"Bristling, hard-swinging, surging, big-toned, competitive, the dictionary can hardly do it justice...What a joy."*

* Quote from Peter Vacher

REVIEW: A Tribute to ‘Jazz at the Philharmonic’ at Cadogan Hall

Callum Au (trombone) at Cadogan Hall, September 2014
Photo credit: Wayne McIntyre

A Tribute to ‘Jazz at the Philharmonic’ by Jazz Repertory Company.
(Cadogan Hall, 14th September 2014. Review by Peter Vacher)

How’s this for a plan? The Jazz Repertory Company’s Richard Pite’s aim was to recreate Jazz At The Philharmonic in facsimile form, using the best local talent, and thereby to pay due homage to these ground-breaking shows and incidentally, their instigator, Norman Granz. Those of us old enough to remember a time when such all-star US troupes came into town, sweeping all before them, Oscar and Ella at the forefront, might have given Pite’s dream short shrift but he has form when it comes to this kind of adventure. More to the point he has a retinue of able players and vocalists who can, momentarily, take you back to a time when a package show like JATP could offer you all that was best yet sometimes vainglorious about this music.

The avuncular Pite, split in two as part-time front-man and drummer, had badged the show as a 70thanniversary celebration and programmed it to follow JATP’s time-honoured routine. Thus pianist Nick Dawson, with bassist Joe Pettit and guitaristNigel Price, opened as representing the Oscar Peterson Trio and my, what a fist they made of it. Dawson played like a man possessed, his keyboard dash and flow of ideas on Honeysuckle Rose like OP on fast-forward. The trio stayed on [with drummer Elliot Henshaw added] for Nicola Emmanuelle’s all-too short Ella-inspired set, this singer’s vibrato wider than Ella’s, her tonal warmth a delight and swing savvy uppermost on It’s Alright With Me. And with me, too.

Tenorist Pete Long, with Pite on drums, and Dawson rallying round, then offered their version of the Gene Krupa Trio, all spirited fun although Long’s emulation of Charlie Ventura was too near parody for my taste. Georgina Jackson was then given the perhaps unenviable task of evoking Billie Holiday in a three-song mini-set, with an augmented band. Nicely done, even if her US-accent distracted me for a minute, but again her innate jazz feeling and sheer vocal élan won the day. As Red Allen used to say, ‘Nice’. And then came the first half closer – The Three Tenors, that’s Long, playing himself this time, Ray Gelato and Dean Masser, all three ‘Brylcreamed and smartly-suited’, as Pite put it, again with the masterly Dawson, Price, whose every solo was a startler, Petit and drumming dynamo Henshaw. Bristling, hard-swinging, surging, big-toned, competitive, the dictionary can hardly do it justice, what with Henshaw’s tireless drive and the rhythm section’s vital swing. Each man on song, trading choruses, eights, fours, riffs, you name it. What a joy.

The second half was made over to the ‘Jam Session’, with the Drum Battle between Pite and Henshaw for starters, the two men as one, the latter just edging it for me, trombonist Callum Au, trumpeters George Hogg and Tommy Walsh added to the ensemble. There followed the Ballad Medley, each player heard in turn, major-domo Long on clarinet, all of this delirium culminating in the Trumpet Battle on Sweet Georgia Brown. Here Hogg’s classy structures emerged a tad ahead of Walsh’s high-altitude forays, both young men compellingly good, as were, well, every one of them. Pite’s beatific smile throughout said it all as did this audience’s cheery approval. Quite a celebration and quite a show. 

70th Anniversary Celebrations for Jazz At The Phil at Cadogan Hall

On Sunday 14^th September at 3.30 pm The JazzRepertory Company is presenting another afternoon concert in its series at London’s Cadogan Hall, situated in Sloane Terrace, just a minute’s walk from Sloane Square tube.  This year is the 70th anniversary of the firstever Jazz At The Philharmonic.  

In 1944 jazz impresario Norman Granz hired the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles and booked a dozen or so jazz luminaries  such as Nat “King” Cole, Les Paul, Illinois Jacquet and Buddy Rich.  The debut was a great success and for the next 40 years Granz took his entourage around the world whilst also selling millions of live and studio recordings featuring many of his star performers including LesterYoung, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, Gene Krupa, Ben Webster, Benny Carter, Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie. 

The Famous Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich Drum Battle

Around 18 months ago Pete Long and I, unbeknownst to each other, started up our own gigs based on the Jazz At The Philharmonic concept (his in an upstairs room of a Croydon boozer and mine at Boisdale Canary Wharf).   The concept’s quite simple – get a bunch of young turks, pitch the trumpet players against each other, likewise with the saxes, limit the number of choruses they can all take to two or three maximum and get them to generate as much excitement as they can.  We were both surprised by the fact that we’d been doing the same thing at opposite ends of London and amazed at the great reaction it got from the audiences.  So we teamed up to bring it to Cadogan Hall.

