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The Palomar Trio: The Song in Our Soul
by Jack Bowers
On The Song in Our Soul, the members of the Palomar Trio look over their collective shoulders to a time when swing was king and musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Art Tatum, Ethel Waters, Gene Krupa, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw and many of their peers were household names. In fact, the trio was named in honor of Goodman's legendary 1935 performance at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, which is widely seen as marking the start ...
read moreThe Bix Centennial All-Stars: Celebrating Bix!
by Nicholas F. Mondello
Cornetist Leon Bismark “Bix" Beiderbecke, while certainly heavily influenced by Louis Armstrong, developed his own highly stylized way of playing and improvising jazz. One wonders what musical highlights might have been accomplished had he lived beyond his 28 years. Celebrating Bix!, originally released in 2003 as a single CD album, adds selections which, due to size constraints, did not make the original release, but they all certainly “make it" here as a double CD and vinyl release. What ...
read moreThe Bix Centennial All Stars: Celebrating Bix!
by Jack Bowers
Here's a new album by the Bix Centennial All Stars honoring the legacy of the renowned cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. Sort of. Actually, most of the music on Celebrating Bix! was recorded and released in March 2003, the actual centenary of Beiderbecke's birth in Davenport, Iowa. This expanded twentieth anniversary edition includes a trio of songs not released at that time owing to limited space, and has been reissued on two CDs instead of one. Having said that, ...
read moreMolly Ryan: Sweepin' the Blues Away
by Jack Bowers
New York City-based vocalist Molly Ryan makes an auspicious impression from the outset on her latest album, leading her splendid back-up quartet through the charming song, “Get Yourself a New Broom (and Sweep the Blues Away)" a light-hearted but little- known treasure written in 1938 by Ted Koehler & Harold Arlen. Ryan seems to specialize in unearthing such overlooked gems, presenting several other prototypes in an anthology that spans the years 1909 to 1941. Even to someone ...
read moreDan Levinson and his Canary Cottage Dance Orchestra: Steppin' Around
by Michael Steinman
In a jam session or reading an arrangement, the gifted reedman Dan Levinson summons up noble ghosts--Benny Goodman, Bud Freeman, Frank Trumbauer and Rosy McHargue. But he is his own man with his own ideas. In spirit, he resembles Dick Hyman, creating historically accurate but radically lively music. Although Levinson is called “traditional" by those who revel in labels, his approach to the past is energetic, with a mission to rescue otherwise obscure American music, pop and jazz. His second ...
read moreDan Levinson and His Canary Cottage Dance Orchestra: Crinoline Days
by Elliott Simon
In 1917, as Russians revolted against the Tsar and the US entered into World War I, the first jazz records, recorded right here in NYC, turned so-called legitimate music on its ear. People danced to the “new music and the national craze that would come to be known as the “Jazz Age was born. That same year, saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft and his Frisco Jazz band wowed NYC society with their hot sophisticated sound at the Winter Garden Theatre's chic club, ...
read moreThe Bix Beiderbecke Centennial All-Stars: Celebrating Bix!
by Jack Bowers
Cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, who considered himself a failure and died (primarily from alcohol abuse) in 1931 at age twenty-eight, would no doubt have been astonished to learn that a group of world- class musicians was assembling to record an album celebrating the hundredth anniversary of his birth. But if Bix was unable to recognize his own genius, others were--and now, seventy-two years onward, he rests comfortably in the pantheon raised to honor such legendary jazz pioneers as Louis Armstrong, King ...
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