
ARTIST`````The Famous Castle Jazz Band
ALBUM`````The Five Pennies
GENRE`````Jazz
YEAR````````1959
Stomp your feet!
The film version of cornetist Red Nichols' life was a Hollywood success, and one of the very few movies to resist the stereotypical image of jazz musicians as drunken, drug-addled losers. Here, the Famous Castle Jazz Band (who didn't play on the original soundtrack) reinterpret songs from that film in a delightful session that brings fire to the cornier production numbers written by Sylvia Fine and authenticity to standards like "That's A Plenty," "After You've Gone" (with a jaunty vocal from Monte Ballou), "Ja-Da," "My Blue Heaven," and the inevitable "When the Saints Go Marching In," given a rousing closing treatment here. Not the soundtrack, but in many ways a whole lot better.