A CD that should be in every jazz collection: the cream of the wonderful band called McKinney’s Cotton Pickers – 26 vintage jazz classics.

American drummer Bill McKinney (1895-1969) would not get a mention in any list of great jazz musicians, and didn’t even play on the series of recordings made between 1928 and 1930 by McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. But any jazz critic will tell you that these are among the classics of jazz. Thanks to the inspired leadership of Don Redman, and the contributions of an extraordinary line-up of instrumental ‘greats’ – Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Rex Stewart, Fats Waller and others – they are a delight from start to finish.

Never Swat A Fly (the title of a zany De Sylva, Brown & Henderson number) is Retrospective’s selection of the 26 finest of these remarkable discs, from the first sessions in July 1928 (Four Or Five Times), through the amazing 1929 band with its incredible sax section of Don Redman, Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins, to their biggest hit If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight in 1930, and the group’s final flourish (You’re Driving Me Crazy).

Track listing:
1. Four Or Five Times
2. Crying And Sighing
3. Milenberg Joys
4. Cherry
5. Nobody’s Sweetheart
6. Shim-Me-Sha-Wabble
7. It’s Tight Like That
8. Save It, Pretty Mama
9. I’ve Found A New Baby
10. Beedle-Um-Bum
11. Plain Dirt
12. I’d Love It
13. The Way I Feel Today
14. Miss Hannah
15. Peggy
16. Wherever There’s A Will, Baby
17. If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight
18. Zonky
19. Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home?
20. Okay, Baby
21. Hullabaloo
22. Cotton Picker’s Scat
23. Talk To Me
24. Rocky Road
25. Never Swat A Fly
26. You’re Driving Me Crazy