At the Jazz Band Ball with The Dukes Of Dixieland - VIK Records

At the Jazz Band Ball
with The Dukes Of Dixieland
Featuring Pete Fountain

1954 VIK Records LXA-1025 Mono

(VIK is an RCA Records subsidiary)

reissued in 1955 on VIK Records LX-1025 Mono as
At the Jazz Band Ball with The Dukes Of Dixieland

reissued in 1956 on RCA Records LSP-2097 Stereo / LSM-2097 Mono as

At the Jazz Band Ball with The Dukes Of Dixieland

reissued in 1961 on RCA Records LSP-2097(e) Stereo / LSM-2097 Mono as

The Dukes Of Dixieland Featuring Pete Fountain

Side A:
1. At the Jazz Band Ball
2. Beale Street Blues
3. Muskrat Ramble
4. Blue Prelude
5. That's A-Plenty
6. Original Dixieland One-Step

Side B:
1. Panama
2. Wolverine Blues
3. Fidgety Feet
4. Tin Roof Blues
5. Tiger Rag
6. When the Saints Come Marching In

Trumpet: Frankie Assunto
Trombone: Freddie Assunto
Clarinet: Pete Fountain
Piano: Artie Seelig
Bass: Bill Potter
Drums: Roger Johnston
Vocals: Betty Owens

Liner Notes:

'Way back in 1917 our Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, closed New Orleans' famed Storyville, and jazz took the rap. Jazz flourished in Storyville as part and parcel of the entertainment. When the "Closed" signs appeared, the New Orleans jazzmen, aided in their quest for gold by Representative Andrew Volstead and his 19th Amendment, headed for Chicago, then known as a city of booze, barons and big money. For a long, long time New Orleans wasn't the same.

Gradually, a jazz renaissance came about in New Orleans. There were outside influences, to be sure, like the Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band in San Francisco. But mainly it was the forces from within, pushing up again against a tide that wasn't pulling too hard. Bunk Johnson had a lot to do with the rebirth of jazz in New Orleans, and so did a group of youngsters who called themselves THE DUKES OF DIXIELAND.

The Dukes got themselves organized right after the fighting stopped in World War II. They were kids, but that didn't seem to matter. Six years ago they walked into the Famous Door in New Orleans for a four-week engagement, and they stayed there for something more than five-and-one-half years. In that time the saloon was remodeled two times. The drawing power of the Dukes was such that the owner had no trouble at all digging up the necessary cash to pay for the expensive redoings. In April of '55, the Dukes were signed for an engagement at the Preview Lounge in Chicago. It was such a terrific success that they've now been signed there to a long-term contract. Because of this, the air should be purer in the old Windy City. But we have gotten ahead of ourselves, for you should know just who the Dukes of Dixieland are. As of today, the roster reads:

Frankie Assunto - trumpet
Roger Johnston - drums
Freddie Assunto - trombone
Artie Seelig - piano
Pete Fountain - clarinet
Bill Potter - bass
Betty Owens - vocal

Frankie, now all of twenty-four years of age, was the real organizer. The Assunto boys, like each member of the Dukes, were born in New Orleans. They got their musical training from their father, who is still a mean man with the slide trombone. The front line, trumpet, trombone and clarinet, incidentally, is exactly the same today as it was at the beginning, and both Johnston and Seelig have been members almost since the start.

Betty Owens, who is the Duchess and who sings like it was all fun, is from Baton Rouge, which is in Louisiana too. For a while she sang as a child hillbilly star with Governor Jimmy Davis. She came to the Dukes in 1947, and we might guess that she'll be around for as long as they are, as she is married to Freddie Assunto.

There's a whale of a difference between the Dukes and a lot of the other jazz bands you hear nowadays. 'It's all to the good. Too many Dixieland bands play like it was just a dose of medicine they have to swallow each night; the Dukes don't - they obviously get a tremendous wallop out of their music making, and it comes through clear and sharp on this disc. Some younger bands depend almost entirely for effect on enthusiastic effort. The Dukes combine their enthusiasm with enormous ability. They are crisp. They work togetheras a unit, and the solo playing is fresh and imaginative. They kick into the final ensembles like the liner United States plowing into twenty-foot waves. They are equally at home with standards and popular songs of the day, with tunes that are fast and slow. In other words, the Dukes have it in diamonds, doubled and redoubled, right down to the toes of their argyles.

As for this recording, it deals strictly with the great old Dixieland war horses, with the exception, perhaps, of Blue Prelude. This is the lovely Gordon Jenkins-Joe Bishop tune that was used as a theme for years by Woody Herman, and it's used by the Dukes as a marvelous expression for Freddie Assunto's trombone.

