‘There Must Be Thousands,’ the debut record release of Birmingham band The Quads was John Peel’s Single of the Decade. His consistent support on his now-legendary radio show was largely responsible for the record reaching Number 66 on the UK Charts in 1979. In 2001, he still listed it as one of his all-time favourite records.
With its blistering rallying cry against the establishment “The world’s a changing place, your views are history” in this era of global crisis, economic collapse and authoritarian leaders, Big Bear Records, the original UK indie label, decided that once again, “There must be thousands who will look at you, the things you do, and tell you that you’re wrong”.
Now for the very first time, ‘There Must Be Thousands’, Undertones-esque B-side You Gotta Jive and anti-unemployment anthem ‘Gotta Getta Job’ have been remastered and reissued as a digital only EP.
The Quads went on to record three more Big Bear singles, ‘There’s Never Been A Night // Take It’ (1979), ‘UFO // Astronaut’s Journey’ (1980) and ‘Gotta Get A Job // Gang Of Kids’ (1981).
The Quads were Josh Jones (vocals and guitar), Jack Jones (guitar), Jim Docherty (bass guitar), and Johnny Jones (drums).
Previously unheard material recorded by The Stoop Down man himself, Chick Willis, recorded in 1997 and now released for the first time on Big Bear Records as an exclusive digital-only album.
Track Listing:
Lou’s Place
Please Don’t Go
Every Day Is A Good Day
Come Back Home
You Got The Devil In You
The Things I Used To Do
What You Got On Me
One Eyed Woman
Tin Pan Alley
Big Fat Woman
Four Wives Blues
Voodoo Woman
Doin’ The Yang Thang
Featuring
Chick Willis: vocals and guitar; Tony Ashton: piano and organ; Roger Inniss: bass guitar; Sticky Wicket: drums
Straight-ahead swinging Dixieland is not a music form normally associated with Southern Spain, but here come Potato Head Jazz Band, hot out of Granada in Andalucía to put that to rights.
Potato Head Jazz Band are no overnight sensation – they’ve been stomping
their stuff throughout Spain since 2003 – and it shows in their no-holds-barred
straight-ahead approach to jazz. Stompin’ Around showcases the
musically sharp, energetic approach to early jazz that has seen them in demand
at festivals from Birmingham to Dresden.
Howard, the ninth of ten siblings, was part of The McCrary Family Choir, a force to be reckoned in American Gospel Music. He fronted The McCrary Five who shared top-billing with The Jackson Five on a coast-to-coast US tour, became friends with Michael Jackson and sang on two of Michael’s albums.
LA based, Howard subsequently recorded with Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Julio Iglesias, Nina Simone, Ringo Starr, Dionne Warwick, Earth Wind and Fire and Chaka Khan, whose sister Tammy he married. He worked with Quincy Jones, was Grammy-nominated in 1985 and received The Duke Ellington Award for Most Promising Gospel Writer.
McCrary took the piano chair and was featured singer with The Phil Upchurch Combo on their 1993 UK/European Tour and for reasons that are pretty much unexplained to this day, jumped ship to stay in Birmingham at the tour’s end.
He made Birmingham his home for the following 18 months and hooked up with Big Bear Records who built a fine band of musicians around his vocals and piano-playing and secured regular gigs at Ronnie Scotts in Birmingham. The band broadcast on radio and TV, undertook several tours including a 40 date UK tour and another through Holland, Belgium and Germany.
This album shows Howard in his element at Ronnie’s, performing to yet another sell out crowd. Never before released, we are now pleased to be able to make this music available for the first time.
Track Listing
Would You?
Hurry On Down
Goin’ to Chicago
Moody’s Mood For Love
Moments Like This
Over The Rainbow
Precious Lord, Take My Hand
Every Day I Have The Blues
I Was A Little Too Lonely
Route 66
Don’t You Drive Me Away
Featuring: Mike Burney [saxophones], Josh McCalla [guitar], Roger Inniss [bass] and Tim Jones [drums]
“This is probably as close as we’ll ever get to matching the legendary Buck Clayton Jam Sessions and possibly better than many of the JATP concerts recorded by Norman Granz.” – Lance Liddle, Bebop Spoken Here
This is the second album sailing under the flag of Jazz City UK, recorded in Birmingham and seeking to draw attention to this City’s jazz heritage. Back in 1984, Big Bear had the idea of emulating the Eddie Condon New York session where two front lines alternate, and sometimes play together.
