January 2026, and A Wednesday Blog!

And it’s all about reminding you that Hedsor Jazz wont have any live music until Thursday January 15^th, when our 2026 season starts with two escapees from “The Filthy Six”, saxophonist Frank Walden and guitarist James Fenn.

We hope that you now have this in your diary and that your diary has already been marked to show that our jazz nights are now the second and fourth Thursday of each month.

Sadly having a jazz session every week has become uneconomic for us until we can encourage more jazz fans to come on a regular basis. Our two jazz evenings a month system will still have the same high quality as before, and we will see how this goes until May, so do put these dates in your diary if you haven’t already done so.

Hedsor Jazz Thursdays:-

January 15^th and 29^th, February 12^th and 26^th, March 12^th and 26^th, April 9^th and 23^rd, May 7^th and 21^st

Frank and James have played for us many times at Hedsor in recent years, but James has an even greater claim to Hedsor fame as he was one of the young musicians who not only helped start live jazz at Hedsor, but he also introduced us all to Vasilis Xenopoulos.

 

I have produced a poster that may catch the eye of passers by, and doesn’t need replacing every month, so if you are in a position to download, print and display it please do.

 

Thinking of all the jazz that helped us on our jazz journey I have been catching up with some from my CD collection.

One CD played recently was of Alex Welsh and his band. Back in the 1970’s the Alex Welsh band came fairly regularly to The Bell in Maidenhead and two of the members from that band have also played either Hedsor, or The Fifield Inn. Trombonist Roy Williams and multi reed man John Barnes. The recording I played recently was a “live” recording from a concert they gave in Nottingham in 1967 which had as a guest another great star, trumpeter Ruby Braff. I saw Ruby Braff many times at The Brecon Jazz Festival, and he was an irascible person, but one who played beautiful jazz.

The recording of them playing together is on Lake Records LACD223. The Sound engineer at “The Dancing Slipper” in Nottingham, Allan Gilmour, used to record the sessions for his own use. This was fortunate for historic reasons and these private recordings are now finding there way into the more public listening of CD release. The music is excellent, and the sound balance reasonable. In those days electric keyboards were unheard of and “The Dancing Slipper’s” piano had a unique sound (!) but pianist Fred Hunt makes a fine job of getting the best out of it. This is a fine release and a release of some fine memories of sessions I was at.