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Will Bradley was a trombonist and bandleader who came to the fore during the swing and big band era of the late 1930s, and developed a strand of music during the early 1940s which took advantage of the then-current popularity of boogie-woogie music. Using a jazz and R&B-flavoured big band style, and often recording as a smaller group, he was aided in this by his featured drummer and singer Ray McKinley and his pianist Freddie Slack, who went on to have hits in his own right. Not all his recordings were boogie-woogie efforts, and he produced a great deal of stylish swing records, based around his trombone work, many of them featuring vocalists Ray McKinley, Jimmy Valentine, Louise Tobin, Lyn Gardner, Terry Allen and others. This 46-track 2-CD set comprises selected A & B sides from his releases on the Vocalion, Columbia, Joe Davis, Beacon and Signature labels from these years. It features his US No. 2 hits “Beat Me Daddy Eight To The Bar” and “Scrub Me Mama With A Boogie Beat”, plus his other hits “Down The Road A Piece”, “Celery Stalks At Midnight”, “There I Go”, “High On A Windy Hill” and Cryin’ The Boogie Blues”. His was a very distinctive strand of the music of this era, and he was one of the most noted hitmakers in the boogie-woogie genre.
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