Panama Rag, After You've Gone, West End Blues, Indiana, Down in Jungle Town, St James Infirmary Blues, The Johnson Rag, On the Sunny Side of the Street, Hindustan, I've Found a New Baby, I Thought I heard Buddy Bolden Say, Muscat Ramble, My Monday Date, Clarinet Marmalade, Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans

Fidgety Feet, Chinatown My Chinatown, Basin Street Blues, Big Butter & Egg Man, Royal Garden Blues, If I Could Be with You, My Buckets Got a Hole In It, After You've Gone, Save It Pretty Mama, Original Dixie Jass Band One-Step, Fidgety Feet, St James Infirmary Blues, Indiana

These two fascinating CDs are live recordings from the Club Hangover circa 1953. The recordings were originally put out on CBS radio in San Francisco. The trumpet man in the two line-ups featured is Lee Collins, a vastly underrated jazzman. Collins was a New Orleans contemporary of Louis Armstrong and studied under the same music teacher, Peter Davies. Collins replaced Armstrong in King Oliver's band when Louis left in 1924.

Collins' playing is similar to Armstrong's when he was leading his Hot 5 and Hot 7. Whereas Louis went on to change his style to suit the big bands of the 30's and 40's and varying it again when he hit the road with his Louis Armstrong Allstars in the 50's and 60's, Lee stayed playing a hot 20's style horn. Like so many other traditional American jazzmen of the period, Collins moved around, playing in New York, Chicago before ending up in San Francisco. In 1951 he accompanied Mez Mezzrow to Europe. On a second tour, in 1954, he returned home early with what later turned out to be emphysema that then slowly killed him.

The quality of the recordings is not quite 'BBC', but the quality of the jazzmen is never in doubt and Lee Collins is magnificent. Any failings of the sound quality is more than made up for by the opportunity to listen to a unique jazzman on some unique recordings. No serious jazz collector can pass these CDs up.

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