Johnny Maddox Dixieland Blues CD

Johnny Maddox's DIXIELAND BLUES is being reissued for the first time on compact disc by Crazy Otto Music, a label devoted to ragtime, dixieland and early American music. This 1959 classic is the first reissue of any of Johnny Maddox's original Dot Records recordings and is backed by enhanced multi-media features including pictures of the original sheet music covers for the songs, Johnny's audio commentary on each piece, and a video clip of Johnny performing "Friday Night Stomp".Johnny Maddox is one of the leading ragtime piano players of all time. He was America's number one jukebox artist in 1955 when he recorded the first all-piano record in history, "The Crazy Otto Medley". This reissue celebrates the 50th anniversary of that legendary recording which spent 14 weeks at the top of the charts, and became the first ragtime record to sell more than 1,000,000 copies, eventually selling more than 2,000,000. Johnny was the first artist of Dot Records, and his instant success helped build the label into one of the most successful labels in the 50's. During his tenure with Dot, he racked up 9 gold singles with total record sales of over 11,000,000. Johnny even has his own star on Hollywood Boulevard. DIXIELAND BLUES is Johnny's favorite record of his 50 plus year (and over 80 records) career and is the lone Dixieland recording his rich catalog. The musicians on DIXIELAND BLUES are a who's who of jazz greats from the 1930's and 1950's including Matty Matlock (clarinet), Mannie Klien (trumpet), Moe Schneider (trombone), Nappy LaMare (banjo), Nick Fatool (drums), Red Callender (tuba) and Bobby Hammack (rhythm piano). Matlock, Schneider and Fatool can all be seen in the 1955 motion picture: PETE KELLYS BLUES, starring Jack Webb and they are also on the great soundtrack album. Dot House engineer Tom Mack recorded the album with arrangements by Matlock and Beasley Smith (Louis Armstrong, Roy Acuff, Beach Boys). Tracks include standards such as W.C. Handy's Beale Street Blues, and St. Louis Blues and Spencer Williams' Basin Street Blues as well as some great pieces such as Tishomingo Blues, Wolverine Blues and Bow Wow Blues.



This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Personnel: Johnny Maddox (piano); Nappy Lamare (banjo); Matty Matlock (clarinet); Manny Klein (trumpet); Moe Schneider (trombone); Red Callender (tuba); Bobby Hammack (piano); Nick Fatool (drums).
For Dixieland Blues, bandleader and pianist Johnny Maddox determined to play Dixieland-style arrangements of obscure songs that he knew from the original sheet music, including some that had never been previously given a Dixieland treatment. Not all of these numbers, it must be said, are obscure: there are very few blues and jazz fans who haven't at least heard of W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues," while the same composer's "Memphis Blues" was the first blues Handy ever wrote. At the head of an eight-piece band (which also included another piano player), Maddox played revivalistically reverent, if lively music that likely sounded very much like early New Orleans Dixieland jazz did in the early 1900s. It was recorded, however, with far more clarity than the first actual Dixieland 78s boasted back in the early 20th century. The 2004 CD reissue of this 1959 recording contains a good amount of enhanced CD material, including a few interview excerpts with Maddox; a short video of Maddox performing "Friday Night Blues" -- the only song on the album he wrote (with Randy Wood) -- on solo piano decades after the album release; commentary by Maddox on some of the songs; a Maddox bio; and vintage covers of the sheet music for some of the numbers on the record. ~ Richie Unterberger