Album Notes

Take a collection of songs, selected from radio broadcasts of vintage music... tunes which have faded into obscurity. Select some favorites, and revive those tunes as arranged by the man who spun them on his radio program decades before. "Gettin' My Bonus in Love," the title track, is one of those songs, arranged especially for Calamity Jazz by reedman David Hutson.

The treasure trove also includes "Lucky 3-6-9," "Throwin' Stones at the Sun," "Kansas City Kitty," and "Kansas City Man Blues," this last tune performed by David in the style of Sidney Bechet on David's vintage 1920s soprano saxophone. What a bonus!

Take four guys and four gals -- several of them multi-instrumentalists who switch with ease from trumpet to drums, from drums to harmonica, from bass sax to flute, from trombone to string bass -- and you have Calamity Jazz!

Whether the tune is a Dixieland standard like "Canal Street Blues" or a special arrangement of a ragtime number originally written for solo piano [Raggin' the Scale; Augustana Club Waltz], Calamity Jazz honors our musical heritage by celebrating the roots of Dixieland!