Steve Newman's Jazz Groove

Don Rendell & Ian Carr

2011-01-25T00:02:00.000-08:00

Read my feature about Don Rendell and Ian Carr...

Ray Russell - Guitar Man

2011-01-24T23:47:00.000-08:00

Read my article about Ray Russell...

Charles Mingus at New York's Town Hall

2011-01-24T01:30:00.000-08:00

Read my feature about the famous Charles Mingus recording...

A Review of Jazz Saxophonist Johnny Lippiett's New Album, Soulscape

2010-06-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

A Review of Jazz Saxophonist Johnny Lippiett's New Album, Soulscape

Down in the Village - The Tubby Hayes Quintet

2010-02-12T09:34:00.000-08:00

Read my article about Tubby Hayes and his 1962 album, Down in the Village, over at Helium.

Buddy Rich & Gene Krupa - The Greatest Jazz Drummers

2009-08-04T00:04:00.001-07:00

Read my article over at Helium...

Django Reinhardt - A Portrait

2009-08-02T07:23:00.001-07:00

Read my feature on Django over at Helium.

Duke Ellington and his Musicians

2009-08-02T07:17:00.000-07:00

Read my article over at Helium.

Trad Mad - Brian Mathew

2009-07-22T04:37:00.001-07:00

Read my feature about Brian's book...
Trad Mad - Brian Mathew

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Ronnie Scott - Some of My Best Friends are Blues

2009-07-05T02:07:00.000-07:00

Read my feature about Ronnie and his book over at Wordpress.

The Temperance Seven

2009-07-01T23:54:00.001-07:00

Read my article...
The Temperance Seven

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"hear Me Talkin' to Ya" - Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff

2009-07-01T09:42:00.001-07:00

Read my article...
"hear Me Talkin' to Ya" - Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff

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But Beautiful: Geoff Dyer

2009-06-30T05:26:00.001-07:00

Read my article...
But Beautiful: Geoff Dyer

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Mike Westbrook - Release

2009-06-29T01:36:00.001-07:00

Read my piece about Mike...
Mike Westbrook - "Release"

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Colin Towns - British Composer

2009-06-29T01:25:00.001-07:00

Read my piece about Colin Towns.

Jelly Roll Morton: The Inventor of Jazz

2009-06-26T09:36:00.001-07:00

Part Two of my feature...
Jelly Roll Morton: The Inventor of Jazz

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Jelly Roll Morton: Red Hot Jazz

2009-06-25T01:53:00.001-07:00

Read Part One of a Two Part feature on Jelly Roll Morton...
Jelly Roll Morton: Red Hot Jazz

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Sidney Bechet - Petite Fleur

2009-06-15T07:47:00.001-07:00

Read the final part of my feature about Sidney Bechet

Sidney Bechet - Petite Fleur

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Sidney Bechet: Treat It Gentle

2009-06-11T09:36:00.001-07:00

Sidney Bechet: Treat It Gentle

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Sidney Bechet - Jazz Musician

2009-06-09T03:20:00.000-07:00

Sidney Bechet was one of those great 20th century voices of jazz: a voice that helped not only define jazz, but the whole modernist movement, a voice that was as important as Hemingway's.

Read the first part of my feature on Sidney Bechet over at Triond.

Ben Webster And Associates

2009-04-14T01:25:00.000-07:00

Fifty years ago, on the 9th April 1959, the fifty year old Ben Webster, and a bunch of old chums, went into the Nola Recording Studios on 111w,57th Street, New York City, to record (for the Verve label) Ben Webster And Associates, an album that has become over the years a bench-mark of jazz perfection played by some of the very best in the business.

The producer was the legendary Norman Granz, who, in this gorgeous recording, created a beautifully crisp, open and expansive sound that shows everybody off to their best, not least Ben himself, whose tenor work on that April day was at a pinnacle of artistic fulfilment, either in the breathy Time After Time, or his biting, thrusting version of Duke Ellington's In A Mellow Tone, which opens this superb album.

