DAVIS, GEORGE - Scapula: Bop Acetates, Chicago, 1949

2014 release. "Saxophonist George Davis is an enigmatic figure in postwar jazz. Hes best known for leading the band in which Jackie & Roy met -- young singer Jackie Cain encountered pianist Roy Krall in the mid-1940s, playing together under Davis in a club on the south side of Chicago called Jump Town. They cut two 78-rpm records for Aristocrat as the George Davis Quartet; these sides followed Davis into obscurity. In 1948/49, Jackie & Roy went on to work with Charlie Ventura. At the same time, Davis cut a very unusual set of acetates with an unidentified band (bass, drums, piano, trumpet, guitar, with Davis on alto and tenor sax), playing some standards and a selection of compositions identified as original but which turn out to have been pilfered from the Fats Navarro songbook. The unique 78-rpm records, which were rediscovered in a record shop in Chicago a few years ago, had not been previously issued. Awkwardly announced by Davis, who pretends that there is an audience thou