On a summer’s afternoon in Birmingham’s Cannon Hill Park, Humphrey Lyttelton and the then up and coming Digby Fairweather headed the two four man front lines backed by the rhythm section that made up a round dozen on stage. The session featured star players from across a wide spectrum of British jazz, the saxophone pairing of Dick Morrissey and Bruce Turner for instance, with everyone at the peak of their ability.
The concert worked so well that that it was repeated as the key element of the Birmingham Jazz Festival which it had spawned. Humph, Dick Morrissey and Roy Williams were on hand again three years later when The British Jazz Awards enjoyed a ritzy evening at Birmingham’s Grand Hotel when no less a personage than the great American pianist Sir Charles Thompson played for diners! The resultant jam session featured some of the very best from a great era for British Jazz.
Both jam sessions were originally issued as Vinyl LP albums, The M&B Jam Session and British Jazz Awards 1987, a copious selection from each have been remastered and are now available on CD for the very first time.
Track Listing
Carolina Diner
If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight
Cherokee
Frankie And Johnny
Crazy Rhythm
Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me
The Hucklebuck
Jumpin’ At The Woodside
Honeysuckle Rose
Musicians Featured
Humphrey Lyttelton, Digby Fairweather, Roy Williams, Roy Crimmins, Dave Shepherd, Randy Colville, Peter King, Bruce Turner, Dick Morrissey, John Barnes, Brian Lemon, Mick Pyne, Martin Taylor, Jim Douglas, Dave Green, Harvey Weston, Allan Ganley, Johnny Richardson
Many thanks to Hortons for their support in producing this album
Having hosted a major international Jazz Festival for 33 years, and still continuing to do so, Birmingham does indeed have a rightful claim on the title of Jazz City UK. Ever since the much-missed Humphrey Lyttelton employed his not-inconsiderable persuasive talents, in conjunction with BBC broadcaster to convince me that a real jazz festival in Birmingham would be a good thing, the City has enjoyed many summers of mostly-free, world class jazz.
Never one to shirk responsibility, Humph cheerfully took on the role of Festival Patron from the beginning in 1985 until his untimely death in April 2008. He was inordinately proud of what he rightly regarded as his Festival; the enthusiasm he continually expressed on his weekly Radio 2 jazz programme was responsible for the initial national popularity of this event. That and appearances by the likes of B.B. King, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Miles Davis, The Blues Brothers Band.
The Festival has matured into an event that still presents the finest jazz, often performed by supreme young bands from all over the world as well as from this region and the rest of the UK. The trumpet ace and bandleader Digby Fairweather now splendidly fills the role of Festival Patron and each year helps bring interesting and inspiring music to Birmingham.
This CD represents some of the bands who have always lived up to – and still live up to – the Festival’s credo, Real Music, Properly Played.
So, this one is for Humph
Track Listing
The Whiskey Brothers: Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do
The Whiskey Brothers: I Feel Like A Millionaire
Tipitina: Hey Pocky Way
Tipitina: Louisiana 1927
Nomy Rosenberg: Swing 48
Nomy Rosenberg: Miro Tata Mimer
King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys: Kidney Stew Blues
King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys: Harvard Blues
Lady Sings The Blues: What Shall I Say?
Lady Sings The Blues: How Could You?
Bruce Adams Quartet: One Foot In The Gutter
Bruce Adams Quartet: Blame It On My Youth
Bruce Adams/Alan Barnes Quintet: Hollywood Stampede
Bruce Adams/Alan Barnes Quintet: When It’s Sleepytime Down South
Alan Barnes All Stars: California Fish Fry
King Pleasure & The Biscuits Boys featuring Val Wiseman: Since I Fell For You
Many thanks to Hortons for their support in producing this album
Billie Holiday’s life-story, as it has been told and retold over the years, is a catalogue of woes and tribulations. Reinforced by some of her best-known recordings, such as Gloomy Sunday, Strange Fruit and Don’t Explain, it has come to define her image to the world. But the image is misleading. Millions of other people have lived troubled and unhappy lives, yet none of them became Billie Holiday. It’s because of her rare gifts that she is loved and revered today, a century after her birth, and celebrated with affection by artists around the world.
