JAZZ

With the Hi-Hat offering swing groups only occasionally, Everctt's Parkway Club closed, and the Tic-Toc temporarily defunct, Katherine Donahue's Savoy looks to be the last "home of jazz" around stolid Boston. But William L. "Wild Bill" Davison is currently blowing his lungs out at the Savoy, and everyone--especially Miss Donahue--is happy.

Sometimes an "all-star" combination comes off; sometimes it doesn't. This one, funneled into the Savoy from New Orleans and Chicago by way of Eddie Condon's in New York, has divergencies of style that detract from its ensemble playing, though the individual performances are good.

Turmpeter Davison, clarinetist Buster Bailey, and trombonist Vic Dickenson are all fine frontmen, and Art Trappier, Johnny Fields, and George Wein furnish a steady background. But each of the horn-players is outstanding on only one of the three qualities that make up a great jazzman--tone, imagination, and the indefinable "drive." Bailey, from years of playing behind Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, possesses all the taste and tone in the group, ensemble specialist Dickenson has the musical imagination, and Davison alone carries the unit along with his driving-and-rocking school of musicianship.

"Blasting" is the only way to describe the things Bill Davison can do with a horn. Though a ring-side seat will allow you to overhear the obscenely humorous patter of the dapper little man from Chicago, it is also an invitation to an earache. Wild Bill's current blasts are the best he's blown since he first packed his horn and came east ten years ago; and when he bounces on the balls of his feet, closes his eyes, and blares through the mouthpiece held carelessly to the side of his lips, that ringside seat--earache or no--is worth your weight in beers.

Incidentally, the Savoy has recently had its face lifted, but the air is still filled with last year's cigarette smoke--and the music is better than ever.