If one single work must be picked as the outstanding number of the album, my choice would be Tin Roof Blues, that ancient collaboration of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings which became so popular as Make Love to Me in 1954. In this one there is a crackerjack and extended solo by one Peter Dewey Fountain, Jr., who is a tremendous clarinetist! There are a couple of times when the clicking of the keys on the instrument can clearly be heard, which may be a good proving point on how well the record was recorded. And a lot of the time, behind Fountain's soulful and expressive blowing, is the undercurrent theme of Yancey's Special. The effect of this is superb.

For Tiger Rag, which should be at least accredited to Jelly Roll Morton, Freddie Assunto plays some handsomely guttural trombone. The Dukes don't treat the Tiger as a race horse, but instead subject her to a steady, good gallop, which is the way it should be. Frank Assunto can be heard singing Saints, in the same kind of an "arrangement" used many years ago by Louis Armstrong. Don't miss the tromboning of Freddie on Muskrat Ramble either. Maybe he was thinking of another trombonist when he was playing this tune, another trombonist named Kid Ory who happened to write the thing. Incidentally, Muskrat Ramble didn't have a name right off the bat. It came up for recording during a session by Louis Armstrong's Hot Five. After it was all over, someone or other asked Ory for the name, and he was saved by Lil Armstrong who simply looked up and said: "Oh, that's Muskrat Ramble." Some time later Mr. Melrose of the Melrose Music Company changed the Muskrat to Muskat, because he didn't like the sound of the "rat," but it never did stick.

Panama, At the Jazz Band Ball, That's A-Plenty are wonderful expressions by the full band - solid rhythm, driving horns, magnificent clarinet and excellent solos. The album plays to a fare-thee-well from stem to stern, and that's the way it was intended by the Dukes of Dixieland, who are, as you will so readily hear, one of the real fine jazz outfits of this or any other time. So, let the record spin. As a lady on my block is apt to say, "It couldn't possibly be more fun!"

- FRED REYNOLDS

Santo And His Tailgaters - Dixieland Festival, Vol. IV - Dixieland Mardi Gras - VIK Records

Santo And His Tailgaters

Dixieland Festival, Vol. IV

Dixieland Mardi Gras

1956 VIK Records LX-1081 Mono
(VIK is an RCA Records subsidiary)

Side One
1. Tailgate Itch
2. South Rampart Street Parade
3. Mack The Knife
4. Copenhagen
5. Clarinet Marmalade

Side Two
1. China Boy
2. March Of The Bob Cats
3. Toot-Toot Tootsie Goodbye
4. You Can Depend On Me

Liner Notes:

Arranged and conducted by Santo Pecora.
Recorded in the Parisian Room, New Orleans, June 11, 1956.
Recording Engineer: Jephson Miller.
Produced and directed by Herman Diaz, Jr.

Personnel:
Santo Pecora, trombone
Roy Liberto, trumpet
Lester Bouchon, clarinet and tenor sax
Ronald Dupont, piano
Paul Guma, guitar
Arthur Seelig, bass
Roger Johnston, drums

Like the prophet who is without honor in his own country, the great jazz musician who stays in his home town is all too apt to be taken for granted. New Orleans-born Santo Pecora has been playing in his home town since 1942 but, unlike the ignored home-bred prophet, Pecora is accepted as one of the elder statesmen of jazz, a great figure of the traditional form of the music. That Pecora has gained such warm-hearted acceptance at home can be attributed, to some extent at least, to the fact that he astutely spent much of the twenty years preceding his return to New Orleans in such distant and glamorous quarters as Chicago and Hollywood building the reputation that he was eventually to take home in triumph.

In this day of many aging but active jazz musicians, when Kid Ory is on the crest of success at 70, Sidney Bechet is the toast of France at 60, when 65-year-old Pops Foster still plucks vigorously at his bass and 60-year-old Tony Spargo, the drummer in the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, still whacks his snare and huffs heatedly on his kazoo - amidst all these, Pecora is not startlingly old (55 in March, 1957) but he is one of the true veterans of jazz.

He first attracted attention as a member of the famous New Orleans Rhythm Kings when he replaced George Brunis, two years his senior, on trombone in 1924. To do this, he had to leave New Orleans for Chicago (for, despite its name, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings was actually a Chicago band, but one which was dominated by refugees from New Orleans). Before taking this trip, Pecora had studied French horn with what could only have been legitimate intentions - this was some thirty years before anybody thought of the French horn as a jazz instrument. However, before he became too involved with the French horn, he gave it up and switched to trombone. Thus equipped, he entered on his professional career by playing in a New Orleans movie theater.