Ben's bunch of chums are Roy Eldridge (trumpet), Coleman Hawkins and Budd Johnson (tenor saxophones), Jimmy Jones (piano), Les Spann (guitar), Ray Brown (bass), and Count Basie's power house, Jo Jones, on drums. A formiddable bunch indeed, who are so obviously in tune with one another that I doubt if there were any rehearsals at all, just an agreement on the numbers to be played, and the keys, and that would have been it, apart from Granz giving the thumbs up.

And it's the three tenor line-up that gives this one-off group its fulsome, meaty sound, with Coleman Hawkins' playing here (and he put the tenor sax into jazz) another masterful treat of his passionate, yet hard edged, playing that compliments the almost vibrato free playing of Ben, and the big-heartedness of Budd Johnson.

The rich meat that is Webster, Hawkins and Johnson is complimented wonderfully by the hot horseradish playing of Roy Eldridge who, whether open or muted, cuts a delicious line through the proceedings, with the rock steady bass, guitar, piano and drums seemingly able to go on forever. You are simply left marvelling at the professionalism and ease with wich it all seems to be done.

I once briefly met Ben Webster back in the 1960s at the Birmingham International Jazz Festival. He'd just finished playing a two hour set with a pick-up group, and was wandering around the audience filming with his Super 8 cine camera. His response to my request for an autograph was very gracious, as is his playing on Ben Webster And Associates.

Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts

2009-03-12T11:45:00.001-07:00

Getting the turntable back in action meant going through all my LPs again, which is a pleasure because you always come across something that you've forgotten, or at least put to the back of your mind. This was certainly true of Duke Ellington's Sacred Concert recordings: one on RCA Victor from 1966 called Duke Ellington's Concert of Sacred Music, the other ( a double album) recorded by United Artists in 1971 called Duke Ellington's Second Sacred Concert. And I had forgotten just how good they are, with the 1966 recording undoubtedly the best.

The 1960s were, for Ellington, a period when he produced some of his finest recorded work (certainly on a par with the stuff from the late 1950s) most notably The Popular Duke Ellington (recorded a year after the first Sacred Concert album, with both albums produced by RCA's legendary A&R man, Brad McCuen) where he introduces a new audience to his most popular compositions, such as Take the 'A' Train (written by Billy Strayhorn of course), Mood Indigo, I Got It Bad, Solitude, Black and Tan Fantasy, and the almost evangelical Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me, (written by Ellington in 1940 as Concerto for Cootie), a piece that has a lot in common with his beautiful melody Come Sunday (written for his extended work Black, Brown & Beige in 1943), which later became a corner stone of his first Sacred Concert. To me this suggest that just about everything Ellington (a devout Christian) wrote from the 1940s onwards was spiritually headed toward his series of Sacred Concerts. Sadly, Ellington's Sacred Concerts have come in for quite a bit of criticism over the years, most notably that they lack cohesive musical form, which is like saying Faure couldn't write a requiem. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When we listen to Duke Ellington's Concert of Sacred Music (recorded at the New York Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church) we hear Ellington at his best, where he uses the whole Ellington bag of compositional signatures (including a hint of Delius here and there) centred around the individual voices of his musicians, creating the Ellington 'family' sound that takes us into his world and, by degrees, his Christianity that, like a simple, familiar hymn, can move us beyond the musical form and into a higher realm. Just listen to track 2, side 1, Tell Me It's The Truth, sung by Esther Marrow, followed by Come Sunday, to get the idea.

This is not just music, but worship.

Acker Bilk at Stratford-upon-Avon Civic Hall

2008-10-16T23:26:00.001-07:00

The Stratford-upon-Avon Music Festival is one of this country's longest established and most popular events on the music calender, which this year included, as part of a superb mix, the remarkable Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and the world renowned pianist John Lill. And today, Sunday 19th October, the festival ends with the Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra, Instant Sunshine, and, at the White Swan Hotel, a tribute to the late and great tenor saxophonist and jazz club owner Ronnie Scott.

