Search - Johnny Dodds :: Wild Man Blues: 24 Clarinet Classics

Johnny Dodds was the most prominent and prolific of the great New Orleans clarinetists, a key voice in the music as it moved to Chicago in the early 1920s. This compilation spans his career, including early tracks on which he can be heard as an essential sideman with King Oliver, Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven, and Jelly Roll Morton. Rooted deeply in the blues, Dodds can even be heard with Blind Blake on the great blues-ragtime guitarist's "South Bound Rag." He can be heard as well in the varied groups that he led on record--usually including his brother, the gifted drummer Baby Dodds, who sometimes plays washboard. The version of "Wild Man Blues" heard here is by Dodds's Black Bottom Stompers with Louis Armstrong, and it makes an interesting contrast to Armstrong's own recording, with Dodds, of the same tune. Whether raw and expressive or fluently liquid, Dodds's clarinet is heard to ideal advantage on his trio versions of "Clarinet Wobble" and "Indigo Stomp." --Stuart Broomer