Although I identify with bop and its children (fusion is a guilty pleasure), I didn't let other styles scare me when I swept through a list of the top jazz albums. I openly admit that I'm not a seasoned jazz listener, so I have no shame in falling back on the opinions of others for now! Hence, the jazz I have also features avant-garde (Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler), ECM (Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny), "jazz-age" (Louis Armstrong's Hot 5's and 7's recordings), and, of course, the swing era, from Ellington and Basie to Benny Goodman.
It's not too often that I have the benefit of having the album actually tell me about itself. The song introductions by Benny Goodman (relegated to the beginning and end of the 1999 re-release) explain how a 1938 concert didn't get released until 1950 and why there are a lot of pops and hisses. One does not simply rescue a vinyl record from the attic and erase of the those little peculiarities. Also, as one with a tolerance/affection for low-fi rock recordings from the 1970's, I'm fairly tolerant of imperfections. This album was already huge (timewise) in its original form and they somehow managed to make it even longer in 1999. The running times are pretty funny, with some songs being bashed out in under a minute, and then two super-long numbers ("Honeysuckle Rose" and "Sing Sing Sing") dominating most of their side of the old vinyl arrangement, each clocking in at over 13 minutes apiece.
Although he had more criticism than praise for bebop, Benny Goodman was an important progenitor of the small combo style, which he featured in this concert alongside his classic big band. In many ways, these tracks helped to cement Goodman's reputation as a forward-thinking artist, even if he also had the reputation of being a real taskmaster.
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