The piece is a good choice for a tribute to Hammond (who was Benny Goodman’s brother-in-law), as he played a major role in making the 1938 Carnegie Hall concert the first time black and white jazz musicians had ever shared a concert stage together. It was Hammond that introduced the pianist Teddy Wilson to Benny, and he also arranged for the star players of the Duke Ellington and Count Basie Orchestras to appear alongside the Goodman Orchestra. 

Not so long ago, ‘In The Mood’ was the choice if a movie soundtrack wanted to conjure up the excitement of the swing era, but it’s now been replaced by ‘Sing Sing Sing,’ not only because it perfectly captures that brief moment when jazz became the most popular music of its day, but because it also appeals to ears raised on rock music. The music doesn’t conjure up rows of middle-aged chaps straining the buttons of their tuxedos and peering down at their music stands in bi-focals in a way that, say, ‘In The Mood’ or ‘Jersey Bounce’ do. ‘Sing Sing Sing’ is all about sex, sweat and frenzy. If Uncle Monty attempted to dance to it at a wedding, the ambulance would probably have to be hailed well before the cowbell brings the band in for the final shout chorus.

‘Sing Sing Sing’ was written by Louis Prima, best known today for singing ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ in Disney’s The Jungle Book. The song was turned into an instrumental feature by Goodman a year later in 1937, taking up both sides of a 78-rpm record and featuring the first ever extended drum solo. Before then, a drummer got, at best, a short break – he’d be lucky if he got eight bars to show off his chops.

Gene Krupa was the right man to carry off this extended drum feature. A wildly extrovert player with movie-star good looks, he had a way of making moves sitting at his kit that were visually as exciting as the sounds he was making. Krupa needled Goodman because he commanded most of the attention on stage. Goodman, of course, played like a dream, but he looked like a college professor and besides the speedy movement of his fingers and the occasional glint of a spotlight on his specs, there was precious little visually to grab a young bobby-soxer. That’s where Krupa came in (and not long after the ’38 Carnegie Hall gig, that’s why Krupa went out).

So, here’s a quick tour through YouTube to pick out a few of the many times ‘Sing Sing Sing’ has featured in the movies. Let’s start with Benny’s band in 1938 in Hollywood Hotel, taking the tune for a short spin for just over a minute.

Here it is in the 1993 movie Swing Kids, a movie about teenagers in Nazi Germany secretly meeting up to dance to it. How the hell those jungle drums didn’t wake up the snoozing fräuleins next door who would have shopped them to the Gestapo, goodness knows. However, a salutary reminder that shortly after it was recorded, you could have been executed for listening to it. 

Woody Allen has the record for using it the most in his films, three times now: Manhattan Murder Mystery; New York Stories; and here in Deconstructing Harry, Sing Sing Sing goes to hell. 

By now those damn drums are probably driving you to distraction, so let’s quit whilst there’s still a chance you might want to come and see it live as it would have sounded in 1938, on 19 January, 3pm at Cadogan Hall SW1 – see you there. 

The show features Pete Long in the role of Benny Goodman; pianist Colin Good as Teddy Wilson and Jess Stacy, Anthony Kerr as Lionel Hampton, and Richard Pite as Gene Krupa. Pete Long’s 13 piece band The Goodmen includes Ryan Quigley, James Davison and Chris Snead on trumpets; Andy Flaxman and Ian Bateman on trombones; saxophonists Karen Sharp, Dean Masser, Alyson Cawley and Bob McKay; plus Martin Wheatley on guitar and Louise Cookman on vocals.

Richard Pite is Director of the Jazz Repertory Company.

The post The Benny Goodman Orchestra’s Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert first appeared on UK Jazz News.

UK Jazz News: The Tubby Hayes music in the show has never been performed before. Can you give us the story about how this music came about, and what happened to it?

Simon Spillett: In the very early 1960s, as Tubby was striking out on his own after a couple of successful years co-leading the Jazz Couriers with Ronnie Scott, he and his then manager Pete King (Ronnie’s business partner) made a plan to tick [off] as many career goals as possible. Out of this came Tubby’s debut in the USA, his own TV series, a major record contract and some movie work. 

