Along with good liquor and beautiful women, fair Boston is sadly lacking a supply of hot music. Nevertheless, if you haven't heard, the boys at Nick's kick the gong around or cried in your beer listening to Billie for a long, long time, and are on the verge of either turning square or going over the hill to New York, you will be able to get some amount of kicks out of one or two of the local jump bands. The best of a poor lot of these bands is probably Sabby Lewis, who once in a while looks up from the book and plays something resembling good jazz. When this is over everyone orders another bottle of Pick-wick, adjusts his dark glasses, and sighs nostalgically for the days when Coleman Hawkins really "carved the joint."

Sabby's band, judged in a commercial light, is one of the finest. It is well drilled, plays, fast and complicated arrangements with laudable ease, and in spite of the loss of Al Morgan, one of the greatest bassists in jazz, has a rhythm section that really rocks. The brass men, although capable musicians, too often ride down loud, high, imaginative riffs and when not playing put on a floor show all their own by jumping all over the stand and waving their arms wildly. This really sends the squares and draws, the customers, but since Sabby and his boys must eat, an unfortunate necessity which all musicians at one time are forced to face, they can be forgiven.

Judged from an aesthetic standpoint (with due apologies to Mr. Copland for using that word here) the band is not altogether unbearable. Once in a while, if you listen patiently, you can dissect from the wild conglomeration of over-arrangements an interesting tenor chorus or a refreshing break by a trumpet or trombone. In fact most of the solos are really worthwhile in comparison to the greater portion of the music heard north of 125th St. So if you're tired of Frank- the Radcliffe-conception-of-virility-Sinatra and your soul cries our for some musical satisfaction, fall in at the Savoy any Sunday afternoon. If you don't like the band, bring your own horn, sit in, and help bring jazz to Boston.