Customer Reviews

Jump for Joy: The Columbia Years 1937-50

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4 star:		(1)
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This is the Hot Lips Page I've been waiting years for!! His Columbia - Okeh and Harmony recordings have not been available since the 78 era and that's older than me. Orrin Keepnews, as usual, has done a fab job and the sound is fantastic. Do yourself a favor and buy this thang - someday people will know that Lips was a genius - an original - deserving of wider acclaim - could swing like crazy - was an A-1 singer - get down with the Blues and just think you were way ahead of them. Great notes by Dan Morgenstern too. Don't delay 'Jump For Joy' is a joy!!!!

At last, at last, at last, we've got a decent Lips Page CD and some real recognition for an artist who totally deserves it and who has been so unjustly forgotten. Hey guys, I've been looking for 'Take Your Shoes Off Baby or Stop Running Through My Mind' for decades. I loved it when I used to hear Lips do it at the Central Plaza in NYC in the late 1940s and it sounds every bit as good and is just as much fun in the early 2000s!

Hot Lips Page was the headliner of a show that combined a band fronted by a guy name Bill Basie featuring a singer named Jimmie Rushing at a bar where sometime the bartender a guy named Joe Turner would sing a few numbers. When John Hammond heard the band's shows and promotors from the Apple Journeyed to Kansas City to sign these cats, someone convinced Page that rather than going East with Basie, he could make the big time as a solo act.

Now you can hear the Basie and Lips Swinging together on one of the Spirtuals to Swing Concert--another Gem rescued recently--but this is just as much top flight KC swing as anythign Basie Cut, and nice in a mostly small group setting. The nice thing here is that barkeep Joe Turner who became a star after the same concerts is reunited with page on some sweet vocals. Turner made many records in the sixties and later with what passed for "Blues" accompaniment, but he was there at the Birth of KC Swing singing and serving drinks and food. And this is where you can hear him at the swinging best, though I still prefer Jimmie Rushing.

Check out the Spooks Breakfast channel on Live 365 net radio they play KC swing of all kinds 24/7 365 and live.
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Tony