When King discovered the BBC was planning to extend the hours of its ‘Light Programme’ radio broadcasting in 1963 and was looking for music that would bridge the gap between pop and jazz, he suggested Tubby as a likely candidate. Although he’d never previously written for such an opulent instrumentation – sixteen strings plus harp and his own quintet and vocals – Tubby took to the challenge with characteristic gusto and in May 1963 financed a ‘trial’ recording of the pieces he’d arranged: recent show tunes, some classic Great American Songbook ballads, even an upscaled version of his latest 45rpm ‘single’ of ‘Sally’.

UKJN: It’s an intriguing back story. What happened next?

SS: The BBC turned him down flat, Tubby believing they couldn’t get past the ‘way-out jazz’ tag attached to his name. The trial tape was forgotten, the arrangements shelved and Tubby simply got on with his career. However, when I was writing my biography of Tubby (‘The Long Shadow of The Little Giant’, Equinox 2015) I was able to hear a cassette of the recordings, which Tubby had loaded to others in the business. The original arrangements are ‘missing in action’ so it’s Ian Bateman‘s impeccable transcriptions that people will hear at Cadogan Hall. He’s done the most incredible job and this concert simply wouldn’t have been possible without his talent, patience and dedication to detail.

UKJN: Were the recordings the only time Tubby performed with strings?

SS: No, he’d already appeared on a Ted Heath big band and strings session for Decca in 1962, although he and Heath had a misunderstanding soon after the session was recorded – Tubby was late arriving at the recording – and there is no credit given to him on the album sleeve, meaning it’s a bit of a well-kept secret. Later on, he used strings on some tracks of his final album ‘The Orchestra’ (1969), very much in the vein of Stan Getz, then the contemporaneous albums in that instrumentation featuring Stan Getz.   He even added strings to one concert performance of his classic self-penned saxophone concerto ‘100% Proof’ in 1967.

UKJN: Vocalist Vimala Rowe is performing as Joy Marshall, who was featured on some of the session.  Tell us something about her?

SS: Joy was a fabulous American singer who arrived in the UK from San Francisco in 1962 and quickly established herself as a popular jazz/cabaret act, performing with the Tony Kinsey Quintet, the Gordon Beck trio and Tubby Hayes, with whom she had a tempestuous romantic relationship. Tubby’s composition ‘A Dedication To Joy’ commemorates their union. Although she publicly denied being a pure ‘jazz’ singer, Joy’s style was very much based on that of Carmen McRae and by the time of her tragic death, aged just 32 in 1968, she was singing everything from Broadway ballads to Bacharach. Alas, Joy didn’t record much (her only LP ‘How About These?’ is mooted to be reissued soon). She’s certainly due a reappraisal.

UKJN: Do you think the BBC turning down Tubby’s proposal in 1963 suggests that getting jazz into the mainstream of entertainment has always been very tough?  Is the assumption that jazz had a much higher profile 60 years ago wrong?

SS: I think Tubby faced exactly the same challenges that many established jazz performers face now, chief amongst them the widely held prejudiced belief that jazz cannot be appreciated by a wider, non-specialist audience. He was as popular as a modern jazzman could be in the UK in the pre-Beatles era, and made many inroads into mainstream media, but nevertheless barriers did exist. 

There’s irony here too: if you were to put the orchestral accompaniment Tubby devised for his Quintet on these string charts behind, say, Ella Fitzgerald they’d be regarded as classics and probably wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if played as background music in your local branch of a well-known coffee chain. But at the time, the Beeb couldn’t see the versatility of Tubby’s talent. He was seen as ‘that wild jazz guy’.

UKJN: Was it the music of Tubby Hayes that made you take up the saxophone?

SS: No, although he was one of the first jazz saxophonists I heard on record. I was originally a trombonist – as was my Dad – but the saxophone took over around age 17. I liked Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond, Getz, Rollins, Coltrane, the usual influences. Eventually it all led to Tubby.

UKJN: As a tenor saxophonist playing this music in public for the very first time, how do you feel about the concert?

SS: Well, Tubby’s are very big shoes to fill and as I’ve said often before, I’m not him: I don’t have what he had. He was unique and incredible. All I can do is help honour his legacy and performing his music to those who haven’t heard it before, whether it’s with my quartet, big band or with strings, is a huge honour and privilege. It’s exciting too, to be able to give this music the exposure it always deserved. I’m just pointing the finger towards his talent and saying check it out.

