The Blues - Coral Records

The Blues

1959 Coral Records CRL 757284 Stereo / CRL 57284 Mono

Side 1
1. St. Louis Blues
2. Blue Mountain
3. Columbus Stockade Blues
4. Aunt Hagar's Blues
5. Lonesome Road
6. The Memphis Blues

Side 2
1. My Inspiration
2. Wang Wang Blues
3. Beale Street Blues
4. Wabash Blues
5. Five Point Blues
6. Bayou Blues

Liner Notes:

THE BLUES
Pete Fountain
Clarinet Solos with Orchestra directed by Chareles Bud Dant

Personnel on: LONESOME ROAD - BAYOU BLUES - MY INSPIRATION - COLUMBUS STOCKADE BLUES - WABASH BLUES
Trumpets - Mannie Klein, Conrad Gozzo, Art Depew, Shorty Sherock
Trombones - Moe Schneider, William Schaefer, Harold Diner, Peter Lofthouse
Reeds - Jack Dumont, Eddie Miller, Russ Cheever, Babe Russin, William Ulyate
Rhythm - Jack Sperling, drums; Stan Wrightsman, piano; Morty Corb, bass.
Personnel on: ST. LOUIS BLUES - BLUE FOUNTAIN - WANG WANG BLUES Trumpets - Mannie Klein, Conrad Gozzo, Art Depew, Jackie Coon
Trombones - Same as above
Reeds - Wilber Schwartz, Eddie Miller, Babe Russin, Matty Matlock, Chuck Gentry Rhythm - Same as above.
Personnel on: MEMPHIS BLUES - AUNT HAGER'S BLUES - FIVE POINT BLUES - BEALE STREET BLUES
Trumpets - Ray Linn, Jackie Coon, John Best, Art Depew
Trombones - Same as above
Reeds - Jack Dumont, Russ Cheever, Eddie Miller, Babe Russia, Chuck Gentry
Rhythm - Same as above.

PETE FOUNTAIN IS BACK in jazz where he belongs. The clarinetist from New Orleans has returned home "to swing a little," as he engagingly put it, "and live the life that I know best." Though grateful for the exposure and recognition accorded him while the swinging member of the Lawrence Welk TV family, it became progressively apparent to Fountain, during his two-year tenure with the Welk organization, that the association could not be a lasting one. "I guess champagne and bourbon don't mix," he told a writer from Down Beat Magazine.

"Environment plays a large role in a person's development," say certain influential members of the psychiatric fraternity. Fountain's life story is wholly in harmony with this idea. Jazz has been a part of his experience almost as far back as he can remember. His Dad was a jazz musician; jazz was a frequent subject of conversation among his friends, and the sound of this music, a constant feature in and around the Fountain house. As you know, New Orleans has always had more than its share of jazz, being one of the chief centers, cradles, if you will, of "our" music. Elements peculiar to jazz and jazz performance wherefore to be found there without really looking.

Considering the situation in which Fountain was born and bred, it was almost inevitable that he select an instrument basic to the more traditional forms of jazz. At 12, he began his study of the clarinet - a full-time job ever since - with Mr. Allesandro of the New Orleans Symphony. For nearly seven years, Fountain played and studied before working his first professional job. It was a rather affecting experience. Pete replaced his idol, Irving Fazola, at a strip joint, the night of his death.

"I had to lie about my age," Pete told an interviewer. "After a little while the management found out and fired me, so I started gigging around the city, anywhere I could work."

With the exception of a few trips to Chicago to work at Jazz Limited and the Blue Note, Pete stayed close to home. He worked with a number of New Orleans traditional units, and was quite happy with his lot. In 1957, Welk beckoned, and this relationship that would thrust the clarinetist into the commercial big time began. It ended in 1959, and Down Beat most succinctly expressed the reason: "Jazz is jazz, and square is square, and never the twain shall meet."

