Customer Reviews

Jelly & James: the Music of Jelly-Roll Morton and James P. Johnson

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Here Dick Hyman re-creates the sound of two early jazz legends, in arrangements from big band to theatre orchestra, solo, duo, and trio. The cool thing is that even though Hyman has, in his orchestration, created the same instrumentation that would have existed at the time, he doesn't restrict his players by having them improvise in any particular style: Joe Venuti sounds like Joe Venuti, Ruby Braff sounds like Ruby Braff, and so forth. Despite the fact that the recordings were done in 1973 and 1975 (at 30th Street Studios NYC), the sound quality is excellent -- I am not sure if Sony has remastered the tapes or not for this 1992 re-release, but in any event it sounds fantastic.

Things to listen for:

- "The Finger Breaker" and "Caprice Rag"... Dick is amazing when he plays solo stride piano...
- The duet with Ruby Braff on "Snowy Morning Blues"...
- The fantastic arrangements of "Black Bottom Stomp" and "Selections from Runnin' Wild"...

... and the soulful playing of everybody involved, including the legendary versatile drummer Panama Francis and the late great Venuti and Braff, Phil Bodner, and Milt Hinton.

This one never stays on my shelf for very long.

Listening to this music brought me pure joy. The virtuosity and musicality of Dick Hyman combine to make a gift that keeps on giving through the decades. Some of my favorites from this collection of treasures include "Pep," "The Finger Breaker," "Caprice Rag" and "You've Got to Be Modernistic." The fact that Jelly and James was, at the time of this Amazon visit, ranked 200,267th on the site, says a lot about the era in which we're living. Lily Tomlin once fretted, "Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world." I thank the stars above that Dick Hyman has achieved enough success in our mediocre world to be able to continue making albums.