Customer Reviews

Hodge Podge: The Best of the Duke's Men, Vol. 1

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No saxophonist had a more beautiful, richly varied tone or played more elegantly than Johnny Hodges. This marvelous collection from 1938-39 features Hodges leading a small group culled from Duke Ellington's band: Cootie Williams on trumpet, Lawrence Brown on trombone, Harry Carney on baritone saxophone, Duke Ellington on piano, Billy Taylor on bass, and Sonny Greer on drums. The tunes are classic jazz, most of them composed by Ellington and Hodges. It's real gin-mill boogie-woogie stuff, with piquant harmonies and infectious melodies. Utterly irresistible! Many of the tracks feature Hodges on soprano sax, an instrument he abandoned after about 1942, and nobody, before or since, has made it sound so good. (Check out track 19, "Finesse", the loveliest saxophone ballad I've ever heard.) Since buying this disc three months ago, I've played it over 200 times and not only have I NOT tired of it, I grow more and more attached to it with each listening. This is a desert-island disc if ever there was one.

Definitive Records has remastered this album from the original 78s, so the CD has some slight surface noise but it preserves the musicians' tone color intact, unlike many remasterings by RCA and Columbia, whose excessive use of "noise reduction" technology has ruined many of their Ellington reissues.

I have this LP, on Epic, and it is titled "Hodge Podge:Johnny Hodges and his Orchestra" (featuring Duke Ellington, Lawrence Brown, and Cootie Williams). The '38-'39 recordings are utterly classic, however there are only 16 tracks on the LP. What makes this LP so endearing to me, though, is the double-wide picture, very clear and present on the cover, of the chorus girls kickin' it up on the floor ar the Cotton Club. You can see every expression on every face, as well as some of the customers. And of course the liner notes are ever-important. I will get this CD for the many extra cuts, but I will never let go of this LP!