Side A
Farewell Blues (*)
St. James Infirmary
March of the Bob Cats (*)
March Through the Streets of Their City
Side B
At the Jazz Band Ball (*)
Blues on Bourbon Street (**)
Jazz Me Blues (*)
Lazy River
Pete Fountain, clarinet
Al Hirt, trumpet (*)
Eddie Miller, tenor sax (*)
Abe Lincoln, trombone (*)
Stan Wrightsman, piano
Bobby Gibbons, guitar
Ray Bauduc, drums (*)
Jack Sperling, drums
Godfrey Hirsch, vibes (**)
Dave West, piano (**)
Lowell Miller, bass (**)
Paul Guma, guitar (**)
Bourbon Street is the companion piece to another Coral record released in the same year of 1962: Pete Fountain & Al Hirt: The New Orleans Scene. It's laid out identically to The New Orleans Scene, alternating between a full New Orleans band featuring both Fountain and Hirt, and Pete's smaller night club gigging ensemble of the early '60s. It's interesting that Coral didn't release all the Al Hirt sides on one of the discs, and all of the smaller groups on another, as the small combo tunes seem to me clearly the stronger ones on The New Orleans Scene. The level of excellence on this Bourbon Street album is consistent, though, with the full Dixieland contingent swinging hard and well.
Highlights of this album include excellent versions of 'Farewell Blues' and 'At the Jazz Band Ball' -- warhorses from the repertoires of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and the Original Dixieland Jass Band, too often covered by bands with an exaggerated nostalgia even in the late '50s and early '60s. Hirt and Fountain tear into them like they were written yesterday, with a freshness and that subtle insistence common to all great music--that sense that the performers have a need to play the music. Perhaps only Eddie Condon's bands played these numbers as well, though I'd give the nod to Hirt and Fountain, for the simple reason that Condon never recorded them with a clarinetist so strong as Pete.
Pete's small combo recording of 'St James Infirmary' is, to my mind, one of the finest versions of the tune recorded. The mood is thoroughly 'modern'...not meaning that the harmonies or melodic style were influenced by modern jazz, particularly, but that the sound and space is once again entirely without nostalgia--a mournful strength runs through Pete's classic solo, with the ensemble murmuring assent. This is one of those performances that ought to make all clarinetists pause and think about the repertoire for the clarinet, even in terms of classical music. How many composers could write such a perfect statement? Such a heartfelt movement of music? Pete carves his own musical path, with assurance and maturity here. To my mind, this music won't ever go out of style any more than Brahms will.
On Side B we're treated to a Fountain/Dant original, 'Blues on Bourbon Street', which incorporates wisps of 'The Saints' and seems an after hours gamble through the Quarter in the wee hours after closing time. 'Jazz Me Blues' reinforces the authority of the Hirt/Fountain band to interpret the earliest jazz tunes, and Pete continues his seemingly endless variations on Sidney Arodin's 'Lazy River.'
Leonard Feather's liner notes are of interest to musicology, highlighting what probably ought to be better understood--the importance of the two poles of jazz in mid-century--52nd Street and Bourbon Street.
This is an essential album.
