Search - Ray Miller & His Orchestra :: 1923-29

HOT dance music! Lousy sound.

"Gimpy" Peach Johnson | 03/24/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Ray Miller's Orchestra was one of the hottest white dance bands of the mid-late 1920s, and this CD contains a tasty sampling of the band's output. With sidemen like Frankie Trumbauer, Andy Sannella, Tom Satterfield, Larry Abbott, Rube Bloom, Charlie Margulis, Muggsy Spanier, and Miff Mole, how can you go wrong? There are some great "stompy" arrangements of some good tunes here, with plenty of room for jazz solo work. The two takes of "Cradle of Love" are notable for the possible presence of Bix Beiderbecke, who was on a short break from the Paul Whiteman at the time they were recorded in Chicago of January 1929. The "mystery cornetist" who solos after the vocal chorus on both takes is certainly a very creative fellow, and I remain undecided whether or not he is Bix. It doesn't matter too much to me though, whoever plays the solo turns an otherwise fairly ordinary record into something really special. Sadly, the sound quality on the disc is disappointing; everything is severely overprocessed, introducing some rather distracting digital artifacts at times and sucking the life out of the performances. I guess the good news is that if you detest hearing any trace of record surface noise, you won't have to deal with that here; every last bit of surface noise has been removed, but along with it went a good deal of music. What a shame. Generally, the people at the Timeless label produce excellent-sounding CDs, but their engineer goofed up this time. The musical material is excellent, and I hope the folks at Timeless (or another label) will revisit it again in the future with better transfers."