CD 1
1. King Porter Stomp
2. Flying Home
3. Stardust
4. All the Things You Are
5. Indian Summer
6. One O'Clock Jump
7. Frenesi
8. The Moon Won't Talk
9. Yours
10. Gone with What Draft
11. Let the Doorknob Hit 'Cha
12. Caprice XXIII Paganini
13. I See a Million People
14. Moon and Sand
15. Superman
16. Who Can I Turn To?
17. Something New
18. I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire
19. A Smooth One
CD 2
1. The Darktown Strutters Ball
2. Time on my Hands
3. Three Little Words
4. Sunday, Monday and Always
5. Bugle Call Rag
6. Sweet Georgia Brown
7. Memories of You
8. Medley: Oh! Lady Be Good / Mack the Knife / I Can't Give You Anything
but Love
9. Avalon
10. Rose Room
11. That's A Plenty
12. Lulu's Back in Town
13. You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me
14. Muskrat Rumble
15. Stompin' at the Savoy
16. The Dixieland Band
17. Dear Old Southland
This is the last in the series of CDs which were made possible when
Goodman gave his collection of private recordings to Yale University.
It was Loren Schoenburg who wended his way through this mass of material,
to produce the five double albums of BG's work which are now available
to us on Nimbus records. I have them all, and all those of us who
loved the great days of the big bands owe a great debt of gratitude
for what he describes in the sleeve notes as his labour of love.
There are personnel details given, but the comprehensive sleeve notes
identify the majority of the soloists. These records are taken from
NBC broadcasts of the band over the period 1936 to 1943.
Eddie Sauter was the arranger of many of the scores that the band
played here. Eddie was well ahead of his time where big band charts
were concerned and his work becomes self-evident. Helen Forrest was
the band vocalist at this time and several of the tracks feature her.
Several drummers are heard with the band, Benny really wanted Gene
Krupa, but Gene of course left to form his own band. Sid Catlett,
J. C. Heard, Buddy Rich, Dave Tough and Jo Jones were all in the band
at one time or another, but none really seemed to suit BG in the way
Krupa had.
By 1943 a teenage saxophone player called Zoot Sims had joined the
band, at the start of what was to be a top-notch career as a jazz
soloist with many bands, as well as his own small groups.
CD2 contains some of the last recordings Goodman made with a band
that included Ken Peplowski on tenor and Louie Bellson on drums. Apparently
the recordings were not made under ideal conditions, because BG would
not leave the sound engineers to do their job!
Throughout the listener is aware of just what a great clarinet player
and all-round bandleader Benny Goodman was. If it were not for these
records being made available by Nimbus, we would have missed some
of his best work, the work of a uniquely talented clarinet player,
a one-off!
Don Mather
CD Reviews
Nimbus NI 2734/5
