Customer Reviews

Swing Low Sweet Clarinet

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great CD for kids learning jazz clarinet. I've been playing for four years and found it great. It is fun to listen to and to get techniques from. It has helped me with many techniques that I'm learning, and it's fun to play along by ear.

A fabulous blend of two of music's most beloved styles. The Big Band sound weaves around the master of the clarinet, Eddie Daniels. Through it all, Daniel's style leads the way. A great interpretation of the early swing era classics, by Daniels and the hr Big Band. If you love jazz, you'll love Swing Low Sweet Clarinet.

Eddie Daniels, a dear friend, is so excited about this new CD. He Feels that it is his best sounding CD yet. I must agree as one of his clarinet colleagues that he sounds remarkable. It is a fun filled CD with beautiful lyrical playing to outright astonishing technical facility. I bought one for all my students and family members this Christmas. GO EDDIE!

This CD scratches a Big Band With Clarinet itch you may not even have known you had. Eddie Daniels glides through a superhuman gamut of style and color supported and enhanced by the fresh, beautifully orchestrated, perfectly balanced arrangements of the hr Big Band. This is not just Got-a-beat-you-can-dance-to music--It's a magical piece of swinging, heart-skipping, soul satisfying art that demands to be heard again and again.

This is a recording of a German radio jazz band, with a featured appearance by Eddie Daniels. They are good--quite tight and disciplined, he is good--his ability to precisely jump up and down the scale is beyond the capacity of the normal human embechure, but the combination just does not work. The HR band is loud, brassy, and basically they are trying too hard. Those cats can't swing. Eddie has to use real pyrotechnics to try to keep up with them. The melodies are familiar, but the arrangements are not the best. It is a confused approach. The CD is OK listening in the car, just to admire the technical skill of all the players and forget about rush hour traffic, but one can do better:

If you want big brass, get Maynard Furgeson. If you want German precision, get a Deutsche Grammaphon recording of Bach, Mozart, etc. If you want Eddie Daniels, "Benny Rides Again" with Gary Burton works much better.

Eddie Daniels pays tribute to some of the big band sounds that influenced him, and offers new renditions of some of his original tunes. Daniels is ably backed up by the Frankfurt (Germany) Radio Big Band in this 1999 recording.
Daniels previously recorded at least seven of the nine tunes in this collection, but the difference is the big band setting, which is skillfully used as a platform for the clarinet solos rather than to showcase the band. The arrangements were done by German writers, with the exception of "Three in One" which is an updated interpretation of the original Thad Jones chart.
The stylistic and technical virtuosity of Daniels' clarinet brings new life to the old big band favorites that constitute more than half of this album. It's nearly impossible to single out a favorite track in a collection of this caliber, but note especially Daniels' performance on "Sing, Sing, Sing" (the only live performance track in this collection) which is likely to become your new favorite rendition of this Benny Goodman hit.

This a great Cd. I would recommend it to any music lover, but especially to any clarinet players. Eddie Daniels is a fantastic player as well as a fantatic person.

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