Music Inside

Ilove New Orleans jazz and I think Pete Fountain is as good as there is. do you have cassettes?
Rating: 5 / 5

The inclusion of “Fascination” and “Shrimp Boats” and the exclusion of “Bourbon Street Parade” and “Panama” emblematize what is missing on this otherwise slick, polished, practically flawless performance. But Pete (whom I remember catching at Chicago’s Blue Note before his Lawrence Welk fame) has sponsored a genuinely valuable contribution to the catalog of recorded clarinet literature with an offering entitled: “Pete Fountain Presents the Best of Dixieland.”

If the word “dixieland” rubs you the wrong way, forget the labeling. For anyone who loves jazz clarinet or, for that matter, those modern-day listeners who tend to be dismissive of the old “licorice stick,” the other album provides a rare opportunity to hear virtually all of the masters of the instrument on a single disc. It’s unlikely a collection like it exists anywhere. The all-star line-up includes the New Orleans triumvirate (Dodds, Noone, Bechet), the Chicago school (Pee Wee Russell), and latter-day giants (Wilbur, Davern, Fountain). Most telling is the expressive range and variety, from the intimate and heartfelt conversations of Russell, to the playful, flirtatious melodic statements of Irving Fazola, to the endlessly inventive responses of Omar Simeon, to the incisive, penetrating attack of Davern, to the breathtaking virtuoso solo work of Edmund Hall. In fact, Fountain’s own smooth, polished performance sets him more in the company of Benny Goodman than alongside the highly personal voices represented on the sampler bearing his name. Those listeners who are so quick to champion the tenor sax as the most expressive instrument in jazz, as the closest thing to the human voice, should listen carefully and often to the “Best of Dixieland” (not the “Best of Fountain”) album before making any further pronouncements.

Whether or not it’s still possible to hear anything resembling the glorious past in the music’s cradle is open to question. In the 1970s it still was. There was a jazz museum right on Bourbon Street (which must have cost the city an infinitesimal amount compared to the Super-Stadium, or whatever it’s called), and you could still go to Preservation Hall and be transported back in time by over half a century by the clarinet of Albert Burbank (even the Humphrey brothers were a distant second). Consequently, I was somewhat taken back, upon bumping into Danny Barker in the middle of Bourbon Street early one morning, to hear his glum assessment of the state of the art of New Orleans music. He must have been prognosticating about the music’s future. Either that or reflecting on a time the rest of us will never be privileged to re-enter–at least not in this temporal world.
Rating: 5 / 5

Originally, I bought this for my son who remembers “Stranger on the Shore” from a juke box in his childhood. But when I heard the album, I had to download it before sending it on. What a joy! I play it all the time now. Besides the nostalgia and a superb artist… good quality recording. Excellent!
Rating: 5 / 5