The music is timeless but only the trumpet player and the guitarist are still with us. Also present are that master of the plunger mute, Cootie Williams, on trumpet Edmond Hall playing a grainy clarinet and fine support and brief solos by guitarist Al Casey and bassist Oscar Pettiford. Big Sid Catlett shows us whence came most of the drummers who followed him. Througout the session Art Tatum proves himself to be na adept band pianist and contributes, as always, solo work of brilliance. His own composition, "Boff Boff (Mop Mop)" allows him to get off some boppish lines, displaying his sympathy for the new music just coming in. On "Esquire Bounce" the great tenorist deals inventively with a simple melodic line, turning it this way, trying it on that way, creating beauty out of simplicity. The Chocolate Dandies (XFL 14936) is made up in part of a session in 1943 played by Hawkins and a sextet, all of them voted the best by a panel of critics more than third of a century ago. Hawkins won first place on his instrument for the four years Esquire conducted an annual poll. There is no one around today on that instrument who has escaped the influence of "Bean." "Prez" may have created his own quiet revolution but the man who first fashioned teh role for the tenor saxophone in jazz was Coleman Hawkins. Low-keyed is a fitting description for this set. His style was cool on the surface yet implicitly hot. In his tenor-sax solo on "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans" Young demonstrates why his approach exerted such influence. The five selections by that sextet are among the golden items in a set of albums replete with riches. There is clarity, great swing and beauty to the numbers by this quintet - but it is only when Lester Young is added a half year later than the term "classic" can be applied. The earlier one is with Buck Clayton, trumpet, backed by members of the Count Basie rhythm section (less piano) and Eddie Durham on electric guitar. Kansas City Six and Five (XFL 14427) presents two sessions in 1938. Johnson and Art Tatum Jack Teagarden and Vic Dickenson Roy Eldridge, Lips Page and Cootie Williams Pee Wee Russell and Benny Goodman Oscar Pettiford and Pops Foster Jo Jones and Big Sid Catlett Billie Holiday. Giants of the music abound throughout the collection: Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Ben Webster, Jelly Roll Morton James P. Now the first batch of 10 albums is out, with 40 more on their way, under the auspices of Columbia Special Products. Milt Gabler, the producer of that label, recently spent years searching for a way to make available again his long out-of-print catalogue. For it was on that day that Commodore Records, the first of the independent jazz labels, cut its first sides. Few would recall that the 17th of that month was of equal, perhaps greater, importance in the history of American music. JANUis a date many jazz fans immediately recognize as significant: Benny Goodman took his orchestra to Carnegie Hall. ROYAL STOKES writes frequently about jazz.
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