Prior to returning to New Orleans to open his own jazz club, The Bateau Lounge on Bourbon Street, Pete cut this album, in itself an emancipation proclamation. He obtained men that he respects and calls "the Hollywood studio elite"; all of whom feel jazz strongly, are flexible, and in the same traditional/swing idiom as Fountain.

"We got the right cats," Pete enthusiastically declared during our phone conversation. "The guys were happy. Mannie Klein enjoyed the dates so much that he brought his wife after the first session to hear the rest. These sessions weren't like recording dates. They were relaxed. All of them should be that way... The real important thing was to get off the ground right away and swing, and I think we did that."

Asked about his style, the general feel of his solos in this presentation, he replied: "I'm trying to combine Fazola's mellow sound with Benny Goodman's drive. Both of these guys are my idols. Yeah, a mellow sound with drive, that gets it!

"Before I forget, I'd like to say a word about the soloists. Eddie Miller, an old favorite of mine, had the tenor solos; John Best and Conrad Gozzo, the trumpet jazz; Moe Schneider was our trombonist; and the mellophone comments were by young Jackie Coon, a West Coast kid who really breaks it up!"

Mention was made of the man with iron lips and leather lungs, one Conrad Gozzo, "the daddy" of lead trumpet men, and drummer Jack Sperling who seems to fit in any musical clime. And then we spoke of the album concept, how appropriate it was considering the situation.

What better way to celebrate a return to jazz than by cutting an album of blues? Pete selected old ones and had some new ones written. All of them, in performance, are blues in feeling; the majority, blues in form, as well. The arrangements by Bud Dant, Frank Scott, Stan Wrightsman, Art Depew and Morty Corb are uncluttered and swinging, show Pete to advantage, and have an unmistakable traditional flavor.

What this writer finds most impressive is the relaxation and lack of pretension about the program. Though there is a big band involved here, an easily recognized sense of rapport typical of small band playing permeates these performances. But that is as it should be, for large jazz bands are most commanding when functioning as a great small unit would. As drummer Mel Lewis said while a member of the Stan Kenton band: "When we can get 18 men `walking' like five, the band is truly swinging."

As for Fountain, himself, I think you'll dig him, for he doesn't try to prove anything with his playing. His only desire is to tell a story through his horn, and most often it is more than ample recompense for the time spent listening.

BURT KORALL

Salutes The Great Clarinetists - Coral Records

Salutes The Great Clarinetists

1960 - Coral Records CRL 757333 Stereo / CRL 57333 Mono

Side 1
1. Woodchopper’s Ball
2. Petite Fleur
3. Sometimes I’m Happy
4. Frensi
5. When My Baby Smiles At Me
6. March Of The Bob Cats

Side 2
1. Begin The Beguine
2. Me And My Shadow
3. Green Eyes
4. Let’s Dance
5. My Inspiration
6. Amapola

Liner Notes:

PETE FOUNTAIN Salutes the GREAT CLARINETISTS
With Orchestra Directed By Charles Bud Dant

Pete Fountain has reached that enviable stage at which the compilers of catalogues for use in record shops are uncertain whether to list him under "jazz" or in the "popular" category. In fact, Pete's success helps to underline the inherently false implication of this listing system that jazz cannot be popular music in the broadest sense. His two years of national TV exposure with Lawrence Welk, his extraordinary success in albums under his own name and most recently the warm reaction accorded his group at such music meccas as New York's Roundtable all tend to prove that given the right blend of musician-ship, showmanship and marksmanship, jazz can be aimed at an almost unlimited audience.

The present collection is Pete's second big band album. Bud Dant, who helped to produce and write the previous venture, the Blues set (CRL 57284), was similarly associated with the new one and used basically the same personnel.

