Rhythm Is Our Business

Jimmie Lunceford | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 20, 1994)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Asv Living Era
• ASIN: B000001HGU
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #432,097 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Flaming Reeds and Screaming Brass

2. While Love Lasts

3. Sophisticated Lady

4. Black and Tan Fantasy

5. Since My Best Gal Turned Me Down

6. Shake Your Head (From Side to Side)

7. Sleepy Time Gal

8. Four or Five Times

9. Hittin' the Bottle

10. My Blue Heaven

11. Organ Grinder's Swing

12. For Dancers Only

13. Pigeon Walk

14. Margie

15. 'Tain't What You Do (It's the Way...

16. Jazz Hot

17. Time's A-Wastin'

18. Baby Won't You Please Come Home

19. Belgium Stomp

20. I'm Alone with You

See all 24 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In the Pantheon of Swing the Great One, March 1, 2005

By 

Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rhythm Is Our Business (Audio CD)

This was the hot, sweet, but sophisticated, party music of the Swing Era. No one was more popular among Black youth who needed music to party than Lunsford. No one out performed them in their stage show. They were decisive to the shape of big band music with their arrangers setting the pace for many other swing bands for decades after Lunsfords death in the mid 1940s.

When I saw the series that was purported to tell the story of Jazz on PBS a couple years ago, I thought I had missed an episode because there was not a full program about Lunsford, or continual mention of the great band and its decisive influence on Jazz. Then I went to my friend who is one of the planet's major jazz lovers and who videotapes anything broadcast with jazz or good music and asked him about the missing episode. He said there wasn't one. I couldn't believe it, just couldn't.

Jimmie Lunsford's orchestra was one of the great Jazz Bands along with Basie, Ellington, and Chick Webb. In many ways, they were the popular royalty of swing, because they presented a higher level of entertainment and were probably more popular among African Americans than Ellington, and were longer lasting than Basie.

Listen to this music. It's smooth, cool, fun, nothing but danceable. The vocals are clean and cool and when the band sings it isn't the usual hoarse half-shout---which I still ador whenever a swing band shouts back--but an organized choir. This is music that must have been what the coolest of the cool guys and gals of the time listened to and above all partied to at the height of the depression.

While they may not have had the kind of impact on Jazz as an art as Ellington's excellent arrangements and compositions or the way Basie's rhythmn section made four beat swing unconquerable and provided a platform for the greatness of Lester Young and, Lunceford had a deeper influence on the white swing bands on post-swing "big band" music. The tight but swinging sound of the Lunsford orchestra, the way the horn sections alternated, the way the voicings were so clear and un mistakeable became the pattern for most of the popular swing bands. The great arrangers within the Lunsford Orchestra like Eddie Durham (Basie actually made a deal with Lunsford to borrow Durham for two years!!), Sy Oliver, and Gerald Wilson were hired by all the big white Swing bands of the 1940s like Glenn Miller who is forever identified with Eddie Durham's arrangement of "In the Mood." Oliver and Wilson outlasted the Swing era either as arrangers and leaders of recording and movie score orchestras into the 1970s.

It wasn't just dance and party music, smooth performanced, choreographed stage shows, Lunsford even had and pulled off great arrangements of light classical pieces.

Unfortunately, while Hampton, Ellington, and Basie lived on and kept their flames going, Jimmie Lunsford died in an auto accident in the forties. So, a lot people don't realize he belongs there with Basie and Ellington in the pantheon of Swing.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars rhythm was their business!, December 3, 2005

By 

rick from Boston - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rhythm Is Our Business (Audio CD)

This is a wonderful overview of one the top big bands from that era. Uptown Blues is as good as any blues of the time, with the wonderful alto sax of Willie Smith wailing away. My kids used to love "taint what you do" with the catchy singalong chorus. "rhythm is our business" really sums up the bands approach to music and could have been the themesong for the swing era. You'll be tapping your feet to the rhythm and laughing to some of the humorous lyrics too. A great introduction to the Lunceford orchestra and swing music too.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely wonderful, January 22, 2001

By 

Ryan (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rhythm Is Our Business (Audio CD)

This album was wonderful. I have owned this CD for many years now and I have never gotten tired of it. IT is a great example of music from the 30's. You will love it!