Description
Release Date: 2013
Label: Acrobat Music
Track List
Disc 1
1 Relaxin’ At The Touro (11th April 1953)
2 Royal Garden Blues
3 Basin Street Blues
4 Dippermouth Blues
5 Boogie (Meade Lux Lewis)
6 Squeeze Me
7 Rose Room
8 Relaxin’ At The Touro (18th April 1953)
9 St. Louis Blues
10 Riverside Blues
11 Farewell Blues
12 Deed I Do (Meade Lux Lewis)
13 If I Had You
14 That’s A-Plenty
Disc 2
1 Medley: a) Relaxin’ At The Touro, b) At The Jazz Band Ball
2 Memphis Blues
3 Careless Love
4 Six Wheel Chaser (Meade Lux Lewis)
5 My Honey’s Lovin’ Arms
6 Relaxin’ At The Touro (1st May 1953)
7 September In The Rain
8 On The Alamo
9 I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate
10 Dark Eyes (Meade Lux Lewis)
11 My Honey’s Lovin’ Arms
Notes
This is the latest in Acrobat’s continuing series of releases of material from the Ackerman Collection, an archive of largely unreleased jazz recordings held at Stanford University, which has already spawned a number of highly collectable gems. This collection comprises the four complete half-hour radio broadcasts, of which two are completely unreleased in any form, made in April and May 1953 by the great cornettist, trumpeter and bandleader Muggsy Spanier during his four-week season at Doc Dougherty’s Club Hangover in San Francisco, which was a hotbed of the New Orleans revival in the city at that time. Every Saturday, radio KCBS in San Francisco took a live feed from the Club, and the tapes were retained by the programme’s announcer. The shows also include unique intermission piano performances by the legendary Meade Lux Lewis and his trio, making this a very special package. The recording quality is excellent, admirably capturing the uninhibited nature of the performances by Nichols and his finely-honed band. Spanier came to prominence in Chicago in the ‘20s as a powerful exponent of the trumpet and cornet, rivalling Bix Beiderbecke, and his Ragtime Band of 1939 made a series of recordings which helped define the repertoire of the Dixieland revival that was to come. Playing his trademark large bore cornet, Spanier became a key figure in that revival, of which these recordings were a part. It is a fine showcase for Spanier’s straightforward and uncomplicated style around which the finely-honed band, most of whom had been playing together for three years, improvise in uninhibited fashion. Personnel: Muggsy Spanier (Large Bore Cornet); Darnell Howard (Clarinet); Ralph Hutchinson (Trombone); Mel Grant (Piano); Truck Parham (Bass); Barrett Deems (Drums)