There are three main groups. On all of them the firm foundation is a superbly integrated rhythm section composed of Stan Wrightsman on piano, Morty Corb on bass, and a familiar figure common to every one of Pete's previous Coral albums (even those recorded in New Orleans), the indomitable and propulsive Jack Sperling, whose drums provide a vital and exciting spark throughout. To these men are added, on Petite Fleur, When My Baby Smiles at Me, Begin The Beguine and Amapola, a brass section (Conrad Gozzo, lead trumpet; Art Depew, Johnny Best, and George Thow or Jackie Coons, trumpets; Moe Schneider, Bill Schaefer and Joe Howard or Marshall Cram, trombones; Pete Lofthouse, bass trombone). The rhythm section provides the foundation, on Sometimes I'm Happy, Me and My Shadow and Let's Dance, for a five piece saxophone section with Willie Schwartz, alto and tenor; Eddie Miller, Plas Johnson, Babe Russin, tenors; Chuck Gentry, baritone. On Woodchoppers' Ball, Frenesi, March of the Bob Cats, Green Eyes and My Inspiration the same reeds, brass and rhythm are combined for some of the most potent big band sounds ever produced by these topflight West Coast musicians.

Of the album's theme, Pete says: "This is my tribute to some of the great people who have been associated with the clarinet. It's not in any way an attempt to duplicate their individual styles." It will be noted that the seven clarinetists saluted are all men who came to prominence in the 1920s and '30s. The reason, will be clear to anyone who has followed the jazz scene: Pete Fountain is the first man on his instrument to achieve complete national success and economic security since the dying days of the swing era, when for no apparent reason the thin black horn lost its vogue.

"I have to keep in mind," observes Pete with typical frankness, "that I was lucky to have an open field on my instrument. After all, when Benny Goodman came along, most of the time he had Shaw and Herman and Dorsey and others on his back; but the fellows who came up in between that period and the present - Buddy de Franco, Tony Scott and the others - are in a different field and represent a different approach to the instrument."

I would debate this last item; despite his New Orleans associations and Dixieland background, Pete essentially is a modern musician, one who has listened to jazz with ears that are as harmonically sensitive and fingers as consistently agile as those of De Franco and the other contemporary stylists. The point has never been more clearly made than in these sides on which, as he emphasizes, the tributes are to earlier figures but the style is deliberately his own.

"The orchestra," says Bud Dant, "was supposed to be built around Pete to showcase him, rather than to be integrated with him. And in the arrangements we would use a phrase or passage here and there that might be reminiscent of the original recording, but here again there was no exact carbon copying."

Woodchoppers' Ball (I have always felt the apostrophe should come after rather than before the s,because the woodchopping clearly was a concerted effort) was the first hit recording of the Woody Herman band, cut in April 1939, some 2½ years after Woody's debut as a recording bandleader. Based on a simple repeated riff in the 12-bar blues pattern, it was rearranged for this date by Don Bagley. In addition to Pete's buoyant pied-piping there is strong support from drummer Sperling and pianist Wrightsman.

Petite Fleur has an ironic history. Though the late Sidney Bechet had composed and recorded it several years earlier, it went almost unnoticed until Monty Sunshine, a British musician, took it up in 1956. His recording with Chris Barber's band became a sensation, first in West Germany, then in Britain and finally in 1959 in the U. S. It was through this freak chain of events that Bechet, just before his death, found himself the composer of a song on the Hit Parade. The Fountain treatment is ingeniously scored by Bud Dant for the brass section, with some attractive and solidly swinging effects accomplished in mutes.

Sometimes I'm Happy was one of the first Benny Goodman recordings to penetrate to a mass public in the swing years. The famous Fletcher Henderson arrangement was cut by Benny for a 78 rpm single in July 1935. "Benny was one of my early idols," says Pete. "I used to hear him play this on the old Camel Caravan show." The Don Bagley arrangement uses saxes and rhythm, with a deep voicing featuring four tenors (Plas Johnson has the lead) and baritone.

Frenesi was a tune Artie Shaw brought back from Mexico after the well-remembered walkout with which he abruptly ended the career of his second band, late in 1939. Artie's version, cut in March 1940, featured a large orchestra with 13 strings. Art Depew scored it for Pete with the full complement of brass, saxes and rhythm; the performance swings all the way, touching only lightly and briefly on the Latin rhythm concept.

