This can fairly be described as a modest disc with modest goals. It is the fifth recording to be issued by George Buck to celebrate the band that essentially plays at the Palm Court Café in New Orleans on Wednesday nights. The liner notes clearly state that “one of the primary reasons for this recording is to offer European audiences the opportunity to hear this band,” which “after making a highly successful tour of Europe in the summer of 2004 (returned) in the summer of 2005.”

Frankly I found the 2004 recording by most of the same musicians to be more interesting than the current offering, although admittedly it is difficult to come up with something original and innovative every time when you are featuring pretty much the same musicians playing the same kind of music year in and year out.

What makes this disc a bit different is three musicians who weren’t heard with the band before, singer Barbara Shorts, trombonist Robert Harris, and drummer Shannon Powell. All of them sing on this disc as does Palm Court regular Topsy Chapman, and if I have any quarrel with the production it would be that a traditional jazz CD which features vocals on 11 of its 14 cuts is a bit heavy in that direction. Indeed my favorite music here comes from two instrumentalists, trumpeter Duke Heitger and reedman Sammy Remington.