The Jazz Age: New York in the Twenties

National Review, March 16, 1992 by Ralph De Toledano

The Jazz Age: New York in the Twenties (BMG/Bluebird 3136-2-RB). This album will appeal to those who resent the fact that many early white jazz musicians were thrust aside in favor of the usually superior black creators. Four "white jazz" bands, three of them pick-up groups, are heard here: Red Nichols, Ben Pollack, Phil Napoleon, and Joe Venuti & Eddie Lang.

In the period before the swing era, Pollack had one of the few white bands which played both the hotel ballroom music and, when it had a chance, the real jazz. He did not record often, but he had as sidemen from time to time the likes of Benny Goodman, Jimmy McPartland, Glenn Miller, and Bud Freeman. The Venuti-Lang sides show the superb guitar voicings of Lang and Venuti doing his damnedest to make the fiddle a jazz instrument. This is all good listening but also belongs in your collection for its historical placement.