful and Blue; Muddy Water; I'm Coming Virginia; Side By Side; Love and Kisses; Magnolia.

Reviewed by William J. Schafer

Paul Whiteman is mostly valued nowadays by jazz fans as the host and canny employer of Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer (along with others like Jimmy Dorsey, Red Nichols and a few other dyed-in-the-wool jazz masters), but he was also an early "inventor" of hot dance music. (He persisted in calling it by inflated terms like "symphonic jazz," however.) Whiteman brought a jumpy, insistent new kind of music to the fast dance crazes that had multiplied and mutated like plague germs under late ragtime and the jazz craze of the late nineteen-teens.

He propelled a couple of generations of urban and suburban high school kids and collegians up off the settees and onto the dance floors. He was identified as the plump and pleasing sultan of whoopee, and you could tell his band played jazz from the whiny and winding clarinet a la Larry Shields, the banjo rolls and the tricksy breaks and vo-de-o-do rhythms. This CD is a good representation of Whiteman's career from 1920 up to the point when he took Bix and Tram aboard. It doesn't include his first mega-hits like "Whispering" or "At Twilight," or the grotesquely rococo quasi-symphonic and "atmospheric" numbers that now sound like carefully preserved sludge, but it does give a good cross-section of the sturdy hot dance repertory that sold the band to millions of record buyers.

September 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag

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