Now Ronnie Scott was a wonderfully inventive musician who played with the best. I remember seeing him with the Woody Herman Orchestra back in the '60s. Ronnie was also a great teller of jokes, and a man who was a friend of Acker Bilk's, who is also a great teller of jokes, and a jazz musician who has been a part of the UK jazz establishment for the best part of 60 years. He's also a musician who, with his Paramount Jazz Band, delighted a capacity audience at the Civic Hall last Wednesday evening.

I first came across Acker Bilk in 1959, when traditional jazz had become 'Trad Jazz',
a genuine movement (and one that did a lot to generate an interest in all things jazz in this country) that filled a vacuum in the popular music industry until The Beatles came along and changed everything. Talking of which my wife, Hilary, remembers going to see Acker (as well as The Beatles) at the Cavern Club in Liverpool where, on certain evenings, you often had to dance on the tables to avoid the rats, who, according to my wife, were very fast on their feet.

These days, at the age of 79, Acker Bilk doesn't really do fast anymore, instead both he and the Paramount Jazz Band have developed a wonderful sound that is both light-hearted and elegantly lugubrious, that takes the listener straight back to the band's 1950s recordings: listen to 'Marching Through Georgia', and the old Harry Raderman hit from 1920, 'Dardanella' to relish its richness, especially Acker's own trademark low-register preference that, even in the higher-register, sounds lower than any other player around, then or now. It's a clarinet sound that goes straight back to New Orleans and Johnny Dodds, with the added sophistication of Barney Bigard (also from New Orleans) who gave the Duke Ellington Orchestra of the 1920s, 30s and 40s its distinctive and compelling drive. And it was this combination of sophistication and drive, plus 60 years of experience, that we received from Acker Bilk and his band on Wednesday.

These days Acker Bilk surrounds himself with relatively younger musicians who are able to give the required pace and variety where needed, and this was most evident in the explosively melodic playing of pianist Colin Wood, whose workout on 'Autumn Leaves' was an extraordinary bravura performance, as was trombonist Ian Bateman's re-invention of 'Sweet Sue'. Trumpet player Enrico Tomasso was everywhere, with his playing a constant source of delight, and a brilliant melding of Louis Armstrong and Louis Prima, truly exciting stuff, all backed up by the rock steady bass playing of John Day and the drumming of Richie Bryant.

As mentioned at the start of this review Acker Bilk is also a great teller of jokes which he told with superb timing between numbers.

" There was this bloke out taking his dog for a walk, a whippet or something, when he comes across this pub. He was dying for a pint too. But there was a sign on the door saying 'No Dogs, Except Guide Dogs'. So the bloke puts on a pair of dark glasses and goes in. When the barman sees him he says:
' Can't you read? No dogs except guide dogs.'
' But this is my guide dog.'
' Don't give me that, guide dogs are either Alsations or Labradors.'
' What they given me then?' "

Acker Bilk is now something of a national treasure and we have to be grateful the British Army taught him to play the clarinet and no doubt helped to hone his skill as a joker.

Note: The above photograph of Acker Bilk taken from Boisdale Belgravia .

Our Kind of Jazz - Ted Heath & His Orchestra

2008-08-07T01:00:00.000-07:00

Rummaging through a heap of old LPs the other day I came across a superb Decca release from 1958: Our Kind of Jazz by the Ted Heath Orchestra - plus guests. And listening to the wonderful hi-fidelity mono recording it still sounds as fresh as the day it was recorded at Decca's Broadhurst Gardens studio, West Hampsted almost exactly fifty years ago.

And what a truly stunning outfit Ted Heath put together for this recording, every bit as powerful as the Count Basie and Herman bands, and you only have to look at the line-up to see why - it's like reading the Who's Who of British jazz.

