Dewey Jackson - Live at the Barrel, 1952

Delmark 246

Not to be confused with the similarly named Dewey Johnson, sideman on Trane’s Ascension and several other Sixties fire music platters, Jackson was among the legion of traditional jazz trumpeters who purveyed their trade in the planet-sized shadow of Louis Armstrong. Like the younger and freer leaning Johnson, his sound on brass could veer in unexpected directions, pushing the parameters of convention with blistering slurs and boisterous growls. This concert, taped by Delmark doyen Bob Koester in his St. Louis-situated youth, features Jackson in the company of small combo well versed in classic New Orleans jazz customs.

Pianist Don Ewell is perhaps the most recognizable marquee name. A devotee of the stride argots of Jelly Roll Morton and Earl Hines, his two-fisted, but sententious style serves as the band’s steadying conscience. There is no formal string bass presence. Instead, the splendidly named Booker T. Washington stamps out a rudimentary anchoring line with kick drum, sounding like he’s working his kit from confines of a container similar to the venue’s title. Frank Chace vigorously chews his licorice stick with an emphasis on the colloquial, wringing out thick rivulets of vibrato that are more back alley than boudoir. Trombonist Sid Dawson completes the band, his torrid tailgate slides recalling Crescent City brass royalty like Kid Ory and Jim Robinson.

The tunes are typical Big Easy fare, but the quintet’s colorings often are not, brimming with rambunctious fervor and an emphasis on ebullient feeling over precision. “That’s a Plenty” finds Chace leading the solo order with a masticating improvisation that stresses his instrument’s register extremes. On “Tiger Rag” Washington playfully tampers with the tempo, ramping into a heated hot-stepping exchange with Dawson. The horns sit out on “Maple Leaf Rag” leaving the unflappable Ewell to a liberated tandem with Washington’s punch press brushes. The deep cerulean read on “St. James Infirmary” presents the band at its most adventurous, digging into the elemental blues theme with vivid tonal smears and soiled pitch slides. The resulting polyphony is almost Ayleresque in its protean ardency. Jackson’s democratic temperament comes through via a lengthy safari through “Tishamingo”, his upturned bell expelling a bright barrage of interstitial notes between set defining solos by Chace and Dawson. Koester, in inopportune conversation with a fellow audience member, mars an otherwise ripping take of “Royal Garden Blues.”

Spring of 1952 was a relatively late vintage for this sort of back to roots affair. But Jackson and his band mates amass a persuasive claim for the timeless virtue of such a venture. More importantly, the roughshod band vivacity combined with an equally tousled tape fidelity result in a helluva lot of fun, start to finish.

~ Derek Taylor