Word: spanier
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Since Goodman left the Hotel New Yorker, the most satisfying band is Muggsy Spanier's, on WNAC Tuesdays at 1:15 A.M., Thursdays and Saturdays at 1:30 A.M. For one of the jazz immortals, Muggsy has less ideas, but more drive than anyone I know. The band is rather sad without him, but the Dean Kincaide arrangements are wonderful listening...
...jazzmen can keep up with their own standards. Even the great Goodman, one of the most ardent perfectionists in the business, has turned out a pitifully large number of stinkers. It's easy to say, on the other hand, that all of Muggsy Spanier's records are good when they total only a dozen. It's also easy to say that even in Louis Armstrong's worst numbers, the mere presence of a few golden notes from his horn redeems them...
...make matters worse, they're simple to the point of being banal. Certainly his pop tunes are turned out according to formula. On the rhythmic numbers you get more variety, but usually the interesting parts are cribbed from Ellington. Compare "American Patrol" as interpreted by Miller and by Muggsy Spanier. It's one of Miller's better records beyond a doubt, but its pretentiousness isn't worth peanuts alongside of Spanier's more modest efforts...
...play old Dixieland tunes like "Fidgety Feet" and "Oh Baby," and blow the roof off in the process. But you don't mind the plaster falling all around you. Not when Davison plays cornet out of the side of his mouth, with's wonderful husky flavor like Berigan or Spanier. Not when PeeWee chortles his notes sometimes with an amazingly dirty tone and sometimes with a tone like molten silver. Not when Gene Schracder bangs out a fine barrel-house piano...
Hesitating Blues (Muggsy Spanier and his Ragtimers; Decca). Compelling blues rhythms and rough, torrid blowing from an eight-man combination. Spanier, long venerated in the hot-jazz world, lately smashed attendance records at Manhattan's Arcadia Ballroom, now rates as a name-bander...