This Week at Hedsor Jazz

We need you!!

For the second week running, this week we have the full Clive Burton Quintet. Sharp tunes, swinging music with great solos. I’m sure for our second week running it will be just like last week. Melodic fun.

What I hope wont be like last week is the audience! Not enough of you turned out to welcome “back” our trombone blowing leader from his bed of back pain. This week, he will be fitter than ever, so come and find out. Please!!

Music Listened to this Week

Following on from my theme of Swinging 40’s and 50’s music from the “Just Jazz” stable I have something old, and something new (er). Having just written that down, it has also reminded me that once there was an LP released by the De Paris Brothers New New Orleans Band entitled “Something Old, New Gay , Blue”. They had no idea what the word “gay” was going to come to represent, they just meant it was “tres jollie”.

Old, in as much as it comes from the 1950’s is a super reissue on the Avid label of 3 LP albums headed up by Lionel Hampton. Lionel came to fame with the Benny Goodman Quintet of the late 1930’s, and in 1955 a film was made called “The Benny Goodman Story”, and much of the earlier recorded work was re created for the film. To free themselves form the constraints of film recordings, Lionel got together with Gene Krupa and Teddy Wilson in another studio to make an LP of their own. They added in bassist Red Callender and remade some of the earlier hits, this time without Mr. Goodman! So, on the first part of this new Avid double CD reissue we have “Avalon, I Got Rhythm”, “Moonglow”, “Just You, Just Me”, (still very popular, obviously, in the Just Jazz concert recordings I wrote of last week it was represented 4 times) and “Airmail Special” from the past. They are very good quality mono recordings. The double album goes on to give you the “Lionel Hampton and His Giants” LP and the “Apollo Hall Concert from 1954” LP.

You will find on this Avid reissue (AVID AMSC993) many of the players who were in the 1940’s “Just Jazz” line-ups, including Harry Edison, Art Tatum, Barney Kessel and Buddy Rich. It’s all great swinging music. That’s swing, not frantic!

Following on from this new issue comes a newer recording but older issue CD!! “The Benny Goodman Quartet Together Again” was recorded in stereo in 1963. It has the same line up as the 1955 Lionel Hampton recording mentioned above, but this time WITH Benny Goodman. I have had this since the dawn of CD’s, and it is really excellent. Beautifully recorded in the days when they were trying very hard to “sell” Hi Fi, it has some of the classic BG Quartet tunes that were originally recorded in the 30’s including my favourite “Seven Come Eleven”, but also “Runnin’ Wild”, “I’ve Found A New Baby” and 7 other great tracks as well. If you need to be introduced to the Benny Goodman Quartet, go and find this CD. I have it on the Bluebird label (an RCA derivative) number ND86283.

One final bit of sadness this week. We have had the news of the death of Michael Garrick. He died last Friday.

There is so much of his work to remember him for, but those of us who heard him at Swanage this year, or at The Wooburn Festival very recently will be saddened that he couldn’t further our remembrance of the MJQ, something he was in the process of bringing to us.

He was 78 years old, still working to almost the last, and had just had a heart operation.