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.
“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
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.
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 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”?
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