This is the second album based on Lady Sings The Blues, the concert-show inspired by Billie. Its very title, Laughing At Life, should help to dispel some of the accumulated gloom, and the music itself will certainly manage the rest. The sheer variety contained in these songs shows off Billie’s expressive range better than any learned article. There are ‘swing-sing’ numbers from the 1930s, ballads and ‘mistreated woman’ pieces from the 1940s, and a hint of the wealth of classic American songs which she finally got around to recording in the fifties.
The aim of Lady Sings The Blues is not to produce a slavish imitation of Billie or an exact reproduction of any of her records, even if that were possible. It’s to revisit her repertoire and in so doing evoke the spirit, and to a certain extent the period, of her work. That’s Life I Guess is a good example. The routine follows the 1936 version fairly closely, with the vocal delayed until the second chorus and brief solos from Julian Marc Stringle on clarinet, Digby Fairweather, cornet, and pianist Brian Dee. (The originals were Benny Goodman, Jonah Jones and Teddy Wilson.) Val Wiseman’s easy, almost conversational approach fits the tempo to perfection. It’s her voice, not Billie’s, but the effect is charming and convincing.
Sometimes a song suits a singer so perfectly that we assume it was specially written, only to find out that they only met later, by lucky accident. That’s the case with You’ve Changed. There’s something about the way the descending phrases of the melody chime with the despair of the lyric that are pure Billie Holiday. She recorded it towards the end of her life, in 1958, for the album Lady In Satin. So it comes as something of a shock to discover that it was written by Carl Fischer and Bill Carey in 1942 and first recorded by Dick Haymes, with Harry James’s band. But it’s Billie’s song now and, for me, Val’s version of it, with Brian Dee’s brilliant piano accompaniment, is the high spot of this album. A wonderful lesson in how to sing one of Billie’s songs without overt imitation but with the authentic feeling.
God Bless The Child, another duet for Val and Brian, is a song that Billie did actually write – in collaboration with Arthur Hertzog Jnr (Don’t Explain was another) – and it has survived to become the one for which she is now perhaps best known. It was assumed to be autobiographical, expressing Billie’s personal philosophy.
The earlier numbers – That’s Life I Guess, Miss Brown To You, How Could You?,Laughing At Life – are full of energy, fun and terrific playing. In the case of the title piece the unbuttoned swing of Digby, Roy, Julian and the rhythm section easily surpasses the rather stolid 1940 original. The more sober songs of the 1940s are spiced with great playing, too, notably Julian’s clarinet in Loverman and Brian’s piano throughout.
I enjoyed this so much, I dug out the previous Lady Sings The Blues CD and enjoyed that, too. I looked up its date (1990) and, apart from noticing how little Val’s voice had altered in the intervening years, I discovered a strange coincidence. The distance between February 1990 and July 2015 is 25 years and five months. The distance in time between Billie’s first studio recording (November 1933) and her last (May 1959) is 25 years and six months. Make of that what you will
Dave Gelly
Track Listing
Laughing At Life
That’s Life I Guess
God Bless The Child
Miss Brown To You
Good Morning Heartache
How Could You?
Comes Love
You’ve Changed
Ain’t Nobody’s Business
Lover Man
Now Baby Or Never
My Man
Fine and Mellow
Musicians Featured
Val Wiseman [vocals]
Digby Fairweather [ trumpet]
Roy Williams [trombone]
Julian Stringle [tenor saxophone and clarinet]
Brian Dee [piano]
Len Skeat [double bass]
Eric Ford [drums]
Many thanks to Westside BID for their support in producing this recording
The Whiskey Brothers’ journey has taken them from band to band, club to club, festival to festival, and now to the Big Bear himself for this recording. It’s live and unedited.
And it’s authentic. Not because it correctly evokes the style of Sonny and Brownie, or Fats, or Big Bill, though their echoes are there.
It’s authentic because it’s just two men playing the music they love, the only way they know how.
You only have to hear a few bars from one of these twelve piece to realise that Remi Harris is a virtuoso guitarist. after another half-minute it becomes obvious that there is more to his playing than exceptional technique; it has the easy poise that is normally the result of long and hard-earned experience. But the remarkable fact is, he was only 25 years old when this album was completed.
Just listen to the music on this album to get some idea of what causes all the fuss. The gypsy-jazz playing is immaculate, but there’s so much else. Like the amazing version of Charlie Parker’s “Donna Lee”, with its terrifying up-tempo twists and turns – or by contrast, the cool “There’ll Never Be Another You”, with Remi’s guitar creating a perfect match with Alan Barnes’ limpid alto saxophone. When it comes to introducing disparate influences into the basic gypsy-jazz style, I can’t think of anyone who has ever done it more boldly or convincingly.
