Various Artists and The Art Van Damme Quintet - The King Of Jazz Accordion: Five Early Albums 1947-54 (2025)

Art Van Damme was one of those very rare animals - a jazz accordionist, and he became undoubtedly the most prominent exponent of his instrument in the history of the genre. Born in Michigan in 1920, he took up the accordion when he was nine, and studied classically after his family moved to Chicago in 1934. He started recording in the mid-1940s around the time he started working for NBC radio, and while his style and sound was compared to Benny Goodman's clarinet technique, his early albums were very much in the style that was called "cocktail jazz", and none the less entertaining for that. This 56-track 2-CD collection comprises all the tracks from five of his first six albums - the 10" LP "Cocktail Capers" and the 12" LP "More Cocktail Capers" for Capitol, and the 12" albums "Martini Time", "The Van Damme Sound" and "Manhattan Time" on Columbia. He almost invariably performed in a quintet format, the personnel generally featuring Charles Calzaretta (vibes), Claude Schneider or Fred Rundquist (guitar), Lew Skalinder (bass) and Max Mariash (drums). He was an absolute master of his instrument, and his arrangements of the many Great American Songbook standards included here, plus a number of original compositions, make for enlightening, fascinating and entertaining listening.