condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (minimal general wear)

The accordion has a difficult reputation in jazz and Art Van Damme spent forty years demonstrating why that reputation is unearned. Working out of Chicago, he built a small-group sound modelled on the Benny Goodman sextet, with accordion in the clarinet role, vibraphone and guitar filling out the middle, and arrangements of real lightness and precision. This is cocktail-hour music in the best sense: expertly played, harmonically smart, and completely unpretentious. European listeners took him far more seriously than Americans ever did, which is a pattern worth noticing.

Columbia pressing. Deeply unfashionable for decades and now quietly being reassessed.