Look at this list of great British guitar players: Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Mark Knopfler. You can now add another name to this list – that name is Will Johns.
Will Johns is the complete package. Not only does he have a beautiful voice; he is also a greet songwriter and guitar player. Will Johns’ guitar playing has a lyrical sensibility and emotional depth that distinguishes all of the guitar players on that list. Will is the son of Andy Johns, the world-famous producer and engineer who worked on albums by Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.
On this album Will Johns has done the production himself as well as all the arrangements. The sound of this album is a testimony to Will’s instinctive ability as a producer to hear and record the sound of a band in the studio.
As a charismatic performer, every Will John gig is unique unto itself. The man also has a sense of humour and never forgets that, when he’s on stage, he is there to entertain. I know you are going to enjoy this album and that you will also enjoy seeing Will perform live. If I didn’t know this, I wouldn’t be writing these notes.
A clearer demonstration of the power of live music to lift the human spirit would be hard to find. Bands that can do this are much rarer now than they used to be, but Tipitina are not entirely alone. What distinguishes them from the others is the amount of variety they manage to extract from a style firmly rooted in the New Orleans boogie/honky-tonk/rhythm & blues tradition.
So that’s Tipitina, 2011 version, more wide-ranging than before, but still firmly attached to its musical heartland where the Mississippi meets the Gulf of Mexico.
Dave Gelly
Track Listing
Hey Pocky Way
Brickyard Blues
Louisiana 1927
Fess Medley: Mardi Gras In New Orleans, Big Chief, Tipitina
Live At Last swings it’s way through an exhausting evening of raucous vocals, tight jazz arrangements, crazy gymnastics and the doctor’s original feelgood prescription. The album will take you right through the frenzy of a night out with King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys until they trudge off in search of their bedtime cocoa, with a final bow to an audience asking for more – which of course you now have, on this CD.
Nomy Rosenberg is the heir to a tradition many times older than jazz itself. Unlike many present-day Sinti artists, who make a point of distancing themselves from the Django tradition, Nomy is happy to work within it. Even so he could never be described as an imitator. His style is unmistakably his own, with a sparkling technique and immense rhythmic drive. Having literally grown up with a guitar in his hands, he makes it all sound deceptively easy, even casual. Every single note of Nomy’s comes out crisp and clean, as though he had all the time in the world.
DJANGO’S CASTLE WITH BRUCE ADAMS: SWING HOTEL DU VIN
Catalogue number BEARCD48
In the fifty-five years since his death Django Reinhardt has remained the inspirational and stylistic beacon for generations of followers who believe that Reinhardt, despite the passages of jazz fashion, remains the greatest guitarist of all. Consequently they form what might be termed a sort of European salon, a gypsy tribe of disciples who preach that Reinhardt musical gospel with undiminished passion.
So it is with Django’s Castle – one of the most devoted and super-skilled Reinhardt tribute ensembles – formed in 1984 by guitarist Pere Soto. It was at Hotel du Vin during the 24th Birmingham Jazz Festival that they were introduced to the phenomenal trumpeter Bruce Adams. Bruce is himself a living celebration to a rapidly-disappearing jazz genre: the art of swing.
On the face of it the musical combination might seem an unlikely one; a Django-esque ensemble teamed with a swing trumpeter. But of course there are distinguished exceptions. From its opening bars – where, following Soto’s crisp introduction, Adams launches a lightning cup-mute attack on Limehouse Blues – the joys fall thick and fast. Both men are master soloists, with plenty of space to parade their skills in this beautifully recorded set, and Soto’s audacious, ebulliently humorous and frequently quotatious guitar regularly engages in conversation with Adam’s horn on equal terms.
Soto has I’ll See You In My Dreams and the closing Sweet Georgia Brown all to himself in outings to which Django would have offered shouts of approval. But it’s the mutual roar of enjoyment exchanged between the principles amid the last chorus of In A Mellotone which sums up this set, a marriage of two musical minds to which no true jazz lover could justly admit impediment
The case against eclecticism and versatility is broadly speaking that if you get good at too many things you’ll fail in the creation of an individual voice, and so you’ll never establish a unique identity; in other words, you’ll be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. After all, isn’t there good evidence throughout the world of entertainment – especially music? From Louis Armstrong to miles Davis, Charley Patton to Bob Dylan, T-Bone Walker to Jimi Hendrix, an instantly recognisable sound is the key to a successful career. If you wanna be big, everything must be subsumed by your own individuality; whatever you do, don’t go changing according to your context.