When My Baby Smiles At Me has nostalgic associations for Pete. "Ted Lewis was my daddy's idol. Dad didn't play clarinet, just a litle drums and violin, but he was crazy about Ted Lewis, and when I was about 11 or 12 he took me to hear him at a local theatre. I guess he was the first clarinetist I ever heard in person." How far the clarinet has progressed since then can be deduced from Pete's elegant, limpid-toned, rhythmically subtle delineation of the hoary melody in this Bud Dant arrangement.

March of the Bob Cats, composed by Irving Fazola, was recorded by him in March 1939 with Bob Crosby's Bob Cats, an octet contingent from the big Crosby band. Pete, who worshipped Fazola, heard him often in New Orleans, from the time Faz left the traveling big band scene until he died in 1949. Much of the excitement and vigorous sincerity of the old Crosby band lives anew in this Morty Corb arrangement, which has solo spots by Eddie Miller and Moe Schneider as well as some of Pete's best work of the entire album.

Begin the Beguine was of course the biggest Artie Shaw hit of all. The brass section backs Pete effectively in a Don Bagley chart. Here the mood and pattern of the original treatment (Shaw recorded it in July 1938, by the way) are retained more exactly than on most of the tracks in this album.

Me and My Shadow, a second tribute to Ted Lewis, has Pete with a sax section backdrop in an Art Depew arrangement. The saxophone voicing is similar to that heard on Sometimes I'm Happy.

Green Eyes was one of a series of hits established in the early 1940s by the Jimmy Dorsey orchestra, which at that time served largely as a setting for the vocals of Helen O'Connell and Bob Eberly. The tune has since been used occasionally as a basis for jazz improvisation, and in this instrumental version it serves as an excellent vehicle for Pete's clarinet, with the full band featured in a Morty Corb orchestration.

Let's Dance, a swing version of Karl Maria von Weber's Invitation to the Dance, has been popular for more than two decades as Benny Goodman's theme. In this Morty Corb score Pete introduces the melody to a background of five saxes led by Willie Schwartz's alto. Again Jack Sperling's drums are a major incentive to the soaring Fountain horn.

My Inspiration is another of the compositions recorded by Irving Fazola during his two-year tenure in the Bob Crosby orchestra. Crosby cut it with the full band in October 1938 and another clarinetist who was a member of the Crosby crew at that time, Matty Matlock, wrote the new arrangement used here as a setting for Pete Fountain. The minor-key melody sounds as beautiful as ever after 22 years. Melodically and harmonically it's a superb piece of material for Pete. After a Sperling break the tempo doubles to bring the performance to a compelling climax.

Amapola, like Green Eyes, was a vocal vehicle in the Jimmy Dorsey band, and coincidentally it has a melody strikingly similar in pattern. Art Depew wrote the Fountain arrangement, featuring the brass section. Jack Sperling's punctuations drive the final chorus along engagingly and Pete uses a Goodmanesque flourish to bring the album to a swinging close.

In concept and execution I believe this is the most successful Pete Fountain album to date, one that will serve to remind many fans of a point made by Bud Dant when we were discussing Pete's accomplishments. "Pete hasn't only helped to bring the clarinet back in front where it should be," said Bud, "he's also managed, with his musicianship and his colorful personality, to make many new friends for jazz in general."

LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The New Encyclopedia of Jazz)

Let The Good Times Roll - Coral Records

Let The Good Times Roll

1962 Coral Records CRL 757406 Stereo / CRL 57406 Mono

Side 1
1. Talkin' Bout You
2. Let The Good Times Roll
3. Get Happy
4. Georgia On My Mind
5. Blue Clarinet
6. A-EH La Bas

Side 2
1. Corrine Corrina
2. Angel Eyes
3. Down Home
4. And The Angels Sing
5. It's All Right
6. Soft Winds

Liner Notes:

LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL
Pete Fountain With The Jubilee Singers With Chorus And Orchestra Directed By Charles bud Dant

Although there are some jazz buffs who decry popularity as musically corrupting, it is to clarinetist Pete Fountain's considerable credit that he has, with his own unique style and great talent, captured the imagination of one of the vastest and most comprehensive audiences the medium has ever enjoyed.

