Andy Sannella

Quality not quantity, the expression goes, but with Andy Sannella, one can literally drown in either. He was a top-notch reed player specializing in the clarinet and a highly original steel guitarist who managed to even make an impact with the Hawaiian crowd. Sannella, whose name is likely to show up missing an "n," turns up as part of some of the most historic sessions and key early encounters in American music history and also might have made history just by the sheer number of platters he played on. He got an early start making records on some of the first real popular music hits ever printed and distributed, but the prolific nature of his activity wasn't just about his being an old-timer. Utilizing all his instruments, which also included innovative use of cello and bass, he was part of a busy high-society big band scene whose members seem to have spent most of their free time hanging around in recording studios cutting multiple versions of the same tunes to be released simultaneously under several different band names. Sannella is in the running for having played in more bands than any other musician in history, but what trips him up is that many of these bands only existed on paper, the paper being glued in the center of a cheaply produced fox trot record to be sold for 13 cents at Woolworth's. The concept of making records like pancakes, always an appetizing comparison, is particularly apt in the case of the infamous Madison line of recordings; there are pancakes that, once allowed to dry out, would create a better sonic impression of a big band if placed on a turntable then some of these cheapjack sides. The high quality of Sannella's musicianship may have easily filtered down into these projects, but the best sense of his playing would have to come from the...