And yet, chameleons have a good life as well. And there’s definitely something of the chameleon about Tipitina. In fact, to go from Tom Waits to Nat King Cole to Chris Kenner to Doris Day/Mama Cass (oh, all right then, Louis Armstrong/Ella Fitzgerald) in the first four songs on an album is to take the listener on something of an aural roller-coaster. That’s one of the things I really enjoy about it.
Putting in the piano interludes is, I think, something of a masterstroke; partly because it softens the curves and swerves of the said rollercoaster, and partly because it creates a kind of frame for the sonic picture and thereby relates everything to everything else, unifying the disparate bits into a sort of suite.
I’ve had a really good time listening to this CD. From the homespun sophistication of the title-track all the way to Henry Glover’s great Breaking Up The House, Tipitina have convinced me that they’re definitely on to something. Don’t go changing, guys.
KING PLEASURE & THE BISCUIT BOYS: HEY, PUERTO RICO!
Catalogue number BEARCD46
What does the title ‘King Pleasure’ evoke? In this context it suggests eating, drinking, spending money, chasing chicks, having a good time, overdoing it more than somewhat and explaining the events of the night before to the judge on the morning after. All apt topics for song and celebration, especially in these grim times. So much pop music nowadays is full of anger and violence on the one hand, and slack-jawed stupidity on the other, and so much contemporary jazz is excessively earnest and glum, that we are in urgent need of music that comes with a cheer-up guarantee. That is exactly what King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys unfailingly deliver.
They’re the genuine article, in full working order, dedicated to shaking you up and swinging you into the middle of next week. They’ve got King Pleasure’s inimitable stogies – and – bourbon voice, they’ve got a roaring band sound that comes at you like the Wabash Cannonball, and above all they’ve got that beat. In the words of the immortal Lord Buckley ‘Rhythm is the key to everything – runs the whole swingin’ thing’.
I suppose if you had to find a musical label for this dark professor of the dentures and his gangland crew, it would have to be jump and jive. But the Doctor Teeth Big Band call on a wide range of influences as they deliver the goods. Yes, there’s the rolling boogie that goes right back to Louis Jordan, the godfather of the genre, but a great deal more too. The good Doctor’s prescription includes a cocktail of influence which seem to me to encompass everything from 1940s B-movies to The Blues Brothers, via jazz and RnB. And of course, that most desirable quality so noticeably absent from a great deal of what goes on in music these days. In short the six-letter word frowned upon by the so-called intellectuals who like to tell us what we should be listening to. And that, of course, is humour.
One ecstatic reviewer wrote after an Albrighton all-nighter: “Nothing had prepared us for the impact of DTBB. This eight piece almost blew the windows out from the very first note.” Well check your double glazing, lock up your daughters and then – only-then – press play!”
Digby Fairweather
Track Listing
Rhythm Is Our Business
The Show Show
Rock This Joint
Spread A Little Love And Get High
Ruby In The Red Dress
One Woman Man
Bump And Grind
Hey Brother, Can You Spare Some Jive?
Cold Cold Ground
Mr Big Is Back In Town
Musicians Featured
Dr Teeth – Vocals
Simon “The Duke Of” Kemp – Piano/Organ/Harmonica
Clancy D’Ockra – Guitar
Moreton Pinknee – Drums
Chris “The Jive Lobster” Mapp – Upright Bass
Jay “Choo Choo Ch” Moody – Tenor Sax
Mike (Double Meat) Adlington – Trumpet
Simon (Let The Good Times Roll) Robilliard – Trombone
The jazz festivals of Marbella in Spain and Birmingham in England formed a hermandad or brotherhood, so nothing was more natural than for Big Bear Records to commission Alan Barnes to write and arrange a new piece of music based on Marbella and donated to that city. As invariably happens, carried away by enthusiasm for the project, we decided to form a veritable dream band. Amazingly all the first-choice musicians were available – or made themselves so. Not surprisingly it all sounded so good it had to be recorded.
