Commemorating Louis & The Duke's Anniversary With A Little Narcissism...

So here at Pitey Towers we’re rather chuffed and rather miffed simultaneously – chuffed that our November 14^th Cadogan Hall show Goodman and Miller at Carnegie Hall has sold out (hurrah – trebles all round!) and rather miffed that our fabulous November 18^th concert  “The Newport Jazz Festival – The 50’s” has sold around nine tickets and so at this rate we’ll be barricading the door to keep the bailiffs out.  Now, this won’t do at all so we have sprung into action and Mrs P  is currently parading up and down the Kings Road with her sandwich board on whilst I am offloading a lorry full of fake Swiss watches down the local and giving away free tickets with each purchase.

Now, just to give you an idea of what you may be missing – Arkwright, our wrinkled old retainer, has been down into the Jazz Rep archives, blown the dust off the file and served up on a silver tray with a hock and seltzer a review of Louis and Duke 1933 at last year’s London Jazz Festival.  By crikey that was a cracking night.

(Tickets available here for the 18th November)

Review By Peter Vacher - Louis and the Duke

Richard Pite’s Jazz Repertory Company has cornered the market for large-scale celebratory excursions into past jazz history. Remember their successful replication of Benny Goodman’s famous 1938 Carnegie Hall concert? This time round, it was two fanfares in one, the first half reprising Louis Armstrong’s ground-breaking appearance [with his ‘New Rhythm Band’] at the London Palladium in July 1932, this followed eleven months later by Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra, also making their European début at the same venue. Oddly perhaps, a certain Max Miller, by 1933 known as the ‘Cheeky Chappie’, was on both bills.

And yes, it was true that both these visiting jazz luminaries were cast as variety artists, appearing with a mixed bag of comics, jugglers and the like, this the result of musician union and Ministry of Labour stipulations then current. All of which was explained in Russell Davies’s sure-footed introductory narrative before the music got underway. That this was in the hands of Keith Nichols ensured authenticity but history also generated the idea that the concert proceedings should recall some of these long-gone variety artists. Thus we had a juggler, a Max Miller clone, a shake dancer, a drum routine, a ukulele act and most amusing of all, the sight of Richard Pite’s burly figure encoiled in a sousaphone, playing the Hungarian Dance no 5 alternately on this mammoth brass instrument and on a tiny piccolo fished out from a pocket.

The music accomplished much, most notably via Enrico Tomasso’s brilliant recreations of the Louis repertoire and Nichols’ avuncular and witty handling of the second-half as his Blue Devils dealt lovingly with the 1933 Ellington material highlighting Tomasso again and fellow-trumpeters George Hogg and Peter Horsfall, all impressively spirited. Just to hear them play ‘The New Black and Tan Fantasy’ was a joy.