Thursday, August 04, 2005

Stan and Benny clicked

Another good Dragon label disk I bought recently, "At the Click 1948," features the great Swedish clarinetist Ake "Stan" Hasselgard dueting with Benny Goodman in a major-league septet that has Wardell Gray on tenor sax, Teddy Wilson on piano and Billy Bauer on guitar. It's fine small-group swing and very beboppy in places.

The sound is decent for a CD made from broadcast recordings, the only thing available since this group never recorded in a studio. Hasselgard, just 26, would be dead a few months later, killed in a car crash outside Decatur, Illinois (about 50 miles west of where I live) while driving to meet Goodman in California.

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