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Before I say anything else, let me remind you that I am not a fan of marching bands. So why did I get the CD? Well, when a band that is still playing in 2000 has a history dating back to the Spanish American war in the late 1800s, you have to find out why. The answer is: excitement!

This 1968 recording has the band in a concert setting rather than marching (try recording a marching band on the go and you will see why they waited until the band sat down to tape them). The recording standards are quite good for a live session of the period, though the vocals and banjo are off mike. This band is a lot smoother than most I have heard, and I actually listened to the whole CD in one session, rather than in short segments of no more than three tracks, which is my usual method of listening to marching bands. The reason has to be that the musicians play around each other, rather than tripping over each other, which happens so often amongst jazz's podiatritsicly mobile fraternity. No, good fun and well worth listening too.

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