"Bracing...Fevered...Revolutionary...4 Stars" - The Times (Clive Davis)

The King of Jazz: Paul Whiteman 
Clive Davis in The Times - Rated 4 stars

Even his surname — somehow redolent of an era when African-Americans were airbrushed out of history — has a faintly problematic aura nowadays. Although Paul Whiteman championed the careers of Bix Beiderbecke and others besides, the fact that the genial Oliver Hardy lookalike was dubbed the “King Of Jazz” has irked many a jazz aficionado down the years.

So it has become almost second nature to think of the bandleader — if anyone outside a small circle of devotees still thinks of him at all — as a purveyor of saccharine; the André Rieu of his day, if you like. Yet as this Jazz Repertory Company tribute for the London Jazz Festival made plain, Whiteman’s achievements as a pioneer of so-called symphonic jazz are still worth celebrating.

Rhapsody in Blue — commissioned by Whiteman for his Experiment in Modern Music concert of 1924 — was inevitably the centrepiece at Cadogan Hall. We have grown so used to sleek orchestral performances of Gershwin’s work that it is always bracing to hear a version that approximates to Ferde Grofé’s original orchestration.

With Pete Long conducting and Nick Dawson at the piano, the piece had a more fevered, staccato ambience. The compact string section had to fight to make itself heard above the horns, yet that striving for balance gave us more of a hint of how revolutionary the work must have sounded at the time.

If the remainder of the programme, deftly steered by the musical director Keith Nichols and the narrator Alyn Shipton, was bound to seem slightly anticlimactic, there were still gems scattered around. Guy Barker, playing a period cornet, brought his usual authority to the Beiderbecke segment, while the elegant Richard White, taking the part of Frankie Trumbauer, put the quaint, faintly asthmatic C melody saxophone back in the spotlight.

We had a glimpse of early Bing Crosby courtesy of Thomas “Spats” Langham, and Limehouse Blues barked ferociously. “It’s a swine to play,” Nichols declared. Whiteman’s music could swing after all.

PHOTOS BY: John Watson/jazzcamera.co.uk

Concerts by Richard Pite's Jazz Repertory Company: