Jazz Focus

Woods featured with a range of big bands from the 50's to the 80's - Quincy Jones, Benny Goodman, Jay McShann, Dizzy Gillespie and Gene Krupa

Jack Teagarden 1939 - his first big band, featuring Ernie Caceres, Charlie Spivak, Dave Tough, Hub Lytle, Lee Castle and others - live and studio recordings

Paul Howard - great band from Los Angeles in 1929 and 1930 - featuring the very young Lawrence Brown and Lionel Hampton as well as Reginald Forsythe, George Orendorf and Charlie Lawrence.

Syncopated Yodelin' Man - overcome your prejudices!  While the three singers here (Roy Evans, Jimmie Rodgers and Emmett Miller) have definite country and minstrel influence, they are backed by some great bands including the Dorsey Brothers, Benny Goodman, James P. Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden and Arthur Whetsol

Saratoga Shout - The great Luis Russell band from 1929-30.  Featuring Red Allen, J.C. Higginbotham, Albert Nicholas, Charlie Holmes, William Thornton Blue, Pops Foster and Paul Barbarin among others . . many of the sides released on OKeh by the Russell band as well as several under Red Allen's name for Victor and one backing Louis Armstrong!

WETF Show - Smoky Mary - the New Orleans record company of the late 1960's and 70's and several sessions featuring the pre-Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Percy Humphrey, Willie Humphrey, Jim Robinson, Frank Demond, Albert Burbank, Sweet Emma Barrett, James Miller, Chester Zardis, Narvin Kimball, Cie Frazier

These recordings were made for a radio program in Los Angeles in the early 1930's by his "International Orchestra" including Milt Hinton, Antonia Spaulding, Clifford King, George Barnes and Jimmy Bertrand - quite a mix of jazz, tango, rhumba, German, Jewish and Latin music!

Art Hodes' Blue Five and Chicagoans in the 1940's - great mainstream dixieland from the Chicago pianist and bandleader featuring Max Kaminsky, Ray Conniff (!), Rod Cless, Jack Bland, Sid Jacobs, Bob Haggart, Danny Alvin, Freddie Moore, Pops Foster, Wild Bill Davison and Sidney Bechet.

Two Brothers - the Adderley brothers, Cannonball and Nat in their first recordings in the summer of 1955.  Featuring Kenny Clarke, Horace Silver, Hank Jones, Jerome Richardson, Kenny Dorham, Roy Haynes and Paul Chambers

Great territory band led by drummer Curtis Mosby in Los Angeles from 1924-1928 or so.  You can see them in various early sound films!  With Thomas Valentine, Bumps Myers, Henry Starr and others . . .Several little known piano solos (of Jelly Roll Morton tunes among others) by Henry Starr are also here!