Freddie Mitchell

As the giant green saxophone suggests, this Boogie Bash is a honkin' sax outing for Freddie Mitchell, with his band of New York musicians.

Although this collection appeared on the "X" label in about 1957, the recordings were made for Derby from 1949-52, when Mitchell was its music director.

Mitchell had a propensity to update old tunes in jump style, so here we have everything from Mendelssohn's wedding march, to jazz riffs like Till Tom Special, to Maurice Chevalier's Louise.

In addition to the 10 numbers on the LP, I've added six from 78s, including Freddie's take on Easter Parade (below) and his hit, Doby's Boogie. The latter was a tribute to Larry Doby, the first African American baseball player in the American League. For a tribute, it isn't much of a tune, seemingly completely improvised.

The LP contains two vocals that are attributed to Sarah Dean (although I wouldn't have guessed they are by the same vocalist).

This post is a follow-up to the Todd Rhodes material below. Like Rhodes, one of Mitchell's records was adopted by disk jockey Alan Freed for theme music. Freed used Rhodes' Blues for the Red Boy when he was in Cleveland, and Mitchell wrote Moon Dog Boogie for Freed.