In this album-generating characteristic musical excitement through his extremely successful amalgamation of his clarinet, a rhythm section, orchestra and vocal chorus - Pete delivers a collection of swinging standards. Among them, the fast-moving title song, Let The Good Times Roll, and such colorful favorites as Talkin' 'bout You, Get Happy, Georgia On My Mind, Corrine Corrina, Angel Eyes, And The Angels Sing, and many others.

As usual, Pete's clarinet provides the vital impetus to the proceedings, supported by some of the most outstanding instrumentalists on the scene today - Stan Wrightsman on piano; Morty Corb, bass; Jack Sperling and Nick Fatool alternating on drums; Bobby Gibbons and Bob Bain, guitar; the Jubilee Singers (Ann Terry, Gene Lanham, Jack Gruberman, Sally Sweetland, Francis Scott, Gwenn Johnson, Bill Lee, William Brown, Sue Allen, Peggy Clark) ; and the orchestra under the able and imaginative direction of Charles "Bud" Dant.

Dr. Fountain's Magical Licorice Stick Remedy For The Blues - Coral Records

Dr. Fountain's Magical Licorice Stick Remedy For The Blues

1970 Coral Records CRL 757513 Stereo / 57513 Mono

Side 1
1. Doctor Fountain's Magical Licorice Stick Remedy For The Blues
2. Mississippi
3. Bridge Over Troubled Water
4. Licorice Stick Rag
5. Somewhere
6. Sulpher And Molasses

Side 2
1. Everything Is Beautiful
2. I'm In Love With New Orleans
3. Applause
4. Passport To The Future
5. Hey Mr. Sun

Liner Notes:

DR. FOUNTAINS'S MAGICAL LICORICE STICK REMEDY FOR THE BLUES

A remarkable formula developed by Dr. Fountain, which combines the heart of the rare licorice stick in a mixture guaranteed to cure the ague, stop the shakes, revoke the rattles, dismiss warts and other peculiar skin eruptions, banish freckles, stop cranky backs from aching, and have a definitely salutary effect on hangnails, fever blisters, and the gout.

This patented remedy must be taken internally. If rubbed on or merely inhaled, it will not have a lasting effect. It must get in-side you !

Give it a chance, and it will.

No longer will you suffer from dyspepsia, sciatica, migraine headache, dilated nostrils, furrowed brows, loss of breath and/or cankers of the cheek and tongue. Forget forever the fidgety feet, quivering fingers, sweating palms, stiff elbows, bowed legs or knocked knees. Kiss your truss goodbye!

Dr. Fountain, who has spent a bearded lifetime among the friendly savages in the mystical city of New Orleans, has learned all their magical secrets and has mixed them into this healing, heady brew.

WARNING! MAY BE HABIT-FORMING!

Take in large doses at least once a day for a week.

The Best Of Pete Fountain - Coral Records

The Best Of Pete Fountain

Inside 4 Page Booklet

1970 Coral Records 7CXSB 10 Stereo Deluxe 2 Record Set

Side 1:
1. While We Danced At The Mardi Gras
2. A Closer Walk
3. Columbus Stockade Blues
4. Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans
5. Fascination Medley: a) Fascination b) Basin Street Blues c) Tin Roof Blues d) Way Down Yonder In New Orleans
6. China Boy (Go To Sleep)

Side 2:
1. When The Saints Come Marching In March
2. St. Louis Blues
3. When My Baby Smiles At Me
4. Shrimp Boats
5. Indiana (Back Home Again In Indiana)

Side 3:
1. Bye Bye Bill Bailey
2. Lazy River
3. Yes Indeed
4. High Society
5. Stranger On The Shore
6. Over The Waves

Side 4:
1. Oh, Lady Be Good
2. You're Nobody 'til Somebody Loves You
3. My Blue Heaven
4. Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet
5. For Pete's Sake Side 1

Liner Notes:

New Orleans, where Pete Fountain was born and bred, is unique in the United States. It has a colorful history, and it has always affectionately preserved its French heritage, but what makes it a kind of Mecca to people all over the world is the fact that no other city has such strong claims to being the birthplace of jazz.