Pecora's two-year stay with the NORK (New Orleans Rhythm Kings) provided him with a reputation which opened doors for him for years afterward. He worked steadily in a variety of commercial bands in the late Twenties and during the Thirties he traveled the land with numerous dance bands, including Benny Meroff's and Buddy Rogers', and got back onto the edges of the jazz scene in Ben Pollack's band. When Paul Mares, the original trumpet man in the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, reorganized the group for a recording date in 1935, Pecora was back in the trombone chair.

From then on he devoted more and more of his time to jazz rather than to commercial work. He played with his New Orleans confrere, the distinctive trumpet man, Sharkey Bonano, in New York, then switched his locale to the West Coast. He was there for several years, playing with Wingy Manone and with groups of his own. While he was in Hollywood, Pecora appeared in two films, Bing Crosby's "Rhythm on the River" and "Blues in the Night."

In 1942, when the prodigal son came home, he was greeted as any true prophet should be. Since then, he has stayed close to New Orleans, taking a jaunt out now and then but spending most of his working time in the neighborhood of Bourbon Street with Sharkey's band or his own group. In recent years his band has shared the stand at the Famous Door with young George Girard's group (which can be heard on the second volume of this Dixieland Festival series, Vik LX-1063; Volume One, which is Vik LX-1057, features Tony Almerico's Parisian Room Band and Volume Three, Vik LX-1058, is a jam session involving members of the three bands heard in the other volumes, including Pecora himself).

Pecora's band is made up of Roy Liberto, trumpet; Lester Bouchon, clarinet and tenor sax; Ronald Dupont, piano; Paul Guma, guitar; Arthur Seelig, bass; Roger Johnston, drums; and, of course, "Mr. Tail-gate" himself on trombone.

The tunes reflect Pecora's relatively cosmopolitan nature. The emphasis is not as strongly in the basic Dixieland repertoire as it has been in the earlier volumes in the Dixieland Festival series. To be sure, Clarinet Marmalade and Copenhagen are straight out of that repertoire. But China Boy and You Can Depend on Me are reflections of Pecora's Chicago period for these are tunes that the Chicagoans were bringing to light then. The tinge of music hall in Toot-Toot Tootsie Goodbye offers a strong suggestion of one of the contributory sources of jazz. South Rampart Street Parade and March of the Bobcats both come from the Bob Crosby band which had a nucleus of New Orleans men and drew in spirit on the Crescent City. Mack the Knife, from Kurt Weill's "Three Penny Opera," was first put into traditional jazz form by Louis Armstrong, with an arranging assist from Turk Murphy. As for Tailgate Itch, this is Pecora's own composition, a showcase for his masterful demonstration of the proper use of the tailgate trombone.

- JOHN S. WILSON

At the Jazz Band Ball with The Dukes Of Dixieland - VIK Records

At the Jazz Band Ball

with The Dukes Of Dixieland

Featuring Pete Fountain

1955 VIK Records LX-1025 Mono

(VIK is an RCA Records subsidiary)

reissued in 1956 on RCA Records LSP-2097 Stereo / LSM-2097 Mono as

At the Jazz Band Ball with The Dukes Of Dixieland

reissued in 1961 on RCA Records LSP-2097(e) Stereo / LSM-2097 Mono as

The Dukes Of Dixieland Featuring Pete Fountain

Side A:
1. At the Jazz Band Ball
2. Beale Street Blues
3. Muskrat Ramble
4. Blue Prelude
5. That's A-Plenty
6. Original Dixieland One-Step

Side B:
1. Panama
2. Wolverine Blues
3. Fidgety Feet
4. Tin Roof Blues
5. Tiger Rag
6. When the Saints Come Marching In

Trumpet: Frankie Assunto
Trombone: Freddie Assunto
Clarinet: Pete Fountain
Piano: Artie Seelig
Bass: Bill Potter
Drums: Roger Johnston
Vocals: Betty Owens

Liner Notes:

'Way back in 1917 our Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, closed New Orleans' famed Storyville, and jazz took the rap. Jazz flourished in Storyville as part and parcel of the entertainment. When the "Closed" signs appeared, the New Orleans jazzmen, aided in their quest for gold by Representative Andrew Volstead and his 19th Amendment, headed for Chicago, then known as a city of booze, barons and big money. For a long, long time New Orleans wasn't the same.

Gradually, a jazz renaissance came about in New Orleans. There were outside influences, to be sure, like the Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band in San Francisco. But mainly it was the forces from within, pushing up again against a tide that wasn't pulling too hard. Bunk Johnson had a lot to do with the rebirth of jazz in New Orleans, and so did a group of youngsters who called themselves THE DUKES OF DIXIELAND.

