New Orleans, LA was dubbed the "Cradle of Jazz" by the first wave of jazz critics and historians who published essays, articles, and book-length treatises on the topic during the 1930s and early '40s. Several CD anthologies have since been issued using the phrase "Cradle of Jazz" in the title. Nobody has crammed more material into one box under this heading than Tokuma with their massive 40-disc longboat of traditional jazz and swing, first issued in 1997. This entity should under no circumstances be confused with Charly's 1998 compilation New Orleans: The Cradle of Jazz. Unlike that double disc, Tokuma's stash -- a whopping 780 tracks spread out over more than three dozen discs -- does not confine itself to Crescent City jazz, even if authentic New Orleans artists do predominate. Reedmen Jimmie Noone, Johnny Dodds, and Sidney Bechet each have at least 40 titles on this set, but so does Fats Waller, who was born and raised in Harlem and made music with only tangential links to the New Orleans tradition. This is not a chronologically or even geographically coordinated anthology. It's more like a bulk rate barge into which someone has dumped entire albums of classic jazz and swing. Artists who are represented here with 30 or more titles are Jelly Roll Morton, Jack Teagarden, Muggsy Spanier, Red Nichols, Eddie Condon, Louis Armstrong, and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Those who occupy between 20 and 25 tracks are Jabbo Smith, Bix Beiderbecke, Bud Freeman, Wild Bill Davison, Pee Wee Russell, Bennie Moten, Bill Coleman, Lu Watters, Scott Joplin (in the form of 20 player piano rolls), and two artists who are mostly represented as sidemen; trombonist J.C. Higginbotham and clarinetist Buster Bailey. Another 89 tracks are divvied up amongst Henry "Red" Allen, Kid Ory, Edmond Hall, George Wettling, and Mezz Mezzrow. Even taking all of this into account, the final 42 titles in the collection constitute the most varied and interesting leg of the journey. Here the producers chose to assemble a wildly varied blend of predominately rare sides by ensembles with exciting names like Boyd Senter & His Senterpedes, Jack Pettis & His Pets, Napoleon's Emperors, the New Orleans Owls, Paul Howard's Quality Serenaders, Bennett's Swamplanders, the Whoopee Makers, the Ross De Luxe Syncopators, Louis Dumaine's Jazzola Eight, Vance M. Dixon's Jazz Maniacs, Charles W. Creath's Jazz-O-Maniacs, Thomas Morris & His Seven Hot Babies, Reb Spikes Majors & Minors and George J. McClennon's Jazz Devils. It is good that the folks at Tokuma went to the trouble of shoveling so much diversity into the caboose end of their whale-sized compilation, remembering to include great but often overlooked heroes like Sam Morgan, Charles Dornberger, and J. Neal Montgomery, and tacking on recordings issued under the names Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Slim Lamar, Phil Baxter, Andy Preer, Lou Gold, George Olsen, Paul Whiteman, Roger Wolfe Kahn, and the Original Memphis Five. One glaring deficiency is the complete and utter absence of anything by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, a vitally important group whose recordings and repertoire influenced the entire Chicago school of traditional jazz beginning with Bix Beiderbecke and extending through many of the artists featured on this compilation. There is also evidence of surprisingly sloppy production as in some cases the exact same recordings appear twice on different discs, attributed to both leaders and sidemen! Still and all, in this budget priced trove, Tokuma has given the world a vat of vintage recordings that more or less define the classic tradition of New Orleans jazz, some of the best mementos of its transplanted heydays in Chicago and the flowering of the continuum in New York City during the 1930s. ~ arwulf arwulf, All Music Guide