New Orleans Stomp

Toweringly influential New Orleans pianist, vocalist, songwriter, and vital bridge between jazz, rock & roll, and R&B.
Justly worshipped a decade and a half after his death as a founding father of New Orleans R&B, Roy "Professor Longhair" Byrd was nevertheless so down-and-out at one point in his long career that he was reduced to sweeping the floors in a record shop that once could have moved his platters by the boxful.
That Longhair made such a marvelous comeback testifies to the resiliency of this late legend, whose Latin-tinged rhumba-rocking piano style and croaking, yodeling vocals were as singular and spicy as the second-line beats that power his hometown's musical heartbeat…

Giants of Jazz presents all of the music recorded in New Orleans, LA by 71-year-old Earl Hines on January 30 and 31, 1975. A consistently surprising pianist whose modernistic impulses began to revolutionize how jazz was played during the late '20s and (in solidarity with those of Duke Ellington) led directly to the innovations of Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Jaki Byard, Hines sounds entirely at home among friends performing material from the traditional jazz and Dixieland repertoire. The band is excellent, with a front line of trumpeter Wallace Davenport, trombonist Tom Ebert and clarinetist Orange Kellin. The pianist's rhythm section mates were banjoist/guitarist Emanuel Sayles, bassist Lloyd Lambert and drummer Louis Barbarin. Hines sings on "(I Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Have None Of My) Jelly Roll" and "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans."

The first recording by trombonist Wilbur DeParis' "New New Orleans Jazz Band" (although it was actually released after their 1955 session) is full of fresh and lively Dixieland. DeParis and his all-stars (cornetist Sidney DeParis, clarinetist Omer Simeon, pianist Don Kirkpatrick, banjoist Eddie Gibbs, bassist Harold Jackson and drummer Freddie Moore) play a wide variety of material which includes the leader's colorful "Martinique," "Under the Double Eagle," Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C Sharp Minor," a couple of Jelly Roll Morton tunes and "When the Saints Go Marching In"; the second part of the latter is taken at a blistering tempo. The DeParis band was one of the most consistently inventive Dixieland-oriented groups of the 1950s.

An amazing piece of work - a massive eight-disc boxed set that contains every one of Fats Domino's 1949-1962 Imperial waxings. That's a tremendous load of one artist, but the legacy of Domino and his partner Dave Bartholomew is so consistently innovative and infectious that it never grows tiresome for a second. From the clarion call of "The Fat Man," Domino's 1949 debut, to the storming "Dance with Mr. Domino" in 1962, he typified everything charming about Crescent City R&B, his Creole patois and boogie-based piano a non-threatening vehicle for the rise of rock & roll.

If one CD compilation could represent a body of work that defined the art of jazz during the mid-'20s, this might be it: cornetist Louis Armstrong's first recordings as leader of his own band, beginning in November of 1925 and covering almost exactly one year of vigorously creative activity as the OKeh record label's hottest act. In addition to Lil Hardin's skills as composer, pianist, arranger, and professional advisor, Armstrong was fortunate to have in his little group rock-solid trombonist Kid Ory and clarinetist Johnny Dodds, who can be heard playing alto sax on "Come Back Sweet Papa" and "Don't Forget to Mess Around"…