“The Brizemont was a big ritzy joint up on Flanagan Avenue. Had all them fancy drapes, lotsa marble, big chandeliers, the works. And you shoulda seen the dames! Man, they was classy! More silk and satin than a hooker's bottom drawer!” Such were the effusions of that sidewalk Boccaccio, Spivs Bucatini, Mafi a soldier, gofer for Al Capone, and author of Bullets, Broads & Booze: My Life of Big Bad Badness. ‘Biscuits’ Ponceford picked up his nickname from an odd fondness for snacking constantly on canine crackers. He and the Crumbs were minor players on the Chicago scene but they had a rep as a really ‘hot’ band and were a big draw at the Brizemont Hotel. They kick off this album with an original called ‘Scuttlebutt Bounce’, which is played at a hectic (if not hectoring) pace and features an extended solo from the leader. “Doc Cheatham had an open, silvery tone… Eddie's was more like a bee stuck a tin can”, recalled pianist Ziggy Goldman. That aside, Ponceford plays with terrific ferocity, like a dog with a wet sock. The band then go straight into an even more up-tempo number, the impossibly catchy ‘Shenanigans on Flanagan’, trombonist Parlezvous Calhoun employing a bewildering flurry of growls and guttural slurs to such an extent that, on close listening, you can hear his spleen bulge. Following the relatively calm treatment of ‘Out of Nowhere’ – which showcases Whit Hayworth, who was clearly of the ‘aquatic school’ of saxophonists – the band go hell-for-leather again with the orientally-tinged ‘Rickshaw Ramble’, during which clarinettist Figs Ackermann inhales rather than blows and nearly chokes on his reed. After more rampaging originals the Crumbs close with the exhausting exhibitionism of ‘Chickamauga Stomp’ – which makes Armstrong's Hot Five seem positively tepid.