This set was Irving Kolodin's suggestion.
Nick La Rocca and his Original Dixieland Band were important players in the years after World War I, bridging ragtime and jazz. Old timers will remember this tune as the Ajax Cleanser commercial in the Fifties.
"Bix" Beiderbecke, drinking companion of Bing Crosby during his badass days, died in 1931, and this tribute to him is played by Bobby Hackett on cornet.
Goodman got his first break in showbiz imitating Ted Lewis in 1923 in Chicago. Lewis was Columbia's answer to La Rocca, who recorded for Victor. After the war, a girl named Norma Jean Mortenson would sell some coke to Lewis backstage and get a Hollywood reference that would eventually turn her into Marilyn Monroe.
This is Harry James playing a famous Louis Armstrong effort.
This was a Duke Ellington tune. Solos are soprano sax (Johnny Hodges), piano (Jess Stacy), baritone sax (Harry Carney) and trumpet (Cootie Williams).