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About Joe Smith & The Spicy Pickles

Album Review

Joe Smith & The Spicy Pickles: Gin & Moonlight

Read "Gin & Moonlight" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
August 26, 2017

Long before jazz became a spectator event, it was dance music. The big bands that played swing made their reputations on being able to flood the floor with dancers. Joe Smith & The Spicy Pickles are on a mission to bring back those days, and Gin & Moonlight has them on the right track. Formed in Denver in 2013, and led by trumpeter Joe Smith, the band has been focusing on dance oriented swing since their 2015 release High Fidelity. ...

Album Review

Joe Smith & The Spicy Pickles: High Fidelity

Read "High Fidelity" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
August 17, 2015

The Swing Era, usually thought of as the late 1930s to the early 1940s, is that one unique time when jazz was America's pop music. While this is not the place to go into the history of that period or its precedents, suffice it to say that the bands of say, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Lunceford, Count Basie and Duke Ellington, to produce an arbitrary list, each had and has diehard fans who will declare them to ...