You could call it rugged. You might say boomy. Even crusty. It’s a big rich sound that Jerry Jumonville gets out of his tenor sax, that’s for sure. He lists a lot of jazz greats as influences—Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Don Byas, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis—but the fact is that Jumonville has been doing it long enough to truly call the sound his own. How sweet it is to find this present day Frenchman Street fixture doing a CD comprised primarily of songs of his own composition. Indeed, the cut “Just How Sweet You Are” is a good demonstration of Jumonville’s ability to turn out soulful ballads that fit into the pre-rock R&B idiom that is his trademark.

The title song and the opening number “Beautiful” fit this pattern and seem especially suited to Jumonville’s rough hewn style. Of course, along with these true originals are several predictable riff- and blues-oriented items, along with a wind-up “I Saw Bird” which lays down a line that is pure bebop. The solos that follow the opening chorus don’t match that description, but they aren’t meant to.

We can add Jumonville to the short but rather interesting roster of New Orleans reedmen who have been writing and recording original compositions in the style of a particular era to which they are devoted. The others are Dr. Michael White, who recently came out with a CD featuring new material in the early New Orleans jazz idiom, and Tim Laughlin, who you might say started the trend several years ago with a disk called The Isle of Orleans, a compilation of originals which he still features prominently wherever he plays.

Among the handful of offerings on this disc that Jerry did not compose is a very nice version of “Harlem Nocturne,” a tune I can’t hear without thinking of the Bourbon Street strip joints where it once was the ultimate bump and grind standard. If any of the bands in those joints could have handled the number even half as well as Jerry Jumonville, I might still be going to them today.