A Little Afternoon Blogging!

Because I have a change of personnel for this coming Thursday to announce! 

We ARE back to our usual Quintet format after last weeks excursion with John Coverdale on guitar. As you may recall, last week I was only allowed to attend for part one of the evening, but what I heard was very enjoyable. This week, I hope to stay for the entire evening and listen to the Clive Burton Quintet, with Martin Hart back on the drums, Mike Wills back on the reeds, but with Phil Berry on bass in place of Ken Rankine, who is playing away this week!! Our usual start time and admission fee apply (8.30pm and £6).

Obviously, being confined to home for the last 3 weeks I have had plenty of time to listen to recorded jazz. Most of what I heard was via Spotify and headphones. I was amazed to learn that I could find that Al Fairweather from the 1950’s was available, as was Alan Elsdon from the 60’s and 90’s!! One album of Alan’s stands out, he recorded with clarinet legend Edmund Hall in 1994! Well worth searching out.

BUT yesterday real listening took place. A new to me double album by Al Cohn. Called “Night Flight to Dakar” and recorded in 1980 in Senegal (West Africa) it is a really exciting find, released on CD in 2015 as an SACD as Xanadu Master Edition 906075, (available via Amazon for just over £17).

You may think that being recorded in West Africa that the recording would be less than Hi Fi, but it is in good stereo, and is a great piece of jazz.

With Al are Billy Mitchell also on tenor sax, Dolo Coker on piano, Leroy Vinnegar on bass and Frank Butler on drums. None of the band may now be with us, but on their dates in Senegal they were vibrantly alive.

Tunes include a super piano feature on “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Out”, (originally a feature recording by Louis Jordan) for Dola Coker, “Robbins Nest” from the Count Basie repertoire and a version of Oscar Pettifords “Blues in the Closet” that you may find hard to recognise from the version played by Clive Burton’s Quintet!! All the recordings were “live” with an obviously delighted audience!

Altogether a great find.

Oh, by the way, thinking of Africa, if you can rush away on an aeroplane for about the next 20 hours or so, you will be able to catch the music festival just about to start on the French administered euro friendly island of Reunion!!

TTFN

Geoff