Word: decca
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...Miguelito Valdes (real name Eugenio Lazaro Miguel Izquierdo Valdes y Hernandez), whose vigorous song-shouting has been featured with both Cugat and Machito. With the latter's band, big, bull-like Valdes recently recorded an album of his guarachas (risque ballads) and pregons (street-vendor songs) for Decca. He sings in a variety of moods from the comic to the truculent, but always with a full head of steam. He grew up on the Havana docks, became a prize fighter, started as a singer when the Havana Riverside Casino fished him out of tough waterfront cafes. Last week Valdes...
...Ellington keeps poking his head in, it's because he keeps making news. This time it's in the form of two fine albums of re-issue, one Victor and one Brunswick, now a Decca subsidiary. The Brunswick has the edge in quality, and the advantage of having many sides unavailable for more than ten years. "Birmingham Breakdown" is remarkable for being the only Ellington with a Dixieland breakdown ending, and "Wall Street Wail" has always been one of my favorites...
...biggest factors in keeping her name going have been the two magnificent re-issues in Decca's first Gems of Jazz album, and a fifteen minute Sunday radio program with Lou Holtz that hardly did her justice. With the last now off the air, and all but one of her Columbia records recently cut out, Mildred is represented by only eight Deccas--which the public isn't buying because of the terrible surfaces...
...hasn't Mildred recorded of late? Blame it on her integrity. She'd signed a contract with Decca largely on the strength of her two best-selling Gems of Jazz reissues, made years before for English Parlophone. She'd sung four perennial jazz numbers: "Willow Tree," "Honey-suckle Rose," "Squeeze Me," and "Downhearted Blues." Only Decca now wanted her to sing the latest. Mildred as usual wanted to make her own choices. In an up-and-coming singer it might be foolishness, but in an artist who has been on top for over ten years, who has developed...
Gems of Jazz, Volume 5 (Decca; 10 sides). Latest addition to Decca's excellent historical anthology. Selected tidbits of the best small-scale Chicago and New Orleans style playing by such immortals as Jimmie Noone, Zutty Singleton, Eddie Condon, Jimmy McPartland. Notable items: Liberty Inn Drag and Get Happy, by the orchestra of famed Pianist Art Hodes, who has not made a recording since...