BRUCE ADAMS – ADAM BARNES QUINTET: LET’S FACE THE MUSIC
Catalogue number BEARCD40
I still get a little shock of surprise and delight whenever I hear Bruce Adams and Alan Barnes doing their stuff. It can’t be because their music is ‘challenging’ or ‘an exciting synthesis of genres’ or anything of that sort. It is perfectly clear what they are up to, which is playing bebop and its close relatives. I remain surprised and delighted because they do it, not only amazingly well, but with such enormous relish.
There is something inherently exciting about the sound of trumpet and alto saxophone playing headlong lines in unison, but they manage to make it more exciting than usual by the way they attack the phrases. Listen to the opening chorus of Hollywood Stampede for a prime example.
I still get a little shock of surprise and delight whenever I hear Bruce Adams and Alan Barnes doing their stuff. It can’t be because their music is ‘challenging’ or ‘an exciting synthesis of genres’ or anything of that sort. It is perfectly clear what they are up to, which is playing bebop and its close relatives. I remain surprised and delighted because they do it, not only amazingly well, but with such enormous relish.
There is something inherently exciting about the sound of trumpet and alto saxophone playing headlong lines in unison, but they manage to make it more exciting than usual by the way they attack the phrases. Listen to the opening chorus of Hollywood Stampede for a prime example.
Bruce Adams is a masterly trumpet player in the grand manner. You don’t need to attend a course of lectures in order to know what he’s on about because he speaks a musical language which everybody understands and speaks it with uncommone elegance and vigour.
I am convinced that, over the years, more people positively enjoy this sort of music than that of the young geniuses who arrive fortnightly, each to a well-orchestrated fanfare. But enjoyment is something that happens inside you. It isn’t visible like a fashion accessory.
Listeners to this album, recorded live at The Grand Hotel, Birmingham on July 10th 1990 during the Birmingham International Jazz Festival will find the range of reference as exhaustive and challenging as ever. As well as a a liberal sprinkling of Swift originals, Duncan pays homage Earl Hines, James P, Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton, revives some second hand Rachmaninov and cavorts with the peasants of Eastern Europe.
So can we call Duncan Swift a stride pianist? Duncan himself, addressing the question with due seriousness, claims that stride is unarguably the main stream of jazz piano, right to the present day. If that seems something of a catch-all argument, nobody will dispute his assertion that, in their own ways, Jelly Roll Morton and Thelonious Monk were stride pianists. If, as Duncan asserts “the only jazz piano which is not stride is that which has no left hand part of any significance”, then this is beyond doubt an album of stride piano. Percussive, witty, melodically inventive, capable of the most surprising twists and most disarming contrasts, Duncan’s playing employs a minimum of two hands at all times. The result is a session that suggests the exhilaration of the Big Dipper far more than the usual ambience of the cocktail bar.
What the album tries to do is to evoke the feeling, not the notes, of the small group jazz of a generation ago and I would say that here and there come moments when what is happening might even be a shade better than what was played all those years ago.
To hear all these pieces sung in a manner faithful to the originals and yet individual in its own way is to be plunged back into a period in jazz history when even the most advanced instrumentalists had not divorced themselves by their own virtuosity from the mainstream of day-to-day life.
BILL ALLRED’S GOODTIME JAZZ BAND: SWING THAT MUSIC
Catalogue number BEARCD31
Lend an ear to Bill Allred’s Goodtime Jazz Band from Orlando, Florida. They might just be – as one recent review claimed – “the greatest Dixieland band in the world!” Try to isolate what makes Bill Allred’s Goodtime Jazz Band so – well – good, and I would come up with three key words: organisation, energy and adventure. Combining the first two is often difficult. Lesser bands who first lay out, then play within a cultivated Dixieland-scape often sound guarded or even hemmed in, as if anxious not to ruffle the grass. Not, of course, how Nick la Rocca, the first jazz punk, saw and heard the music in 1919 or how Eddie Condon did 20 years later.
Seventy years on, it takes musicians as gifted as Allred’s, first to create the written landscape with sensitivity and then play through it like American footballers thundering down the grid. For great examples of this listen to It Don’t Mean A Thing or Limehouse Blues right here. The third quality – adventure – finds its way, appropriately in triplicate, into Allred’s compliment of soloists, arrangements and repertoire. This last may include anything from King Oliver-style replays (via Lu Watters) to elegant Goodman-esque swing tributes and beyond. This repertoire wherever appropriate (and only then) is irresistibly decked out in arrangements offering a capella passages, key changes, dynamic ups and downs shifts in texture and style and fine touches that turn each selection into a kaleidoscope of jazz colourtones. And from this luxurious background Allred’s soloists regularly spring to devour solos as if, in Irving Townsend’s marvellous phrase, “they hadn’t had one in weeks!”
