The First Blog of 2021

So, what can I say. There is Hope for 2021 as there is a vaccine on its way. 

BUT someone told the virus, and now it is an improved and more virulent one. 

Happy New Lockdown 3!!

So, how to keep entertained? 

Last week I referred to Humphrey Lyttleton playing alongside pianist Mick Pyne, and reminded people that Peter Clayton had introduced them as “the band that can get to gigs on a tandem”!

That was in 1983. So I thought I had better dig out my recording of the broadcast, which I did, and played it again perhaps for the first time since 2009. That was when I turned the tape into a CD for my own personal use.

But drastic times need drastic measures, and I am going to risk letting you hear it via a link to my drop box folder, where an MP3 version of the CD now resides for a short period of time. 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ywg5k7ylh5iwurc/AACW8LOPIhtYKP4unFR2NrSGa?dl=0 

I had forgotten that on the same recording was a version of Humph’s 8 piece band, with a sax section of legends. Bruce Turner, John Barnes and Kathy Stobart. And the recording has the added bonus of the voice of Peter Clayton. 

He was for me the voice of jazz on the BBC. Jazz Record Requests on Radio 3 and Jazz Club on Radio 2, and that was back in the days when Humph himself had a weekly program on Radio 2 called “The Best of Jazz”. 3 hours a week of jazz with one of those hours a recording of a live performance. Many of these were recorded in BBC’s Maida Vale Studios in front of an invited audience, of whom I was often one.

In this time of live jazz starvation it is good to look back on one’s live jazz experiences. I hope you enjoy the above recording enough to pay any fine I might incur through sharing the music with you. However if you should feel any guilt do please put money in Cancer Research’s collecting box.

Not a lot else to report. If you like the duetting contained in the drop box download, try that old standby YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nq4ZccP7IvCaomkEz87zznVSvJ7gHxypA

For more of the same.

One of the songs on that compilation was “We Fell Out Of Love” which Humph wrote for singer Elkie Brooks, which has some very poignant lyrics. I first heard that sung by Elkie Brooks with Humph at the Royal Festival Hall. At that time I had no idea who she was, and she appeared onstage in a very floaty white dress, and when not singing proceeded to flirt with Bruce Turner. Maybe she had heard his version of the tune “Cream Puff”! 

Well I have dropped enough names for those of you who are intrigued by them to search for the sounds themselves. They are all out there. 

So, try hard, wait patently for your jab, and in the meantime don’t break the law by going out!