Search - Claude Gordon :: At the Palladium

Excellent, top-notch artist/band

Melvyn R. Windham | Acworth, GA USA | 09/15/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Back in the late 1950s, my dance partner and I were competitors on the Al Jarvis' "Let's Dance" (ballroom) TV program in Hollywood (Burbank?), when I first met one of that evening's judges named Claude Gordon, a trumpet musician, composer, and band director, who was about to appear that weekend and the next at the Hollywood Palladium (this was before Lawrence Welk obtained a lifetime contract to perform weekends at the Palladium). After the TV program, Mr. Gordon personally gave me and my dance partner free tickets to the Palladium. They turned out to be one of the best presents of this type we had ever received. On the marquis, Claude Gordon's band was lauded as being the best new big dance band of that year (1957-1960?). This was a time when the Palladium was bringing in the best of the big bands - a different band about every two weeks or so. And it was certainly on the money when it brought in Claude Gordon and his band. Superb, "danceable" dance music. The band's rendition of the "Light Cavalry Overture" is among the best I have heard (although perhaps not quite so danceable as the others on this CD). Claud's trumpet playing is crisp, sharp, right on the button, with fantastic, audible overtones, reverberations, and emotion. The "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean" is also excellent - a good, moderately fast swing tempo - both of the above selections with excellent motific development and variations throughout - what I call music that tells a story - with an attitude. If you have not heard the music of Claude Gordon, you are in for a real treat; it is a joy to listen and dance to from beginning to end."