New Jazz Records

"Jazz is the assassination, the murdering, the slaying of syncopation . . . We are musical anarchists." Thus Cornetist Nick LaRocca defined the new music he and other members of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band had played at Reisen-weber's restaurant in Manhattan during World War I. When word about the shocking doings at Reisenweber's got to the Victor Talking Machine Co., the Dix-Jelanders were asked to come up and cut two sides. They blared two of their liveliest numbers--Livery Stable Blues and Dixie Jazz Band One-Step--into an eightinch acoustical horn, and thus became the creators of history's first jazz record.

That was 40 years ago (the anniversary was solemnly celebrated last week in a special broadcast by Britain's BBC), and since then the worldly fortunes of jazzmen have become firmly glued to records. Now, with the flood of jazz disks higher than ever, record companies are taking a nostalgic second look at some of their earlier artists. Among the more impressive results: the Jazztone Society's ten-disk collection, Styles of Jazz, including that original recording of Livery Stable Blues, a fast and vastly exuberant piece in a weak-and-strong two-beat, with barnyard sounds reproduced by cornet, clarinet and trombone. From there, the album ranges over various jazz styles--blues, swing, cool--and reaches a high point with Fats Waller's full-chorded, stomping piano playing and lowdown comic singing. Decca's four-record Encyclopedia of Jazz covers much the same ground, with one LP devoted to each of the last four decades. Among its best offerings: a 1927 recording of Johnny Dodds's Black Bottom Stompers in Wild Man Blues, displaying Trumpeter Louis Armstrong as sideman in a tremulous 32-bar solo.

Other jazz releases:

Lars Gullin: Baritone Sax (Atlantic). Seven pulsingly rhythmic interpretations of old favorites (Summertime, A Foggy Day) and new numbers (Fedja, composed by rising Swedish Jazzman Gullin himself). The numbers get a lift from the free-swinging drumming of Nils-Bertil Dahlander (known as Bert Dale when he toured the U.S.), generally show Swedish jazz to be as cool as iced aquavit.

Erroll Garner: The Most Happy Piano (Columbia). Alternately jigging and relaxed, and punctuating his performance with solid grunts of satisfaction, pixie-style Pianist Garner offers ingenious twists on such standbys as Time on My Hands and Alexander's Ragtime Band.

Jack Teagarden: Jazz Great (Bethlehem). Ten selections by one of the most durable of contemporary trombonists, accompanied by such seasoned players as Edmond Hall on the clarinet and Jo Jones on the drums. Among the selections: a sultry Bad Acting Woman, followed but not improved by an adenoidal Teagarden vocal, King Porter Stomp.

Ellington at Newport (Columbia). An audible report on the highly charged performance of Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, which set Newport bloods to stomping up the aisles last summer. Most notable: the supple solo by Tenor Saxman Paul Gonsalves, who lovingly rocks through no fewer than 27 choruses.

The Urbane Jazz of Roy Eldridge & Benny Carter (American Recording Society). A witty dialogue between Eldridge's jabbing trumpet and Carter's clean, relaxed alto sax. Worth the price of the record alone: a wailing, heavily percus-sioned version of Eldridge's Polite Blues.

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