The Roaring Twenties

AMG Review of The Roaring Twenties

John Bush
All Music Guide

Though he played swinging Chicago jazz with a Dixieland tilt his entire career, Eddie Condon enjoyed a bit of distance from the classics of classic jazz -- before he recorded The Roaring Twenties in 1958, he promised never to be caught playing the hoary old chestnut "St. James Infirmary" ever again. Thanks to some good-hearted pressure from Columbia's George Avakian, however, Condon recorded that song and 11 other standards of the same era in the company of all-stars and friends, including cornetist Wild Bill Davison, drummer George Wettling, clarinetist Bob Wilber, bassist Leonard Gaskin, and trombone player Vic Dickenson. Also on the docket is the Bix Beiderbecke standard "Davenport Blues," which never made it to the song list for his 1955 tribute, Bixieland, along with joyously swinging versions of Jelly Roll Morton's "Wolverine Blues," "That's a Plenty" (recorded many times by many stars, including Condon himself during one of his 1944 Town Hall Concerts), and Fats Waller's "Minor Drag," with pianist Gene Schroeder ably filling in for the master. A lighthearted session with not much to challenge listeners but plenty to entertain them, The Roaring Twenties features a couple of longtime veterans of Dixieland-inspired jazz enjoying themselves playing the songs they'd known for decades.