UKJN: Tubby’s long-time friend and collaborator Ronnie Scott is also represented on the concert. Tell us a bit about that.

SS: In 1964 Ronnie recorded half of an album with strings (The Night Is Scott…) very much inspired by Stan Getz’ ballad playing, and it seemed highly appropriate that he be represented too. Again, Ian Bateman has lovingly transcribed the original arrangements (by Richard Rodney Bennett), and in this case expanded them to feature a full string section rather than the slightly smaller unit on the original versions. Ronnie has always been a hero of mine and this is music which, like the Tubby Hayes charts, has never ever been played live before. And to add some more connections, Pete Long and I are featuring a couple of numbers from the repertoire of The Jazz Couriers, Ronnie and Tubby’s famed two tenor sax band.

UKJN: You have become something of an archivist for all things Tubby. Are recordings or ephemera still turning up?

SS: Yes, amazingly!  Although he was born nearly ninety years ago and has been dead for over fifty years, things are still coming to light. In the past few months, the soundtrack to one of his ‘lost’ TV shows has been rediscovered, and some previously unknown radio recordings from 1966 have also come to light. It’s very much like the legacy of Coltrane or Louis Armstrong: something we haven’t heard before is always lurking out there, waiting to be found.

(*) Richard Pite is Director of  the Jazz Repertory Company.

The concert will feature the Pete Long Orchestra with:
Simon Spillett; tenor saxophone
Alan Bateman; clarinet
Nick Dawson; piano
Anthony Kerr; Vibraphone
Vimala Rowe; vocals

The post The Music of Tubby Hayes, Ronnie Scott, Acker Bilk and George Shearing with strings, at Cadogan Hall first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Richard Pite writes: On Sunday 29^th September The Jazz Repertory Company’s fine array of classic jazz specialists and the superb singer Vimala Rowe will be recreating all the musical excitement of a spectacular night out in New York in the 1930s.

Our presenter Kerry Shale presents a guided tour of the city’s nightclubs, recording studios and radio stations when jazz and swing were at their peak of popularity.

Our first stop is 52nd Street and the Onyx Club where John Kirby’s Onyx Club Boys are resident. This hot little band has just struck gold with their latest hit Rehearsin’ For A Nervous Breakdown.

From here it’s a short cab ride to the CBS radio studios to catch Artie Shaw’s Gramercy Five broadcasting hits such as Special Delivery Stomp on the Radio Hall of Fame. Artie’s hot clarinet is backed by the swinging harpsichord of Johnny Guarnieri and Al Hendrickson’s electric guitar.

One of Manhattan’s most renowned nighteries is Café Society in Greenwich Village. Here we’ll find the magnificent Billie Holiday with Teddy Wilson and his orchestra and Lester Young guesting on tenor sax.

Louis Armstrong, the biggest jazz star of the era is in the studios of WNEW Radio in mid-town recording good ol’ good ones like Tiger Rag and I Got Rhythm for the very popular Make-Believe Ballroom show. Louis is appearing with Jack Teagarden, Fats Waller, Bud Freeman and a cooking rhythm section with Cliff Leeman on drums.

No visit to the Jazz hot spots of New York would be complete without a cocktail or two at the Cotton Club where Duke Ellington brought his jungle rhythms to Harlem.

For something completely different we head to the RCA Victor Studios in the Rockefeller Centre where the amiably eccentric Raymond Scott and his Quintette are laying down some future million sellers like The Penguin and Powerhouse. You might not know his name but you’ll have heard his music on countless Warner Brothers cartoons as he sold all his music to them much to the benefit of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

We wind up the evening in West 44th Street at the swank Yacht Club with the “Cheerful Little Earful” Fats Waller entertaining the elite whilst they eat.

We hope you can join us on our journey back nearly ninety years to a time when some of the greatest names in jazz history were available for less than a buck (or for free if you stayed at home and listened on the radio). For one night the Jazz Repertory Company will be recreating a moment when jazz was the soundtrack to the most exciting city in the world.

PERFORMERS

Kerry Shale presenter
Vimala Rowe vocals
Enrico Tomasso trumpet/vocals
Ian Bateman trombone
Michael McQuaid saxophones/clarinet
Matthias Seuffert saxophones/clarinet
Nick Dawson piano/vocals
Martin Litton piano
Thomas “Spats” Langham guitar
David Chamberlain double bass/guitar
Richard Pite drums

(*) Richard Pite is Director of the Jazz Repertory Company. PP features are part of marketing packages.