The origins of jazz have been the subject of many ingenious theories and many intriguing legends, but there is no doubt that New Orleans always possessed an unusually rich musical culture. A cosmopolitan port. it was the meeting place of several different idioms that fused to give the twentieth century its most significant and appropriate music.

In the scaled-down instrumentation which New Orleans jazz musicians adapted from the familiar brass bands. the clarinet had a vital role, and it was from this role that the main emphasis on improvisation in jazz developed. In the traditional ensemble. the clarinet had more freedom than any of the other instruments. The responsibilities of the trumpet and trombone, for example. were firmly defined, but above and around them the clarinet was free to embellish and improvise. In exercising this prerogative, the New Orleans clarinetists attained a supremacy that was not challenged for many years. They also developed a recognizable style and, in several cases. remarkable virtuosity.

The honor roll of names is long, and such clarinetists as Jimmie Noone, Sidney Bechet, Larry Shields, Alphonse Picou, Sidney Arodin, Leon Roppolo, Barney Bigard, Johnny Dodds, Omer Simeon, Irving Fazola and Albert Nicholas, not forgetting the great teacher, Lorenzo Tio, Jr., wrote a glorious page in jazz history. Others, like Buster Bailey of Memphis and Darnell Howard of Chicago, assimilated the essential characteristics of the New Orleans style, which was subsequently modified by Benny Goodman and others.

At a time when the clarinet has tended to wane in popularity, it is noteworthy that New Orleans remains a clarinet town. The sound of the instrument wails out of club after club every night of the week on Bourbon Street, and not least from that flourishing establishment, Pete Fountain's French Quarter Inn.

That the clarinet tradition has survived so strongly in New Orleans is not due to insularity on the part of its musicians. They, after all, were among the first to disseminate the jazz message, traveling extensively throughout the world after World War I, as many have continued to do ever since. They proved adaptable to changing conditions and contexts, while always retaining an identifiable spirit in their playing. Today, they are affected by the same pressures, competition and radio programming as musicians of other cities, but the attitude of their audiences is decidedly different. In the Crescent City, music, particularly jazz, is associated with a good time. The inexplicable longueurs and aberrations that are inflicted on per-missive listeners in jazz clubs elsewhere are seldom tolerated there.

The recordings in this set reflect that attitude, and render Pete Fountain's popularity easily understand-able. His music is indeed musicianly, but it is not pretentious. Nor is it ever presented as a mystery or a misery. The moods and tempos vary, but the spirit of enjoyment is fundamental.

Pierre Dewey La Fontaine, Jr., was born in 1930. In due course, finding a need for a more concise name, he became Pete Fountain. His father had played several instruments as an avocation, and he encouraged his son's interest in music. Before he entered his teens, Pete had begun to study clarinet at Johnny Wiggs's State Band School of Music. He showed such natural instinct and aptitude for the instrument that in a very short time he was far ahead of the other pupils. He further developed his style and technique in the time-honored jazz fashion by "sitting in" and "jamming" with bands on Bourbon Street. He studied the work of such prominent jazzmen as Eddie Miller, Charlie Teagarden, Bobby Hackett and Ray Bauduc, and most particularly that of his idol, clarinetist Irving Fazola.

His first professional date came when he was 16,when Fazola died. He took Fazola's chair in a French Quarter band, and the blues tributes he blew for his friend and teacher that night were the making of yet another legend.

In 1948, when he had completed his schooling, he joined the Junior Dixieland Band, which won a talent contest and toured the United States. His reputation was growing apace, and after playing in Phil Zito's Dixieland Band, he helped form the Basin Street Six in 1950. This combination played in New Orleans and the area around for three years. He next joined the Dukes of Dixieland and went to Chicago for several months, but he returned home when the group set out on a national tour. Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans is a song with a title of more than ordinary significance to the native son.

