Mike Markel hauled his band into the Okeh studios and recorded this on June 26 of 1922. A prolific piano-playing bandleader, he's mainly known for his electrically-recorded releases (two of them, "St. Louis Blues" and "Who'll Be Blue,"
are available on CD at Amazon.com). This is a good one, especially for 1922. The arrangement has lots of instrumental breaks, can't
really call them solos, and some of the sax breaks in the beginning may or may not be the svelte tones of Loren McMurray who was later known for his work with the Paul Whiteman band (see
VJM.biz to learn more about him). The engineering on this disc was definitely up to the Okeh standard, with bright brass and decent bass response for an acoustic disc.
This record had been kicked around a little, with surface noise increasing some toward the end, but there turned out to be some life left in it after all once noise reduction was gently applied.