The post The Jazz Repertory Company presents ‘Jazz in New York: The 1930s’. Cadogan Hall, 29 Sept. first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Sixty years ago, Britain was Trad mad with Acker Bilk’s Stranger on the Shore topping the charts in both the UK and the USA and Kenny Ball’s Midnight in Moscow reaching number 2 in both countries. The 1962 movie “It’s Trad Dad” capitalized on this popularity and we’ve borrowed its title for our concert of jazz with a very British flavour.

Trad coincided with the invention of the teenager in the 1950s and a time when American jazz musicians were not allowed to perform in England. To satisfy demand the British musicians did a DIY job on the music and came up with their own unique approach and the newly minted teenager was smitten. That unique approach was largely down to the weather. Jazz musicians in New Orleans played with a lazy and laconic lilt because it was so hot and humid – over here the bands played with a frantic energy, largely to keep warm in freezing dance halls, pubs and bandstands.

Besides Ball and Bilk there was Chris Barber, Terry Lightfoot, Alex Welsh, Monty Sunshine, Humphrey Lyttleton and the most eccentrically British of the lot – The Temperance Seven.

The Trad hits included I Love You Samantha, March of the Siamese Children (a UK number 1 for Kenny Ball), Bad Penny Blues, In a Persian Market, Tavern in the Town and Petite Fleur. These and many more are performed by our eight-piece band led by trombonist Ian Bateman – all the musicians have worked as sidemen with the greatest Trad bands – Ian has been a member of the bands of Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball, Terry Lightfoot and Humphrey Lyttelton and trumpeter Ben Cummings is a dead ringer for the young Kenny Ball (in whose band Ben played).

By 1963 the Trad boom was over and replaced by Beatlemania and the Beat Merchants. The banjo was chucked in the dustbin and the electric guitar got plugged in and turned up and up. The teens had moved on and mum and dad were welcome to their Trad.

But as the cycles of fashion and fluctuating tastes move through time, a resurgence in appreciation for these styles and sounds has emerged in recent years, with a new crop of young musicians coming through who are performing for young audiences who, like their grandparents sixty years ago, are attracted to a music which is exciting, fun and great to dance to.

This is jazz that conjures up Morris Minors, rain-soaked holiday camps and duffel coats rather than Cadillacs, skyscrapers and Brooks Brothers. It’s a black and white snap of a different Britain on the brink of the 60s revolution and after all these years it’s a music worth another listen – it charms and delights and is worthy of rediscovery.

Personnel:

Ian Bateman: trombone (Terry Lightfoot, Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball, Humphrey Lyttelton)

Ben Cummings: trumpet/vocals (Kenny Ball)

Trevor Whiting: clarinet/saxes (Chris Barber)

Craig Milverton: piano (Terry Lightfoot, George Melly)

Tom Clarke Hill: bass (Kenny Ball)

Nick Millward; drums (Kenny Ball, Terry Lightfoot)

Sean Moyses banjo/guitar (Rod Mason, Pasadena Roof Orchestra, Bob Kerr’s Whoopee Band)

The post The Jazz Repertory Company Presents – ‘It’s Trad Dad’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The Spice (6 Moor Street and right next to The Palace Theatre) has hosted lunchtime sessions (12:30-2:30pm) for seventeen years but they’ve been much missed these last 18 months. 

We do hope to welcome back many of the regular Monday crowd and if you haven’t been before come and give it a try – there is good grub, excellent real ale and a fine line-up of jazz talent. 

We begin with the great trumpeter/singer/entertainer Enrico Tomasso backed by Spice regular Jack Honeyborne and his trio. 

It’s an intimate room with great acoustics and a lovely atmosphere and I look forward to welcoming you all this coming Monday.

OCTOBER DATES: COMPLETE LISTING

Monday 4 October Enrico Tomasso and Jack Honeybourne

Monday 11 October: Alan Barnes

Monday 18 October: Vimala Rowe with the Gunther Kuermeyer Trio

Monday 25 October: Pete Long with the Nick Dawson Trio.  

Sessions start at 12:30pm

The post Monday Lunchtime Gigs Resume at the Spice of Life, Soho first appeared on UK Jazz News.

