Ted McNabb - Ted McNabb & Co. Big Band Swing. Arrangements by Marion Evans (2020)

Despite having an A-list personnel of people like Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Frank Rehak, Urbie Green, Gene Quill, Bernie Glow and a Nat Pierce-Milt Hinton-Osie Johnson rhythm section with Barry Galbraith on guitar, this is probably the rarest of all big band albums from the 1950s. Moreover, Ted McNabb, whose name it bears, isnt even on it. He was just the guy who put up the money. He paid for the charts by arranger Marion Evans, the musicians and the studio time all the upfront costs that enabled Columbia to agree to release it on their Epic label.

For him it was a dream realised; a big band in the Swing Era style, clean, precise and stomping, like the old Basie and Goodman bands, playing some standards that hadnt been overdone at the time. The arrangements are well-crafted, not uncomplicated, but not overly complex either and, in the hands of this band, they swing mightily in the call-and-response manner of the Swing Era. Unsurprisingly, the solos are uniformly good and often rather more than that.