That’s Bill Allred’s Goodtime Band. Dixieland at its very best. As Bob Haggart himself might ask in smiling approval: “What is there not to like”?
Amid the multitude of Midlands groups during the mid-1960s, all replete with Beatles haircuts, high collared jackets and a neo-Liverpool sound; one band stood out, The Blueshounds. It was soon to become better known as Locomotive, playing Kansas City jazz and blues and featuring a 7-piece horn-based line-up. A recipe for suicide you may think, but strangely enough the band carved their own very personal niche in the UK music scene, chalking up some 250 shows each and every year.
Locomotive became renowned as a nursery for musicians destined for stardom. Graduates from its ranks included John Bonham (later Led Zeppelin), Chris Wood (Traffic), Poli Palmer (Family), Pete York (Spencer Davis Group), Dave Pegg (Fairport Convention/Jethro Tull), Carl Palmer (Emerson, Lake & Palmer), Mike Kellie (Spooky Tooth) and Dave Mason (Traffic).
In 1967 CBS Direction released the first Locomotive single, coupling the ballad A Broken Heart, with what was much later to become a ska classic, Rudi, A Message To You. Six months later, Locomotive trumpet player Jim Simpson quit playing in order to concentrate solely on the band’s management, a role he had previously combined with performance. Simpson had signed the band to Parlophone (EMI) and Locomotive hit the national and international charts with Rudi’s In Love, the first UK chart entry to use the Rock Steady rhythm which developed into Ska and then Reggae.
When Parlophone rejected the band’s follow-up Ska single (in favour of the doom-laden Mr Armageddon) Simpson set up his own label to release Rudi The Red Nosed Reindeer, performed by Locomotive under the soubriquet Steam Shovel. The label was named Big Bear Records in recognition of D.J. John Peel’s nickname for the label’s founder, and the date was November 15th 1968.
During the 1970s Big Bear Records steadily built a worldwide reputation with its now-legendary recordings of important American bluesmen Doctor Ross, Homesick James, Lightnin’ Slim, Big John Wrencher, Snooky Prior, Tommy Tucker, Eddie Playboy Taylor, Eddie Guitar Burns Cousin Joe, Willie Mabon, Mickey Baker, Boogie Woogie Red and more.
At the same time, the label did not neglect local talent, the most successful of which were Muscles Love Is All I’ve Got and Make Me Happy and The Quads, who charted with There Must Be Thousands (selected as John Peel’s single of the decade!).
The enigmatic Garbo’s Celluloid Heroes gained critical acclaim at this time, but it inexplicably never transferred into record sales, although there is still a steady worldwide demand for their recordings from collectors.
With the 1980s came a swing back to Big Bear Records’ first love, jazz and swing. Concentrating mainly on British artists, the label was to win a string of plaudits and awards, securing its place in the history of recorded jazz with great recordings by Kenny Baker’s Dozen, Val Wiseman with Lady Sings The Blues, Duncan Swift, Bruce Adams/Alan Barnes Quintet and, of course, the incredibly successful King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys.
Many of these recordings are currently available in our catalogues.
Recorded live at Birmingham’s Cannon Hill Park in 1984, described by Bebop Spoken Here as “probably as close as we’ll ever get to matching the legendary Buck Clayton Jam Sessions and possibly better than many of the JATP concerts recorded by Norman Granz.”
Featuring:
Trumpets: Humphrey Lyttelton and Digby Fairweather
Trombones: Roy Williams and Roy Crimmins
Clarinets: Randy Colville and Dave Shepherd
Alto Saxophone: Bruce Turner
Tenor Saxophone: Dick Morrissey
Guitar: Jim Douglas
Piano: Mick Pyne
Double Bass: Harvey Weston
Drums: Johnny Richardson
Track listing:
Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me
On the Alamo
Frankie & Johnny
Crazy Rhythm
Jumpin’ At The Woodside
The Hucklebuck
Honeysuckle Rose
Available on LP, download and streaming, and as part of Jazz City UK Volume 2
