A little reminder for today’s blog is that there is no live jazz at The Hedsor Bar this Thursday.

Since the beginning of the year when we decided that we would run jazz at Hedsor only twice a month (on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month) I have been pondering on what to interest my blog readers with in the weeks when no live jazz is on.

Over recent years the blog fell into a pattern of what it was like, with photos to prove it, last week, and what it will be like (again with photos to hope with) for next week.

With now a week between each live jazz event, I have fallen into the habit of showing the last events photos twice!

Well, last weeks event will have its photos published NEXT WEEK. As will the “hopefully to come” pictures to entice you to the next event! 

Looking back over the years I can see that I used to write more often about recorded jazz than I have done recently. I thought it might be an idea to do that again a bit more often, so for this week I am going to write a bit about my early listening years with two released cd’s that can back that up.

My early listening years (after the period of “The Teddy Bears Picnic” on 78 records via a wind up Gramophone) was via a pre war valve radio (which was probably a fire hazard), that was used in my bedroom at the top of an Edwardian House in Hammersmith. 

Following the program “The Man in Black”, a series of spine tingling mystery stories brought to you BY The Man in Black (Valentine Dyall) at about 9pm on the “Home Service”, came “Kenny Bakers Dozen”. This was a superb jazz program broadcast live until about 10 pm. It was led by extrovert trumpet player Kenny Baker. His band was largely made up of big band musicians who played a semi arranged form of modern jazz. This program ran from 1952 until 1958. It was a great introduction to the modern jazz repertoire and it gave a good grounding in the form of music that ran in parallel with the form of traditional jazz that was just about to sweep the country, TRAD!

A great example of the music played can be found on a Vocalion CD CDNJT 5305 ”Kenny Baker Presents”, recordings made in thhe 1950's with musicians like trombonist George Chisholm, drummer Eric Delaney, and Saxophonist Harry Klein. It was a great grounding in “modern” jazz music, although I still also followed revivalist jazz. This did morph into Trad eventually and for a few years in the early 60's was "popular"! Go and listen to the difference between Humphrey Lyttelton’s band of the time and Chris Barbers recordings.

 

In the days of the 78rpm record, my listening had been mostly confined to the music of Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings, albeit now driven by electricity.         

These dribbled into the UK market as single 78’s. They were studio recordings made around 1925 to 1929.

They were recordings not made by a working band stepping of the road into a recording studio they happened to be passing, but by a band pianist Lil Harding put together purely for recording purposes. She was convinced that Louis (her husband at the time) was going places, and wanted to ensure she was part of the journey! 

Fortunately electric recording techniques were just coming in and the recordings became classics. Tunes like “Muskrat Ramble”, “Cornet Chop Suey”, “Big Butter and Egg Man” all became famous and were famously replicated by the trad jazz players of the 1950’s and 60's.

I’m sure many trad jazz players at the time didn’t understand those titles either, which meant that the audience couldn’t possibly have done! For example, the song “Big Butter and Egg Man” referred to a rich farmer at the time, and how beneficial it would be to be married to one! “I want a Big Butter and Egg Man”!

There is a great 4 cd release around of the complete Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings for you to investigate. Columbia Legacy Jazz C4K 63527

Just to wet your apetite we dont have either Louis Armstrong or Kenny Baker coming for our next gig at Hedsor, but we do have a trumpet player, Simon Gardner.