You can just tell, looking at the programming over the years of the Newport Jazz Festiva since its inception in 1954, that “hot jazz” (or Dixieland) held a special place in the heart of impressario George Wein. This was the music of the ‘Roaring ’20s, initially popularized in Chicago by King Oliver’s Creole Band featuring star trumpeter Louis Armstrong. A musical movement further defined by Armstrong’s landmark “Hot Five” and “Hot Seven” sessions of the late ’20s, this music swung hard and defiantly rather than lightly and politely. Essentially the punk music of its day, it attracted hordes of teenagers who instantly connected with the sheer visceral energy and countercultural appeal of this new music and burgeoning scene. Some of those included members of the Austin High Gang, a loose aggregation of aspiring musicians on Chicago’s West Side who fell for King Oliver’s band in the ’20s like teenagers fell for The Who in the ’60s. There was an edge to this upstart music that just could not be denied, and young impressionable aspirants like cornetists Joseph “Muggsy” Spanier and Jimmy McPartland, along with saxophonists Bud Freeman and Frank Teschemacher picked right up on it. Spanier was so taken with both Oliver’s and Armstrong’s high-note trumpet style, infact, that he obsessively followed them from gig to gig on Chicago’s South Side at places like Lincoln Gardens or the Dream Palace.
Spanier would go on to form his Muggsy Spanier’s Ragtime Band, which specialized in hot jazz. The group’s theme song was “Relaxin’ at the Touro,” named for Touro Infirmary in New Orleans, where Muggsy was treated for a perforated ulcer in 1938. At the 1964 Newport Jazz Festival, Wein gathered several of these old school hot jazz specialists, including Spanier, who led an all-star ensemble through a faithful rendition of “Relaxin’ at the Touro.” Things would get pretty rowdy toward the end of the set as New Orleans one-armed trumpeter Wingy Manone, trombonists Lou McGarity and George Brunis, clarinetist Peanuts Hucko, bassist Bob Haggart, drummer Buzzy Drootin and George Wein himself on piano would cut loose on a rousing rendition of the spirited jamming vehicle “That’s A Plenty,” which was for the Dixieland or hot jazz set what “Cherokee” was for the bebop crowd. On these tapes that we’ve been surveying, you can hear Muggsy (or was it George Brunis?) take the mic and yell to the crowd…”Anybody wanna sit in?” and then after a long pause, “Anybody want a drink?”
And away they went.
