Word: pee
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Other albums, the Decca Chicago Album, and the Bud Freeman album of the old Wolverine numbers of Bix Beiderbecke, are living proofs of the non-existence of true Chicago style since its decline at the beginning of the thirties. The present-day Chicagoans, Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland, Eddie Condon, Pee-wee Russell, Joe Sullivan, George Wettling, and all the rest have stuck together, but their music is not a style...
Perhaps the most convincing flaw in the fantasy of the Chicago style's existence today, is the wide discrepancy in the styles of the Chicagoans. Contrast, for example, Pee-wee Russell and Mezz Mesirow, who is in partial retirement from his music, the "dirty" clarinet and the pure, reminiscent of New Orleans...
...those who heard Davision this summer, his remarkable trumpet-playing needs no recommendation. At the time, however, he was overshadowed by Pee Wee Russell's name, though not by his playing. Now you can listen to five really great jazzmen whose names mean nothing to most people, and hear some swell music without regard to reputation...
Bill Davison stands by the old Chicago tradition of using a cornet instead of a trumpet, but that hardly precludes comparison with James. Bill may not rake in the shekels, but he plays good music far more consistently. Those who have been attracted to the Ken by Pee Wee Russell's fame and clarineting have invariably stayed to hear Davison. On the basis of tone alone, or ideas alone, he is undoubtedly a top-ranking musician. James may play more obviously difficult pieces, but Davison occasionally gets off some amazingly technical stuff himself, and this always in good taste...
...Pee Wee was in fine form and his famous "dirty" clarinet had many of his listeners' feet tapping in time. Davison's cornet solos and Schraeder's piano barrelhouse also drew plenty of cheers from the crowd. But two Harvard musicians, Stu Grover '45, on drums, and Pamelia, whose saxophone playing George Frazier, Boston Herald swing columnist, called in "the Bud Freeman tradition," stayed right in there with them...