On saxes alone we have Don Rendell and the much lamented Ronnie Scott - two guys who are still an inspiration to new players - plus Tubby Hayes, who, with Scott created the Jazz Couriers back in the fifties, and a player who subbed for Paul Gonsalves in the Ellington band when Paul failed to turn up for a concert. Also in the sax section we have Tommy Whittle, who for a while was the musical director of the Dorchester Hotel Orchestra. You only have to listen to these four tenor players kick-off side one of the LP with Ronnie Roullier's 100 miles an hour 'Four Fours' to hear section and solo sax playing at its best; you simply don't want the track to end. The sax section is completed by Ken Kiddier, Henry MacKenzie, and Ronnie Chamberlain, whose soprano work must surely have inspired a very young John Surman.

The trumpet section is made up of the now legendary Bobby Pratt (who died in 1968 aged 41) who gave the Heath brass its clear, crisp, and often soaring drive. Sitting next to Bobby is Eddie Blair, who later played for John Dankworth and a player who was this country own Miles Davis. Alongside the trumpet section - which also included Bert Ezard and Duncan Campbell, and of course the great Kenny Baker who was a favourite at virtually every British jazz festival until his death a few years ago - you have the fantasy trombone section made up of Keith Christie, who again played for John Dankworth, Wally Smith, Jimmy Coombes (two Heath veterans), and the late, great Don Lusher who went on to front the band after Heath's death in 1969, plus Maurice Pratt, who was another Dankworth sideman.

The rhythm section is a formidable battery, and one of the best ever assembled, with Ike Isaacs on guitar (he later played with Stephane Grappelli and Digby Fairweather), Johnny Hawksworth on bass (he wrote the music for several British TV sit-coms of the 1970s), and the spirited Ronnie Verrell on drums, who supplied the beat for the drummer Animal in The Muppet Show. Oh, and not forgetting the one and only Stan Tracey on piano and vibes, and you don't hear Britain's best jazz pianist play vibes any more.

Anyway, the whole LP is a delight from start to finish, and it's still available on CD, search it out.

Digby Fairweather: On The Road With George Melly - The Final Bows Of A Legend

2008-01-09T01:02:00.000-08:00

Digby Fairweather is one of Britain's finest jazz trumpeters, he is also an excellent broadcaster (theJazz), and a writer of huge talent who is fast becoming - like the late George Melly before him - a master of the memoir, as his own autobiography, Notes From A Jazz Life, and his biography of Nat Gonella (co-written with Ron Brown), A Life In Jazz, testify. But it's his latest book, On The Road With George Melly, where Fairweather the writer really seems to come into his own with a memoir that is wonderfully witty and a very moving tribute to that finest of renaissance men, George Melly, as this extract from the introduction shows...

" George Melly knew I was writing this book. 'With or without the help of Dr Smirnoff's' he twinkled - aware that mutual ingestion of our favoured drinks (mine Smirnoff's vodka, his Jameson's Irish whiskey) occasionally - though never permanently - tempered our feelings of firm mutual affection.

" I loved George of course. And writing this book about his last years - which at one point I was going to title Winding Up - was one way of returning a cherished favour. Back in 1965, while still a junior assistant in Southend on Sea's Central Library, I read his first volume of autobiography Owning Up - that now legendary account of his fourteen youthful years on the road with the uproarious, unrepentant Mick Mulligan band - and, until I turned jazz music into my profession twelve years later, the book became my behavioural vade-mecum; a raver's primer. Owning Up to Winding Up; well, it seemed reasonable."

In those two paragraphs Fairweather gives a wonderful, elegant, and well written (damned well written) flavour of the whole book, and one that should, and probably will be, the vade-mecum for a whole army of dedicated British jazz aficionados.

It's a great read.

Buy it.

Digby will also be appearing at The Stratford-upon-Avon International Festival of Literature
on Sunday 20th April at 1pm.

I shall be writing more about Digby's life and career at a later date.

Copyright 2008 Steve Newman