93 years ago, the British-born American writer Alistair Cooke was a Cambridge undergraduate and enthusiastic jazz fan.  At home during the summer vacation, he took delivery of a package from the USA containing Louis Armstrong’s latest release – the stately King Oliver composition West End Blues.  He put the record on the Victrola and after a minute or so became aware of a strange noise nearby.  He went next door to find his mother in great emotional distress and on asking her what was the matter discovered that the noise he had inflicted on her had been so terrifying she had broken down sobbing.

The music of a hundred years ago often sounds quaint and corny to modern ears but we forget that for many at the time, jazz was the soundtrack of societal breakdown, its jungle rhythms and wild dancing an affront to civilisation (in 1928 Duke Ellington’s The Mooche was blamed for the rise in sex crimes in New York City).

Enrico Tomasso, who takes the role of Louis Armstrong in the Jazz Repertory Company’s show The Roaring 20s on September 25^th, was involved in the recording of the soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby back in 2013 and told me that the director wanted to capture the essence of what had so affected Cooke’s mother. He did this by letting his executive producer Jay-Z contemporise the music of the era. As Luhrmann said: “In our age the energy of jazz is caught in the energy of hip hop.”

Whilst we hope our musicians recreating the Roaring Twenties don’t cause mass sobbing to break out, they will be aiming to conjure up the frisson of danger and decadence that the audiences back then would have relished and also been repelled by.

Like all popular music revolutions, the jazz of the 20s was accepted by the young and abhorred by many of their elders and betters.  In 1931 Bix Beiderbecke died just one year too late to join the legendary 27 Club (Brian Jones, Amy Winehouse, Janice Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain) but his life and early exit was a template for all the young, romantic and tragic musical comets who came much later.  He was revered by American college kids, but his parents never opened the packages he sent home which contained his latest recordings (successfully avoiding the horrors suffered by Mrs Cooke).

The Creole pianist Jelly Roll Morton was a remarkable musician and remarkable blabbermouth too, claiming to be the inventor of jazz.  He honed his craft in the 1900s working in the whorehouses of New Orleans and by the time he made his classic recordings with the Red Hot Peppers in 1926 he was a jazz veteran, revered and reviled equally by his contemporaries.  Just the former is the case with our pianist Martin Litton, the UK’s finest exponent of the Jelly Roll style, who has developed his own style without ever taking a gig in the notorious red-light district of his home town of Hay-on-Wye.

Duke Ellington, in contrast to Mr Jelly Roll, was bought up in a far tonier environment – his father being a butler at the White House.  His elegant manners and demeanour were the reasons for his soubriquet and his wonderful band of the late 20s was resident at the uptown Cotton Club in New York City where the entertainers were all black, the audiences all white and the owners all gangsters.  In such a situation elegant manners and demeanour no doubt came in very handy.

The fifth of the five great names of 20s music celebrated in the concert is the Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith.  It’s not easy finding someone who can emulate the power and majesty of this extraordinary singer but we are very fortunate to have the superb Vimala Rowe taking on the role. Alongside her commanding voice she has a natural gift for theatrical delivery. A few years back I performed in the band accompanying the astonishing Cécile McLorin Salvant and Vimala shares the same musicality and charisma.

The Roaring 20s will feature a dozen of the UK’s premier specialists in Vintage Jazz including reed players Michael McQuaid, David Horniblow and Mark Crooks, the ebullient 20s percussion stylist Nick Ball, vocalist/guitarist/banjo maestro Thomas “Spats” Langham, Chris Barber trumpeter Pete Rudeforth and trombonist Alistair Allan.  The show will be presented by actor Kerry Shale, an expert on the music of the era.

The music for The Roaring 20s was programmed by the late Keith Nichols, the show’s original musical director back in 2020.  Because of Covid this was not to be but we are grateful to be using the music from his large archive. The 25^th September performance will be a tribute to him and his legacy as a performer, teacher and scholar. There will be guest appearances from musicians who had a long association with Keith including trumpeter Guy Barker and singer Janice Day.

The Roaring 20s is at Cadogan Hall SW1 (one minute from Sloane Square tube) at 7:30pm on Saturday 25 September 2021.

The post The Roaring 20s first appeared on UK Jazz News.