There followed a brief hiatus in his musical career when he joined the "day people" in a 9-to-5 job. This move was primarily made because the musician's life separated him from his wife, Beverly, whom he had married in 1950. Music continued to call, however, and after their first child was born he organized a band for an engagement at Dan's Pier 600 on Bourbon Street, where, with the aid of several successful records, his reputation resumed its interrupted expansion.

In the summer of 1956, Pete scored a tremendous success at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, which led to an invitation from Lawrence Welk to make guest appearances on TV. The offer he subsequently accepted for two weeks turned into an engagement lasting two years! The response of home viewers was phenomenal, but eventually the urge to play his own way became too strong.

"I guess champagne and bourbon just don't mix," he said. "Don't get me wrong - Welk is a wonderful man and his TV show did plenty for me. But I just couldn't play the kind of music I wanted to."

Back in New Orleans, he obtained an interest in his friend Dan Levy's Bateau Lounge on the street he loves best - Bourbon Street. Soon he had his own well-appointed and successful club, the French Quarter Inn, and in due course he became the owner of a 35-acre ranch a half-hour outside the city.

Happy to live his life in New Orleans, which he leaves somewhat reluctantly for concert and TV appearances, Pete has done much to secure recognition - and an aura of "respectability" - for jazz. It was always supported by the masses, but he succeeded in winning over the city's social, cultural and business leaders as well. When Pete Fountain Day was eventually proclaimed in New Orleans, the festivities concluded with a torch-light parade and concert.

In 1968, with Mayor Schiro's blessing and backing, the city put on its first full-scale jazz festival. Theweek-long "jazzfest" began with a Mass for deceased jazz musicians in St. Louis Cathedral. Then the bands marched through the streets, played to 2500 people on the riverboat President, and performed before enormous audiences in the Municipal Auditorium.

Jazz had come full circle. The parent style was well represented by local musicians, prominent among whom were Pete Fountain and his enlarged band from the French Quarter Inn. There, too, were the "children" from overseas, and the famous bands of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Woody Herman (each with its clarinet player), which had re-translated and expanded upon the gospel the first disciples took out of the city four decades before.

This collection of recordings, made between 1959 and 1967, illustrates many facets of Pete Fountain's musical personality. As he told writer Burt Korall, he seeks "to combine Fazola's mellow sound with Benny Good-man's drive," and these qualities are evident as he plays in the many different contexts devised for him by producer Charles Bud Dant.

On half the titles, he is heard as soloist with a rhythm section that is occasionally supplemented by Godfrey Hirsch's skillful vibes playing. While this affords him maximum freedom, it also charges him with maximum responsibility. Just how adroitly he walks the tightrope between them is happily audible on such classics of the New Orleans repertoire as When The Saints Come Marching In March, A Closer Walk, While We Danced At The Mardi Gras and Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans.

Other performances like Columbus Stockade Blues and St. Louis Blues find him in front of a band and arrangements that recall those of Bob Crosby, with whom Irving Fazola made his name internationally famous. Heinie Beau's arrangement of Over The Waves, with its knowing use of tuba and four drummers, recreates the sound of the parade bands that are such a feature of New Orleans life. Sy Oliver's famous Yes Indeed becomes a neat essay in gospelry as Pete's clarinet is answered by a 14-piece choir. In between an excursion to Nashville for You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You, and to Hamburg for Bert Kaempfert's For Pete's Sake, there are a whole lot of evergreen jazz standards. And by way of salutes to other clarinetists, there are Lazy River (for Sidney Arodin), When My Baby Smiles At Me (for Ted Lewis), High Society (for Alphonse Picou), and Stranger On The Shore (for Acker Bilk).

The clarinet is one of the hardest instruments to play, but when the inevitable campaign to "bring back the clarinet" begins, it will be well to remember that it has never been out of favor in New Orleans - in Pete's Place.

