Real New Orleans jazz is different. It has its own inner values, assumptions, subtexts, prompts, functions. It's as fundamentally far from all later jazz styles, including generic Dixie, as the Creoles were from New York. You can't imbibe these mysteries by taking the jazz history courses, reading the learned books, or strolling through a couple of festivals. Total immersion required. The longer the better. The hardest part, increasingly, may be shutting out other influences.

Norrie Cox's boys have done it. And doing it. Their stew has been simmering within and among them for several collective lifetimes. The surface simplicity of Dance Hall Days is like that of a Zen artist who has long since paid his dues with rigor and love.

...DeVore, Cox, Klippert, and their fine rhythm section have long since gone beyond mere imitation. That's the trick in graduating from second line to first: staying within the discourse, yet speaking with one's own voice.

Dance Hall Days has this personal tone and style, and it also has soul. Cox's sweet, singing sincerity says so much more, for instance, than the swing-derived technical flash and harmonic cuteness favored these days on the "jazz party" circuit. Economy of means. Caring about what you say, rather than trying to impress people...

...One can best imagine partaking of this band in the sort of ballroom where the CD was recorded, or anyway up-close and personal, rather than in a fancy auditorium. Grit, not dazzle.

Specifically, this is the loose and simplified New Orleans tradition that has come to us from the hometown "rediscovery" or "revival" period after 1940...

The interior chemistry of both periods is the same, however. And, as I say, different from everything else. We can thank the seep dedication of people like Norrie that this sound is alive and well and living in the 21st century.