This week, Riverwalk Jazz remembers the late Milt Gabler and his Commodore record label.

Commodore Records, founded in 1938 as an offshoot of the legendary mid-Manhattan Jazz Records store, was one of the first record companies whose principal motivation was a deep love for the music and whose main goal was to celebrate jazz and its players. The company was essentially the creation of one remarkable man, Milt Gabler.

Gabler, born in 1911 in Harlem, got his start in the record business through working at his family's radio store. He began by selling his favorite jazz records pressed by other companies, then he founded his own label. Commodore recording artists included Eddie Condon, Pee Wee Russell, Edmond Hall, Bud Freeman, Hot Lips Page, Muggsy Spanier, Bobby Hackett, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum, Wild Bill Davison, Lester Young, Earl Hines, Lee Wiley, Fats Waller, and the great Billie Holiday, who recorded her famous rendition of "Strange Fruit" for Commodore.

By the mid-1930s, the Commodore Music Shop on East 42nd Street had become, in the words of George Frazier, "a wondrously cluttered hole-in-the-wall where you would go at lunchtime or after work to hear tumultuous talk and brave new music."

Milt Gabler summed up his feelings about the music this way:

"If you love jazz, you cannot stand still. Your interest can only go forward as the new performers and innovators appear. By the same token, if you have an open mind and are serious about the subject, you must go back to the source, the mouth of the mother river, the root. You must hear the men and women who came before, the creators and stylists and writers who inspired and taught the young people of today. There it is---on the record, to be enjoyed and listened to."

In 1954, by then a member of Decca's A&R staff, Gabler produced a New Jersey-based combo doing a rhythm and blues number. The band was Bill Haley & The Comets, the song was "Rock Around The Clock," the anthem of early rock 'n roll.

This week, Riverwalk Jazz salutes Milt Gabler and Commodore Records with performances by The Jim Cullum Jazz Band in the style of the famous Eddie Condon Commodore sides. Titles include "Breeze That Blew My Gal Away," "Oh, Sister Ain't That Hot!," and the first song ever recorded on Commodore by Condon, "Love is Just Around the Corner."