"Jazz Battle" - The Rhythm Aces f/ Jabbo Smith (1929) скачать в хорошем качестве

"Jazz Battle" - The Rhythm Aces f/ Jabbo Smith (1929)

The first - and probably best known - of the twenty sides Jabbo Smith recorded for Brunswick in 1929, as he was being marketed to compete with the popular Okeh recordings of Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five by producer J. Mayo Williams. Smith was twenty years old. Many of these tunes were written and performed on record in quick succession. "Smith would make up the tunes perhaps the night before the date, but he wouldn't write them down; in fact, he made no effort to copyright his compositions. The other musicians would learn the tunes only when he ran them down at the recording studio. He'd teach them the melodies, they'd rehearse for maybe a half hour, then they'd record." Jazz Battle is a small combo mad dash - intricately laced with rapid fire lines traded between Smith's trumpet and Simeon's clarinet. At times sounding to my ears like Tchaikovsky and Arthur Pryor were on the rear guard of the battle somehow - feeding little riffs and hot breaks like ammo to the furious horns on the front lines. The performances here are a wild ride. Of Jabbo, French jazz critic Hugues Panassie wrote "He has astonishing force and a positive attack of great beauty." Unfortunately, Jabbo's Brunswick discs would not be big sellers - and like many excellent jazz musicians, the advent of the Great Depression put an abrupt end to his recording career as a bandleader. Recorded in Chicago, Illinois on January 29, 1929. Released as Brunswick 4244. Credits: Jabbo Smith - trumpet Omer Simeon - clarinet Cassino Simpson - piano Ikey Robinson - banjo Sources: Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942), 6th Ed., Brian Rust Voices of the Jazz Age, Chip Deffaa, University of Illinois Press, 1990.