Search - Artist/Band: World's Greatest Jazz Band

• Band Name: World's Greatest Jazz Band
• Formed: 1968
• Disbanded: 1978
• Decades Active: 1960,1970
• Genre: Jazz
• Styles: Dixieland, Dixieland Revival

Title	Release
Porter/Rodgers & Hart	07/01/2005
Way Out West	09/03/1996
World's Greatest Jazz Band of Bob Haggart & Yank Lawson	10/20/1985
Plays George Gershwin and Rodgers & Hart	1975
Plays Duke Ellington	1973
Century Plaza	01/17/1972
What's New	12/16/1970
World's Greatest Jazz Band of Yank Lawson and Bob Haggart	12/10/1968

This all-star group was founded in 1968 by Dick Gibson at his sixth annual Jazz Party. Despite the impossibility of living up to its outrageous name, the band was indeed the finest in dixieland/classic jazz. Co-led by Yank Lawson and Bob Haggart, and also featuring Billy Butterfield, Bud Freeman, Bob Miller, and Ralph Sutton, the WGJB originally alternated standards with Dixiefied versions of current pop tunes like "Mrs. Robinson," but its finest album (Live on Atlantic) sticks to hot jamming. After the personnel changed a bit (Eddie Miller and Dick Wellstood passed through the band), the group broke up in 1978, although reunions by Lawson and Haggart in later years sometimes revived the name. Their recordings for Project 3, Atlantic, and their own World Jazz label are pretty much all worth getting. ~ Scott Yanow, All Music Guide