The Dukes got themselves organized right after the fighting stopped in World War II. They were kids, but that didn't seem to matter. Six years ago they walked into the Famous Door in New Orleans for a four-week engagement, and they stayed there for something more than five-and-one-half years. In that time the saloon was remodeled two times. The drawing power of the Dukes was such that the owner had no trouble at all digging up the necessary cash to pay for the expensive redoings. In April of '55, the Dukes were signed for an engagement at the Preview Lounge in Chicago. It was such a terrific success that they've now been signed there to a long-term contract. Because of this, the air should be purer in the old Windy City. But we have gotten ahead of ourselves, for you should know just who the Dukes of Dixieland are. As of today, the roster reads:

Frankie Assunto - trumpet
Roger Johnston - drums
Freddie Assunto - trombone
Artie Seelig - piano
Pete Fountain - clarinet
Bill Potter - bass
Betty Owens - vocal

Frankie, now all of twenty-four years of age, was the real organizer. The Assunto boys, like each member of the Dukes, were born in New Orleans. They got their musical training from their father, who is still a mean man with the slide trombone. The front line, trumpet, trombone and clarinet, incidentally, is exactly the same today as it was at the beginning, and both Johnston and Seelig have been members almost since the start.

Betty Owens, who is the Duchess and who sings like it was all fun, is from Baton Rouge, which is in Louisiana too. For a while she sang as a child hillbilly star with Governor Jimmy Davis. She came to the Dukes in 1947, and we might guess that she'll be around for as long as they are, as she is married to Freddie Assunto.

There's a whale of a difference between the Dukes and a lot of the other jazz bands you hear nowadays. 'It's all to the good. Too many Dixieland bands play like it was just a dose of medicine they have to swallow each night; the Dukes don't - they obviously get a tremendous wallop out of their music making, and it comes through clear and sharp on this disc. Some younger bands depend almost entirely for effect on enthusiastic effort. The Dukes combine their enthusiasm with enormous ability. They are crisp. They work togetheras a unit, and the solo playing is fresh and imaginative. They kick into the final ensembles like the liner United States plowing into twenty-foot waves. They are equally at home with standards and popular songs of the day, with tunes that are fast and slow. In other words, the Dukes have it in diamonds, doubled and redoubled, right down to the toes of their argyles.

As for this recording, it deals strictly with the great old Dixieland war horses, with the exception, perhaps, of Blue Prelude. This is the lovely Gordon Jenkins-Joe Bishop tune that was used as a theme for years by Woody Herman, and it's used by the Dukes as a marvelous expression for Freddie Assunto's trombone.

If one single work must be picked as the outstanding number of the album, my choice would be Tin Roof Blues, that ancient collaboration of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings which became so popular as Make Love to Me in 1954. In this one there is a crackerjack and extended solo by one Peter Dewey Fountain, Jr., who is a tremendous clarinetist! There are a couple of times when the clicking of the keys on the instrument can clearly be heard, which may be a good proving point on how well the record was recorded. And a lot of the time, behind Fountain's soulful and expressive blowing, is the undercurrent theme of Yancey's Special. The effect of this is superb.

For Tiger Rag, which should be at least accredited to Jelly Roll Morton, Freddie Assunto plays some handsomely guttural trombone. The Dukes don't treat the Tiger as a race horse, but instead subject her to a steady, good gallop, which is the way it should be. Frank Assunto can be heard singing Saints, in the same kind of an "arrangement" used many years ago by Louis Armstrong. Don't miss the tromboning of Freddie on Muskrat Ramble either. Maybe he was thinking of another trombonist when he was playing this tune, another trombonist named Kid Ory who happened to write the thing. Incidentally, Muskrat Ramble didn't have a name right off the bat. It came up for recording during a session by Louis Armstrong's Hot Five. After it was all over, someone or other asked Ory for the name, and he was saved by Lil Armstrong who simply looked up and said: "Oh, that's Muskrat Ramble." Some time later Mr. Melrose of the Melrose Music Company changed the Muskrat to Muskat, because he didn't like the sound of the "rat," but it never did stick.

Panama, At the Jazz Band Ball, That's A-Plenty are wonderful expressions by the full band - solid rhythm, driving horns, magnificent clarinet and excellent solos. The album plays to a fare-thee-well from stem to stern, and that's the way it was intended by the Dukes of Dixieland, who are, as you will so readily hear, one of the real fine jazz outfits of this or any other time. So, let the record spin. As a lady on my block is apt to say, "It couldn't possibly be more fun!"

- FRED REYNOLDS