Norrie Cox and His New Orleans Stompers have been together for a dozen years and play together several times a year despite being geographically dispersed -- Charlie DeVore and Bill Evans live in Minnesota, Norrie Cox and Mike Carrell in Wisconsin, and Jim Klippert in California.

The disc at hand is the result of a weekend of intense activity -- two concerts and a recording session. The material chosen for issue comes from a Sunday afternoon concert for the Illiana Jazz Club. Bob Koester recorded the whole concert and chose the highlights for this set; hopefully we'll see the studio session as well one of these days.

For this outing they addded an old friend, pianist Butch Thompson, who worked with cornetist Charlie DeVore, bassist Bill Evans and drummer Doggie Berg in the Hall Brothers New Orleans Jazz Band, a great Twin Cities-based group between the late '50s and the early '90s. Thompson, known primarily as a piano soloist these days, got his start playing the clarinet with the Hall Brothers and knows New Orleans ensemble jazz as well as anyone out there. His solos, based as always on the music of Jelly Roll Morton, are very effective here, and his ensemble playing adds a light touch to the rhythm section.

The set opens with an astonishing blast on cornet, from DeVore, emulating the great Wooden Joe Nicholas. I was setting up a new set of speakers when I tried this CD for the first time, and I was sure I'd blown them out. DeVore has been playing this stuff for almost 50 years, and he just keeps getting better.

"Weary Blues" is a perfect opener for the set and sets a high standard. Another highlight of the set is "Mobile Stomp", a Sam Morgan number based on "The Waltz You Saved For Me" that isn't done nearly enough. The band takes the tune at a perfect tempo, just relaxed enough to showcase the music, with beautiful ensemble dymanics. This is one of the most relaxed bands you'll ever hear on record. They make the music look easy, though there are few people out there who could actually play this kind of music any more. Charlie DeVore has always been a great interpreter of the music of Joe Oliver, generally playing a tune or two from the King every time he records. Here the band does a marvelous version of "Mabel's Dream", one of my personal-favorite Oliver numbers.

"Exactly Like You", another New Orleans standard, gets a relaxed workout, highlighted by a nice Butch Thompson solo.

There are three piano solos here -- "The Crave", "Krooked Blues" and "King Porter Stomp" -- and Thompson brings his best Mortonian resources to bear on them. It's good to hear "She Looks Like Helen Brown" again. This was a featured vocal for Doggie Berg and the Hall Brothers back in the 1960s. I haven't heard him do it in years, but it was resurrected and done to a T as a special request in honor of someone's anniversary.

The Stompers are a real New Orleans band, one of the few units in the country that follows the guidelines of the old-style bands like those which graced Preservation Hall in its heyday. Norrie Cox has been playing the clarinet since England's Trad Boom of the late 1950s, and right now he's probably playing better than ever, particularly when backed by the fabulous rhythm section featured here. I was lucky enough to have been at the concert where this was recorded, and I'm glad to have a souvenir of a fabulous afternoon. Wild horses couldn't have kept me away from the chance to hear Butch Thompson playing band piano with one of the best bands of its kind in the world.