- STANLEY DANCE
____________________________________________

PETE'S ACCOMPANISTS
(A) Stan Wrightsman, piano; Morty Corb, bass; Jack Sperling, drums. 16 February, 1959.
(B) As above. 17 February, 1959.
(C) As above. 24 February, 1959.
(D) Shorty Sherock, Conrad Gozzo, Arthur Depew, Manny Klein, trumpets; Moe Schneider, Bill Schaefer, Harold Diner, Peter Lofthouse, trombones; Jack Dumont, Eddie Miller, Russell Cheever, Babe Russin, William Ulyate, reeds; Stan Wrightsman, piano; Marty Corb, bass; Jack Sperling, drums. 10 March, 1959.
(E) Manny Klein, Jack Coon, Arthur Depew, Conrad Gozzo, trumpets; Moe Schneider, Bill Schaefer, Harold Diner, Peter Lofthouse, trombones; Wilbur Schwartz, Eddie Miller, Matty Matlock, Babe Russin, Charles Gentry, reeds; Stan Wrightsman, piano; Morty Corb, bass; Jack Sperling, drums. 11 March, 1959.
(F) Godfrey Hirsch, vibes; Merle Koch, piano; Donald Bagley, bass; Jack Sperling, drums. 26 October, 1959.
(G) Conrad Gozzo, Art Depew, Johnny Best, George Thow, trumpets; Moe Schneider, Bill Schaefer, Joe Howard, Peter Lofthouse, trombones; Wilbur Schwartz, Plas Johnson, Babe Russin, Eddie Miller, Charles Gentry, reeds; Stan Wrightsman, piano; Morty Corb, bass; Jack Sperling, drums. 8 April, 1960.
(H) Stan Wrightsman, piano; Morty Corb, bass; Jack Sperling, drums. 9 August, 1960.
(I) As (H), plus Godfrey Hirsch, vibes. 17 August, 1960.
(J) Stan Wrightsman, piano; Bobby Gibbons, guitar; Morty Corb, bass; Jack Sperling, drums. 30 June, 1961.
(K) Godfrey Hirsch, vibes; Stan Wrightsman, piano; Bobby Gibbons, guitar; Morty Corb, bass; Jack Sperling, drums; and 14-voice mixed chorus. 9 September, 1961.
(L) Charlie Teagarden, trumpet; Moe Schneider, trombone; Eddie Miller, tenor saxophone; Stan Wrightsman, piano; Bobby Gibbons, guitar; Morty Corb, bass; Jack Sperling, drums. 9 November, 1961.
(M) Godfrey Hirsch, vibes; John Probst, piano; Bobby Gibbons, guitar; Morty Corb, bass; Jack Sperling, drums. 6 September, 1962.
(N) Richard Noel, Lew McCreary, Bill Schaefer, George Roberts, Moe Schneider, trombones; Jack Coon, trumpet; Bobby Gibbons, guitar; Morty Corb, bass; Phil Stephens, tuba; Jack Sperling, Paul Barbarin, Nick Fatool, Godfrey Hirsch, drums. 23 March, 1963.
(0) Jack Coon, trumpet; Moe Schneider, trombone; John Probst, piano; Bobby Gibbons, guitar; Morty Corb, bass; Phil Stephens, tuba; Jack Sperling, Paul Barbarin, Nick Fatool, Godfrey Hirsch, drums. 23 March, 1963.
(P) Godfrey Hirsch, vibes; Earl Vuiovich, piano; Paul Guma, guitar; Oliver Felix, bass; Nick Fatool, Paul Edwards, drums. 8 February, 1964.
(Q) Boots Randolph, alto saxophone; Floyd Cramer, piano; Bob Moore, bass; Harold Bradley, Ray Edenton, guitars; Paul Edwards, drums; and The Jordanaires. 17 October, 1964.
(R) Stan Wrightsman, piano; Morty Corb, bass; Jack Sperling, drums. 30 August, 1966.
(S) Orchestra with vocal sextet, arranged by Herbert Rehbein. 10 October,1967.