Word: decca
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...Victor and Columbia are concerned. In the past four months Victor has issued one Blackbird record of Barney. Bigard, which is three weeks overdue in the stores. Columbia did a little better with an occasional Basic or Goodman sextet, and much better with a Teddy Wilson album. Only Decca has approximate peace-time output, with two Gams of Jazz albums and about a dozen Bob Crosby records...
...down to what little has been released lately, it is a pity that Decca, the one company that shows any interest in jazz, has the worst record surfaces. These have been improved lately, but not so that a cactus needle can approach them without a qualm. Decca's new Gams of Jazz, vol. 5, lives up to the standards set by the previous albums, and brings out the first batch of all-improvised jazz in over six months. This time, however, there are no big names like Hawkins, or Berigan. As a matter of fact, it is very probably that...
Jimmy McPartland, trumpeter in the Bix style, you've met before in the Decca Chicago Jazz Album. His two sides here, made four years before the Chicago album, are even better. Jimmie Noone, clarinetist, is known to most people only as the man who taught Benny Goodman how to play. You won't hear much Goodman, how to play. You won't hear much Goodman, but you will hear the best work Noone has ever recorded...
...thing is, of course, not the tune, but they way the band plans in and around it. "Down by the Old Mill Stream" is as ancient and hoary a piece as you'll find, but Lunceford's version of it on Decca shows such imagination and ingenuity that the tune, while recognizable at all times, is a secondary consideration. Earl Hines's "Jersey Bounce" on Bluebird is comparatively unknown, yet it is probably the most vivid and happily-conceived version ever put to wax. So try a direct comparison on well-known songs if you want to find the gateway...
Last spring Decca's specialties man, Frank Luther, asked Painter Benton to record some of the music played at his get-togethers. The result: Saturday Night at Tom Benton's-music as tangy and close to the soil as Tom Benton's paintings. Father and son blow their way with true amateur zest (and professional assistance from strings and voices) through three homely folk tunes: Cindy, Old Joe Clark and the fine, mournful Wayfaring Stranger. On three more sides they romp through two simple, diverting pieces (Gay Head Dance, Chilmark Suite) written for them by Edward Robinson...