Even 75 years after it ended, the Jazz Age remains an unpredictable era. Paul Whiteman, the most popular musician of the 1920s, billed himself the “King of Jazz,” yet he played that music only intermittently. Conversely, Ben Pollack, the greatest talent scout of the era, spent most of his career trying to be the next Paul Whiteman. In the process, Pollack stuffed his orchestra with players who would later make a huge impact on jazz history … under the leadership of a different front man, namely Bob Crosby.

Drummer Ben Pollack (1903-71) was a pioneering percussionist who first made his name with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. Much more important, he was the first leader to feature Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden – not to mention Glenn Miller, Harry James, Muggsy Spanier, and Charlie Spivak – and for that reason alone his recorded output is worth preserving.

Beginning in 1999, the Ontariobased collector’s label Jazz Oracle, working in conjunction with (the now late) John R.T. Davies – the best sound-restoration engineer in the world – began work on a definitive collection of Pollack’s most important recordings from 1928-33. The set, which was completed this year at seven volumes, is a tangible document of a man who led one of the most important bands in jazz almost in spite of himself.

Born and raised in Chicago, Pollack was introduced to jazz by his older brother Ollie around 1917, when the first New Orleans bands reached the Windy City. He was soon organizing Dixieland-style bands at his school. Both jazz and organized crime received a major boost when Prohibition became the law, and Pollack later said, “If it hadn’t been for my drums I would have gotten involved [with the mob] too.”

Pollack’s first major break came around 1922 when he was one of two Chicagoans to join three major crescent city players, including the great clarinetist Leon Rapollo, in the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, one of the seminal units of Chicago jazz. Pollack played drums for the NORK on most of their classic recordings in 1923, including their famed session with Jelly Roll Morton.

In 1924, Pollack took over the leadership of a band based in Venice, Calif. Shortly afterwards, he brought the 16-year-old clarinet prodigy Benny Goodman (who, according to legend, was still a kid in knickers) out to join him. In 1926, Pollack moved back to Chicago and assembled his most celebrated band, which included Goodman and the excellent cornetist Jimmy McPartland. Initially, Glenn Miller was Pollack’s trombone soloist, but the formidable Jack Teagarden came on board when the band relocated to New York in 1928, and Miller began concentrating on arrangements.

Having recorded for Victor Records in Chicago, Pollack’s band worked extensively in New York with the producer and publisher Irving Mills, who often used Pollack’s men under such pseudonyms as the Whoopee Makers. During sessions done under his own name for RCA, however, Pollack tried to reinvent himself into a pop personality. He sang on some titles and concluded many by speaking his verbal signature, “May it please you, Ben Pollack.”

When Pollack played regular dance music, the band was no better than any of the other white outfits that recorded for Victor. But on the Millsproduced recordings, there is a lot of hot jazz to be heard. Those who buy the Jazz Oracle series just for Goodman and Teagarden will not be disappointed; more than most bandleaders, Pollack was not stingy with solo space.

Volume 1 (1926-28) opens unpromisingly with “When I First Met Mary,” a medley of nursery rhymes in a fox-trot tempo of the kind that Whiteman typically played. Things pick up considerably with the second track, the jazz standard “‘Deed I Do,” which features the first recorded solos of Miller and Goodman, as well as a peppy vocal by the leader. Even in these early years, Goodman is a fully-formed player: The clarinetist’s work has a hot-andlusty timbre, equal parts Chicago and New Orleans, that may surprise many listeners who only know Goodman’s smoother, more-classically-influenced playing from later years.

As with most music of the pre-swing era, the most dated segments of Pollack’s recordings are the vocal choruses. Though studio tenors Scrappy Lambert and Smith Ballew at least croon in tune, Pollack is barely passable – and he isn’t even the worst vocalist to be heard here. Mills also insisted on singing, and the rogue’s gallery of vocal oddballs includes a goofy hillbilly who yodels his way though “After You’ve Gone,” an excruciatingly operatic pseudo-soprano on “You’re the One,” and a Betty Boop mimic on “She’s One Sweet Showgirl.”

This makes it all the more rewarding when Pollack has the good sense to suppress his own vocal desires and instead feature Teagarden’s marvelous blues chops on “Beale Street Blues” and “If I Could Be With You.” Teagarden also stars on the 1931 “I’m One of God’s Children,” an obscure and unlikely text by Oscar Hammerstein recorded under the nom de jazz “The New Orleans Ramblers.” The song features a sharp and sexy arrangement, and other than a clarinet solo by guest star Jimmy Dorsey, this is Teagarden’s show all the way, on both trombone and a sultry vocal.

Even Pollack’s dumbest songs, like “Waitin’ for Katie” and “Buy, Buy for Baby,” are made palatable by juicy solos from Goodman and Teagarden.Yet there are just as many future standards, and several outstanding songs that history otherwise forgot, including a dozen or so by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh, who were also working for Mills.

The series goes as far as 1933, ending with Teagarden’s last session with the Pollack band. Pollack was soon to be distracted with pop dreams once again, this time with the idea of making his wife, Doris Robbins, into a singing star. I wish Jazz Oracle would continue with Pollack’s output beyond the Goodman-Teagarden years documented here, especially with the drummer’s lesser-known band of 1936 that introduced Harry James to the world. Yet the last title on Volume 7, the dynamic “Two Tickets to Georgia,” is as hot and lusty as they come: In addition to outstanding contributions by Teagarden and singing guitarist Nappy Lamare, it features a marvelously hard-driving arrangement that anticipates the best of the swing era.