Customer Reviews

The Owls' Hoot!

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This CD has every track (including alternate takes) ever recorded by this obscure hot big band in New Orleans called The Owls in the 20's. This is rare and hot stuff, get it while it's still in print. Essential.

I am a lover of trad / Dixieland jazz and wanted to add to my collection with music with an "old" jazz sound from earlier in the 1900s.

Having researched what was available, I chose "The Owls' Hoot" with a 1920's group and I am delighted with it.

It rounds off my jazz selection as it gives me a coverage of trad sounds from all eras.

Brian.

This was the second CD issued by the newly-formed Frog label in 1994, and it was an important reissue, presenting all eighteeen issued sides by the New Orleans Owls. Unlike many other similarly-styled groups, its members were all from the crescent city, and key members had been playing together, in the Invincibles String Band, since around 1912. The Owls was formed in 1922, and recorded a total of sessions for Columbia between September 1925 and October 1927. The late 1926 session was recorded on tour in Atlanta, and includes "The Nightmare" which was coupled with "Eccentric" and issued also in England.

That's followed by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings recordings made by Victor in New Orleans in March 1925, when that group recreated two of the numbers recorded two months earlier for Okeh, albeit that clarinetist Leon Roppolo had been replaced by Charlie Cordella, who'd played tenor sax on the earlier date. Both issued of each number are included, and although these are not as well known as the Okeh recordings they are still impressive testaments to the NORK's great ensemble sound, particularly in the rideout of "She's Crying For Me", and the virtuosity of its soloists.

The compilation concludes with the two Victor recordings made in New Orleans by John Hyman's Bayou Stompers in March 1927. It presents the authentic sound of early white New Orleans jazz, and the recordings deserve to be more widely known.

new orleans owls, new orleans rhythm kings