CRATE DIGGER! Anachronic Jazz Band

April 22, 2013

Starting off my new series, “CRATE DIGGER!” – within which I’ll briefly profile some amazingly cool records I dug out of the crates at used record stores – we’ve got this crazy cool LP from the French label OPEN, from the Anachronic Jazz Band.

$4.50 from the used bins at ELLA GURU Record Shop in Decatur, GA.

I don’t speak nor do I read French, but I do know that the French were and remain pretty crazy for American Jazz. From fairly early times in Jazz history the Europeans seemed to show far more love and respect for American Jazz and its musicians than Americans did. Sad but true. So many greats found energetic and positive reception in Europe while at home they still had to deal with kro-magnon racial issues that made life difficult-to-intolerable. Without dragging myself up to far onto the soapbox about it, I’ll just say this: Anachronic Jazz Band do an odd and delightful justice to the music of the masters they have chosen to honor.

In short: in the mid-1970’s this group of extraordinary musicians re-imagined some of the great post-swing-era music as if it were composed for Dixieland/Hot Club style. And you’d think … WHA?? But – yes – it’s amazingly cool. Who’d have thought that tuba and banjo had a place in Yardbird Suite? Anachronic Jazz Band, that’s who!

Great tunes abound on this LP, from the aforementioned Yardbird Suite, ‘Round About Midnight, Anthropology, Blue Monk, Tin Tin Deo, Jordu, Pent Up House, Bernie’s Tune, and Move round out the whole of Sides 1 and 2. You even get a lovely little vocal and scat from Mssr. Daniel Huck – who is apparently still gigging in the same style around Euro.

More to come very soon from CRATE DIGGERS!

– Chris Sommovigo