Like any business concerned with making a profit, the record industry has often resorted to questionable concepts, tributes, or other hooks to lure more costumers to their product. Currently we find ourselves in an era where the quality of original music is arguably on the decline, thus it has become even more prevalent to use nostalgia as a selling point. While ghost bands and one-off tributes may be a way to bring a new audience to the music of some memorable American artists, all too often these projects involve musicians and executives who are far removed from the original personalities and music involved.

Unlike this present state of affairs, there was a time in the '50s and '60s when a longing for earlier jazz styles produced a good number of outstanding albums. Most prevalent was an effort by labels to record elder statesmen steeped in the Dixieland tradition, a movement that ultimately proved quite valuable not only for kindling the careers of many men who had gone unrecorded for years, but also for leaving us music of this style in a fidelity that was easier to listen to and admire.

Swing musicians who had previously fallen out of favor with record labels as bop and its various derivatives became the new thing also benefited during this period of rediscovery. Although he had already been a working musician and veteran of many big bands during the '40s, tenor man