When you see a CD featuring America's leading black trumpet player and one of England's finest reedsmen, you know it is worth having, and this CD certainly is.
From the minute the first track cuts in with Gregg playing a beautiful mute trumpet and Brian weaving a magic clarinet, your feet start tapping. Record producer, Big Bill Bissonnette, has made something of a protegee of Gregg, he has also made a point of featuring British jazzmen. On this CD he has brought the two together and matched them with a fine second line consisting of Sven Stahlberg on drums, Colin Bray on bass and Emil Mark on piano.
All the tracks are well worth listening to. I particularly liked, 'Punch's Long Distance Blues', which allowed all the members of the band to show themselves at their best. Brian Carrick plays some excellent low register clarinet; Emil Mark plays complimentary piano to Gregg's vocal; Colin Bray adds a beautiful break on his string bass; Gregg tops it off with some innovative horn playing. I should also mention, 'High Society', where Gregg's muted underscoring of the clarinet virtuoso break gives this popular tune a new twist. But the whole CD is excellent, full of surprises. One surprise I wasn't keen on, however, was the end part of 'Darktown Strutter's Ball'. Gregg continually plays a high note. Originally I thought that the CD was flawed and it was repeating, then I realised that Brian Carrick was weaving away beneath the note!
My father came in whilst I was playing the CD. He said: 'Very nice, but what it needs to make it perfect, is a trombone to add a bass element to the frontline.' Maybe there is a hint there for Big Bill when he is working out this year's recording schedule.

CD producer, Big Bill Bissonnette, tells that he first heard Dr Michael White at Preservation Hall, New Orleans. Waiting to get in, he listened to the band playing and started to mentally tick off the players. When he got to the clarinet player he came up with the impossible answer that it was the long dead jazz maestro, Johnny Dodds. Getting into the Hall, he expected to see a player from Europe, where classical traditional jazz is best preserved. What he saw was Dr Michael White, a man who proves that not all Negro Americans have forgotten their musical heritage. I had come to the same happy conclusion some while back. I had complained to my Swedish mate, Bengt, about the lack of young black American traditional jazzmen and he had sent me a tape of Michael and his Original Liberty Jazz Band of New Orleans so that I would know that all is not lost.
Now, Johnny Dodds is my favourite clarinetist from the classical jazz period and, although not slavishly imitating Johnny, Michael White is very much in his style. Match him with one of my favourite horn players, England's Norman Thatcher, and my joy knows no bounds. I refuse to single out any tracks of this CD for mention, as the skilful and beautiful playing on all of them blew me away. One wet afternoon I played this CD through 4 times without stopping and without getting bored by listening to it. If you don't buy this CD you will be missing out on one of life's delights: New Orleans jazz played, as it should be, by those that love it.

Of all the classical period jazz clarinet players, George Lewis would have had the biggest influence in Europe, if only because of his visiting and playing with bands there. Listen to most European clarinetist and you will hear the man's style and phrasing being nourished and kept alive.
This CD is from three American radio sessions: Dixieland Clambake; September and October 1950, April 1953; and an Art Ford TV programme, August 1958. All sessions come with the original intros. The sound quality is not always the best, but the balance isn't too bad. Whatever shortcomings I might find in the technology, there is no denying the quality and balance of the bands George Lewis leads. To hear this CD is to begin to understand why people became so excited when George spearheaded the traditional jazz revival in the 1940s. For this reason alone, you need this CD in your collection.
The only thing that grated for me was the condescending tone of the announcers. Perhaps the fact that, just after listening to the CD for the first time, I watched the film, 'Driving Miss Daisy', and had just finished reading a biography of a Southern States family entitled: 'Slaves in the Family', made me sensitive. But then, maybe we need to hear and feel that prejudice, to understand some of the feelings and emotions that lie beneath New Orleans jazz.

Before I say anything else, let me remind you that I am not a fan of marching bands. So why did I get the CD? Well, when a band that is still playing in 2000 has a history dating back to the Spanish American war in the late 1800s, you have to find out why. The answer is: excitement!
This 1968 recording has the band in a concert setting rather than marching (try recording a marching band on the go and you will see why they waited until the band sat down to tape them). The recording standards are quite good for a live session of the period, though the vocals and banjo are off mike. This band is a lot smoother than most I have heard, and I actually listened to the whole CD in one session, rather than in short segments of no more than three tracks, which is my usual method of listening to marching bands. The reason has to be that the musicians play around each other, rather than tripping over each other, which happens so often amongst jazz's podiatristicly mobile fraternity. No, good fun and well worth listening too.