Are you looking forward to Thursday?

Or has the tennis captured your soul?

Well, there are some really good reasons for catching 2 sets at The Hedsor Social Club Jazz night this week.

In place of Clive Burton (there must be a lot of railings to paint in Reading!) we have that very thoughtful guitarist John Coverdale. 

And then we hope to have a very young lady to come and sing a couple of songs for us. Berenice can be found on various YouTube clips, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcF-qwI7G00) and Thursday you can see her for real. It is very rewarding to be able to extend the experience of someone so young who wants to sing and is using Hedsor Jazz to gain some of that experience.

Next week our guest musician will be trumpeter Stuart Henderson. For those who have yet to hear him, there are VERY few jazz trumpeters in the UK who can better him.

Sadly (gladly!) I will be away on my holidays, so will miss this. I will however try to keep reminding you of the excellent jazz that will be unfolding every Thursday at Hedsor via that long distance internet thingy.

Looking further a field than July, August 8^th is rushing towards us, (I get older by the minute!) and I do now have a poster. If you would like to print a copy to advertise it I will add it

a)    as a jpeg file to this blog (above, read last weeks additional posting to find out how to enlarge it) and

b)    as a PDF file to my nagging little emails. Some of them might even get through!

New Web Page for Hedsor

You might like to know that the Hedsor Social Club now has a very good web site now. Do take a look at http://www.hedsorclub.com/ 

That’s it for now folks, keep listening……..   !

A Postscript

This applies to ALL of my CD cover illustrations. 

If you want to see them in a larger form, perhaps to read the track list or personnel, double left click the picture, and low and behold, it is more legible!!

Geoff

Summer Suns are glowing, at least that is the promise for today,

But we all know that they wont be tomorrow! You can however always obtain that warm glow that you know Hedsor Jazz always delivers.

I gather quite a large number of you played truant last week. I myself was laid up again! Missing 2 Thursdays this year due to ill health is not really a good enough excuse, but hey hoe. After lots of antibiotics I will be there, waiting to greet you for Thursdays Jazz Session this week!

It will be the regular Clive Burton Quintet, so put in your requests to him from their extensive repertoire.

They have made a number of recordings in the past, but I wonder if you would like them to have another one ready in time for Christmas? Let me know what you think.

My holiday period is coming up in July. Swanage and Marlborough Jazz festivals are both on my radar, as is also the Ealing Jazz Festival. Then in August my own mini festival night, August 8^th. I will be celebrating 75 years of survival, and 54 years of marriage! To help me do that we will have Vasilis Xenopoulos, Nigel Price and Gill Cook all accompanied by our lovely Clive Burton Quintet. OR you could go to someone else’s jazz festival and see them there!

Not having been well should have had me glued to my loudspeakers, but strangely I didn’t fancy doing more than sleep! When I did listen it wasn’t to anything new to me, rather I sought solace in the past!! 2 CD’s I have mentioned in my blog before, both reissues from the late 1950’s and early 1960’s

“Humph, Bruce and Sandy Swing at the BBC” on the Upbeat label just happens to remind me of how good the jazz I listened to in my early years really was. Players like Tony Coe, John Pickard, Stan Greig, as well as the entitled Humph Bruce and Sandy were all great players. On this album alone you can hear Stan on piano and drums!! This album (URCED182) has been around since 2002, but I’m sure Liz Biddle (of Upbeat Records) will still sell you a copy. British Mainstream jazz at it’s best.

The other album has Humph’s band, and a derivation of the Sandy Brown band from the other CD, recorded by that other radio station we sometimes tuned into that wasn’t run by the BBC, Radio Luxembourg! Now issued on Vocalion “The 208 Rhythm Club Volume 2” has some more of that wonderful period for British Mainstream jazz. Both sessions, one by Humphs Band which still included Tony Coe, and one with Al Fairweather and Sandy Brown’s “All Stars” have an unusual message “Thanks George” included in them. Apparently link announcements after the adverts were done by George Melly, but they were dubbed in after the session! So, we have all of the studio recording (in excellent sound quality, no AM Hiss here) complete with introductions by the band leaders!!

It really is a first class music, issued this year. Vocalion CDNJT 5316.

So, until our tryst tomorrow…..TTFN

ONE WEEK LATER

And progress is being made!!

I hope last weeks blog amused you, our gig certainly did. It was a really enjoyable night at "The Hedsor Social Club" with Karen Sharp and a selection of "our boys".

This week we get back to more normal progress, if I kept up the WWII analogy we would be  stuck in the Bocage! 

This Thursday we have The Clive Burton Quintet, but with Ken McCarthy on keyboard and Mike Jeffries on drums. AND we welcome back our regular bass player. Ken Rankine is a working musician again, and will be playing all evening for us on Thursday this week. It will be great to have him back, and we must hope that he stops falling over. 

I would like to take this opportunity of thanking all the dep bass players we have had over the last couple of months. Now we know you all, be aware, we have made a note of your names!!

One positive of the replacements we have had over the last few months for both Clive and Ken is the rich diversity we have laid on top of our program of guest musicians. We have had many very enjoyable sessions, so some good does come out of misfortune. However, I do would not wish accident or illness on anyone, even for jazz!!

So, I hope you will all turn out to encourage our wonderful jazz ensemble to continue in their musical careers.Live Jazz is EVERY THURSDAY at the Hedsor Social Club, from 8.30 pm!

Finally click on this link, and see what you think of a local 17 year old!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcF-qwI7G00

Today is D Day.

 

 

Your landing area is Hedsor.

 

Your objective is saxophonist Karen Sharp.

 

 

Synchronise your watches now. 

 

 

Your start time is 20.30 hours.

 

Over and out.