Kid Ory - Creole Jazz Band 1954 (Good Time Jazz)

Back in the 1950s, California-based Good Time Jazz functioned much like Delmark still does today. Keeping the torch of traditional Nawlins music aflame with a succession of fresh sides from the legends of the idiom along with the revivalists. Ory, linchpin of the seminal Oliver and Armstrong outfits, inked a contract and cut a half dozen or so records for the label. Nothing much new in the way of repertoire, but the real draw here, then as now, is hearing classic tunes, previously the province of groove-eroded 78s, in the high fidelity and extended running times allowed by the LP format. Ory’s combo, cacheted under the generic sobriquet described by the disc’s title, contains colleagues both long standing (Alvin Alcorn & Minor Hall) and new (George Probert & Don Ewell). Together they climb nine robust evergreens from Dixieland’s halcyon era. Probert’s clarinet adopts a Jekyll & Hyde persona, dapper and dulcet on “Yellow Dog Blues,” tart and ornery on “Maple Leaf Rag.” Ed Garland slugs his upright like a pugilist pummeling a punching bag and produces a fat snapping thump alongside Hall’s peppy snare beat. Ewell’s spit-shine strutting piano chords are certainly spry, but carry a bit too much poise in places. Something Ory’s recalcitrant trombone seems more than happily strip and stomp away. His tone is cavernous, gruff and chocked with grit, scrawling ropy smears across the hot-stepping cadences of the tunes. With plunger pistoning in and out of bell, he gives a textbook lesson in proper tailgate enunciation on practically every track. Ory even finds space for a quick leather-throated vocal on the opening rundown of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Almost a half century before Tim Berne put the culinary liner note custom back into practice, there’s also two tasty recipes from the Ory Creole Cook Book included- one for gumbo filé, the other for shrimp jambalaya. Both sound just as tasty as the music.