Dicky Wells
Bomojaz | South Central PA, USA | 03/31/2007
(4 out of 5 stars)
"This CD contains material from two Felsted LPs Dicky Wells recorded in 1958-59. One LP, "Bones for the King," starts off with 3 tracks featuring a trombone quartet (Wells, Vic Dickenson, Benny Morton, and George Matthews), with Skip Hall on organ. BONES is a slow blues, with just a tad too much of Hall's desultory organ for my tastes. SWEET DADDY SPO-DE-O is a medium-tempo blues, with appealing, though corny, lyrics thrown in by Wells and Vic. Major Holley takes two wonderful solos on this track and steals the show. The remaining 3 tracks from this LP have a completely different front line: Buck Clayton (tp) Rudy Rutherford (cl/bar) and Buddy Tate (ts/bar) along with Vic (Everett Barksdale is added on guitar, and the rhythm section stays the same). Vic's outlandish humor comes to the fore on COME AND GET IT while STAN'S DANCE contains a great Buddy Tate baritone sax solo (also a horrendous squeak from Rutherford's clarinet).
The trombone quartet returns for the second album included ("Trombone Four-in-Hand"), and they perform more in a choir format than above. Kenny Burrell is added on this material, and he takes a jaunty solo on AIRLIFT. WINE-O JUNCTION is an up-tempo swinger, with good solos all around. GIRL HUNT swings even harder and is the gem of the entire CD. Although these 12 Felsted sides (one track from the "Four-in-Hand" LP has been left off) pale in comparison to Dicky Wells's work with Count Basie in the '30s or his brilliant recordings in Paris in the summer of 1937 with Django Reinhardt among others, they are decent enough examples of mainstream swing played by masters of the trombone."
Track Listings (12) - Disc #1