From the Gable's Travelogue

On Wednesday, February 16 Rosemary, I and our friend Barbra Dooley went to see Dave Greer’s Classic Jazz Stompers at Alex’s on 725.  I’m please to say it looks like they have found a new haunt.  After a long stint at the top of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, their new dig appears to be a wonderful fit.  Alex’s is a true supper club with good food, outstanding service and a large beautiful dance floor – what more could a Trad-jazz band ask for?  As they say for those who know, no explanation is necessary but for those of you who have not had the pleasure of knowing the Stompers I offer a bit of their own website verbiage:

“Here is a territory band from Dayton, Ohio which is magnetized by the moment in the late 1920's and early 1930's when classic jazz evolved into small band swing. The fluidity and polyphony of the front line remained intact, while the driving rhythm of the banjo and tuba was lightened by the substitution of guitar and string bass. Unhampered by the horn sections and written arrangements of the big band jazz that captured the years from the dawn of the depression through the denouement of World War II, the music left lead players free to explore their individual creativity with the support of a "modern" rhythm section. It looked backward with an affectionate smile, and forward with an appreciative glance.

After amassing and absorbing the wonderful music of the giants of jazz and the schools and styles of New Orleans, Chicago, New York, Kansas City and San Francisco, the aficionados who used to be affectionately termed "mouldie fygges" would scour the second hand stores for recordings from the "territories" -- those areas of lighter population density where under-recorded and under-appreciated bands often established their own sound and local traditions. Dayton, the home of the Wright Brothers and Dunbar, has been as fertile and inventive in music as it has been in technology and poetry. As inheritors of its territorial approach to traditional jazz, the Classic Jazz Stompers have enjoyed almost two decades of pleasurably fanning the flames of that tradition.”