My bloggy bits this week really carry on from my comments of last week about Roy Williams.

I was writing about that great British trombone player and mentioned that Festival Hall concert where he dueted with trombonist George Chisholm. I had written it up from memory, but later in the week I looked out the CD of the concert (I had it originally on LP too!), and I was  wrong!! 

It was on London’s South Bank, but it was in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, not the Festival Hall. The concert was on 28th November 1971 and it was given as a memorial to Louis Armstrong. The duet I was remembering was Roy Williams and George Chisholm playing “It’s All Right With Me”, and I think it only right if I quote from the sleeve notes written by Liam Keating about that particular tune. 

The redoubtable George Chisholm guests on Cole Porter's “It's all right with me”. George is joined by Roy, and both trombonists, displaying a mutual admiration, build upon each others solos to excel even their own high standards. Roy breaks away from the introductory duet and performs four scintillating choruses, only to be bettered by four from George. After a two chorus interlude from Jim Douglas we are treated to two choruses of swapped "fours" (George is the more outgoing of the two and is inclined to separate his phrases more than Roy) and then a grand final duet, spanning four choruses, sans rhythm. I will refrain from saying any more about this track - it would inevitably be an understatement! 

The CD reissue was published in 1995 by Black Lion Records as BLCD760515. If you don’t have it already I really do recommend it. 

Please don’t get it confused with a celebration of Louis’s birthday given in the same place a year earlier, as that recording is dreadful. It has some good music on it, with Humph and Alex Welsh again participating, but the recording left everything to ones desire!

Roy Williams and George Chisholm do do another duet in this concert playing “Tea for Two” and there is a lot of great jazz on this double album, but the recording for some reason badly lets it all down. I can remember the comments about it in the musical press when the LP’s were first released. 

If you can find a copy then have a listen, but a lot of the players are off mike, and the ensemble is badly out of balance. However it does give you the chance to hear Beryl Bryden, a stalwart British blues singer from the dawn of the British revivalist period. She was a large lady with a matching voice, AND she played a washboard. 

The mix of styles playing this concert is kind of confusing, but it was celebrating the music of Louis Armstrong. If only it had been recorded with a sound as good as some of the acoustic recording Louis made, have a listen to some of Louis Hot 5 recordings, then it would be worth buying, but there are too many buts on this one.

The 1971 concert came very soon after Louis died, and looking it up on Wikipedia just to check my facts, I was surprised that the place where he died had a very familiar look about it!!  He died on 6th July 1971 in Corona, New York!!

This continual semi house arrest state we currently endure has made me look back at CD’s that I haven’t pulled from the collection for some time. You may recall that at Christmas time I was delivered of a Chris Barber Band recording made in Nottingham by Alan Gilmore which was well worth collecting and in my digging around and listening this week I have come across a CD by the Humphrey Lyttelton Band also recorded by Alan Gilmore in Nottingham. 

The recording isn’t as good as the Barber one, (but better than the one referenced above from 1970) but nonetheless well worth a search out. it’s the Humph Band with Gospel Singer Marie Knight, recorded in 1958. 

There are a number of reasons not to be frightened off this one. Most of the songs are NOT gospel, and the band was one of Humph's very best. John Pickard was on trombone, and the reed section was Tony Coe, Jimmy Skidmore and Joe Temperly. Yes folks 1958. And you just have to believe that the Humph band of the day did play “Shake, Rattle and Roll"!! You just have to hear how drummer Eddie Taylor lays down the beat!

Its on the Calligraph label CLG CD 047, and was released in 2010

There you have it for this week. 1958, 1970 and 1971. I wonder where next weeks search and listen will take me. In the meantime do keep the home of jazz in your thoughts as the United States of America starts life with a new president.