Miles Davis Big Bill Bissonnette - Rhythm Is Our Business [Audio CD]

Product Description Upbeat Recordings is releasing this album on JAZZ CRUSADE as a tribute to Big Bill Bissonnette who died in June 2018. This recording of his band EASY RIDERS dates back to 1985 and 1986. Jazz Journal International - British Jazz Magazine Bissonnette is a New Orleans inspired leader and trombonist who led a revivalist band in the days of the trad boom. These recordings …….offer an eclectic mixture of influences and styles, a loose easy- riding approach to music-making reflected in the band's name. The powerful trombone of the leader, Big Bill Bissonnette, is complemented by an adaptable Boehmke.... A rare variety of music played with honesty and reflecting the unflinching individualistic nature of the leader. Eddie Blackwell. Big Bill Bissonnette formed his own label Jazz Crusade, now owned by Upbeat Recordings, and recorded so many of the jazz greats. Here he is in all his glory, with his own band playing jazz as he wanted. Review Recorded Wallingford, Connecticut, on Sep. 2 (tracks 1-10) and Nov. 6 (tracks 11-18), 1986. The late Big Bill Bissonnette strove for many years to help preserve New Orleans-style jazz, in the course of which endeavor he formed and led a band the Easy Riders Jazz Band as well as established a record label Jazz Crusade on which he recorded his own band along with others, some from New Orleans itself, who also played jazz in that style.He documented these efforts in his book THE JAZZ CRUSADE: The Inside Story of the Great New Orleans Jazz Revival of the 1960's.Upbeat Records acquired the Jazz Crusade label before Bissonnette's passing,and Upbeat's Liz Biddle, who shares Bissonnette's partiality for traditional jazz, is reissuing many of the label's recordings to make them available again, this CD being one of them. The first thing one will notice is that the tune list contains many songs that will probably not be that familiar to most jazz fans.Bissonnette deliberately sought out the seldom-recorded numbers, doubtlessly as part of his effort to create a band that was more than just another traditional jazz revivalist group playing the popular jazz repertoire as well as to keep these tunes extant.Their inclusion in the playlist here contributes much to the appeal of this CD, giving us as it does the opportunity to become familiar with and enjoy them. If you have been heretofore unacquainted with numbers such as Short Dress Gal, Black Cat Moan, et al,now is the chance to remedy that deficiency.I was unfamiliar with Sweet Mama and Black Gal, You Better Watch Your Step. The emphasis is on collective improvisation, as it always is with the New Orleans style. This version of the Easy Riders jazz group follows that pattern but lacks a trumpet (or cornet) lead horn, having only a two-man front line of trombone and clarinet, as did several of the bands out of New Orleans on occasion, such as those of George Lewis and Sidney Bechet. The lead tends to be shared, alternatively, by the two front liners, Bissonnette and Bochmke, placing a greater burden on them than is usually the case. On reeds Bochmke demonstrates he is well up to the task, while on trombone Bissonnette manages to hold his own, although he is not up to the caliber of his idol, Big Jim Robinson. I did not care for his rather stiff staccato work on Perdido St. Blues, or the muted trombone capers on Black Gal, You Better Watch Your Step. All told, however, the musical quality of the CD is quite high. The arrangements ( most of the head arrangements are mine, says Bissonnette) are interesting. Thus along with the shuffle rhythm, there are some unusual chords in Sam Morgan's classic Short Dress Gal that I don't recall having heard before. Ellington's Sweet Mama, recorded frequently by different groups of his, has unusual clarinet obbligatos from Bochmke behind Bissonnette's lead bird-like runs with fast tonguing. Another Ellington composition, The Mooche, features nice muted trombone by Bissonnette and fine glissandi by Bo