Jazz At The Philharmonic 1953

Granz booked tremendous virtuosos and showmen – JATP was no place for shrinking violets.  We’ve brought along some marvellous talents (young and not so young) to our Sunday afternoon tribute – including saxophonists Ray Gelato and Dean Masser, young trumpet demons Tommy Walsh and George Hogg, the great guitarist Nigel Price, piano maestro Nick Dawson and Buddy Rich disciple Elliot Henshaw on drums.

We’re following the JATP format of small bands in the first half and featuring singers Georgina Jackson and Nicola Emmanuelle in the respective roles of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.  

Nicola Emmanuelle with the Nick Dawson Trio

In the second half it’s the JATP inspired jam session and cutting contest.  Should be great fun – hope you can make it.  Click here for more details and here for tickets

The Cynic's ABC

Spending Sunday in the office not catching up with the backload of work.  Came across The Cynic’s ABC penned by Ron Rubin and the late, lamented Campbell Burnap.  Here’s a selection.

Banjo  - The mother in law of the jazz family.

Busy – Having a much better technique than oneself.

Commercial – making more money than we are.

Diatonic – What Fat’s Waller should have put in his gin.

Fats Waller - Ain't Misbehavin' - Stormy Weather (1943)

Jazz  - Originally a four letter word.  Still a four letter word.

Lively – Something you get asked to play just after you’ve played “Tiger Rag”.

Repercussions – What happens when you tell the drummer he’s racing.

Drummer de jour - Richard Pite

Residency – a bed-sitter where a musician waits for the phone to ring.

Zweiunddreissigstel – German for Demisemiquaver.  The shortest note with the longest name.

Louis Armstrong - 'Tiger Rag' (1932)

Bungling in front of Elvis

Most musicians like to forget their cock ups as soon as possible.  Oddly, about 10 years ago I asked Nils Solberg to capture a classic Pitey cock up in the style of H.M. Bateman.  

The gig was with Suspiciously Elvis and all went fantastically well until the last number when I got two bars out and stopped before the rest of the band.  A memorable finale and the picture lives at the top of the stairs at Pite Towers to remind me to bloody concentrate in future.

Nils Solberg after H.M. Bateman

The Mouthpiece Made of Carrot

It’s the moment all brass players dread.  You’re on the gig, you open your instrument case and there’s no mouthpiece.  When I was 13 I was playing tuba in a brass band which was playing at the Royal Albert Hall and my mouthpiece was no where to be seen.  My parents never let me live this down and whenever I do something for my old school music teacher she always introduces me to her pupils and audience as the kid who forgot his mouthpiece (the last gig I did for her was at Christmas and 43 years later out popped the story again!).

How to make a mouthpiece from a carrot...

Years later when I was a pro tubist I had a gig for British Rail to play for a launch of a new, exciting train (that never got built).  The band was hidden behind a screen and was supposed to burst forth and play “When The Saints Go Marching In” at the end of the speeches and a short film.  Once again – arghhh….. no mouthpiece.  I called home but had to whisper as the speeches were going on.  My wife thought it was an obscene telephone call and slammed the phone down.  By the third call I convinced her I had no time to be obscene – this was an emergency.  She despatched a taxi and the mouthpiece finally arrived seconds before the big fat finale.  So traumatised was I by this that I keep a mouthpiece on me all the time even though I only play the tuba ten times a year.

Louis Armstrong - When The Saints Go Marching In

So last week Enrico Tomasso opens his trombone case and bloody hell, there it isn’t……   Now this is the type of challenge Pete Long relishes – he’s the chap who’ll sort it out.  He asks me to go to the kitchen and fetch a carrot and a knife and moments later he’s whittling and presents Rico with an orange trombone mouthpiece.  It works!  And, furthermore, good though the band meal was, it was rather small so Rico was able to eat his mouthpiece after the show!  A win win situation.

How To Fashion A Mouthpiece From A Carrot

If you watch the video and hear Pete going on about B&F productions I should explain that “Bodge and F*** It” is the unofficial name self-bestowed on all Pite/ Long musical ventures.

Party Jazz on the Disney boat at Southampton a few years back.

Party Jazz on The Disney Boat

In order to cheer up the kiddies Brian Masters played his banjo dressed as the fuzz, Richard White on clarinet dressed as a Victorian undertaker, yours truly as a Victorian dodgy geezer.

Most of the ankle biters grabbed hold of their parents when they saw us dressed like this and our versions of I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts and My Old Man Said Follow The Van were, no doubt, equally terrifying.

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts (Merv Griffin)

Fortunately for them and us we only played a meet and greet session and then were turfed off before it set sail.  Strangely they never invited us back – zip a de bloomin’ do dah.

When did these OAPs get so damn funky?

I’m off on a cruise ship next week.   In return for wheelbarrows of food, huge galvanised buckets of booze and trips to exotic places conducted at a pace that would suit a reasonably fit 80 year old (or clapped out 57 year old – i.e. me) I have to play my drums for a couple of hours for the terpsichorean pleasure of the passengers.

Richard Pite on drums and sousaphone

In a bizarre moment of eccentric design the club in which the band performs has given pride of place to the TV and shoved the band in the corner in front of the broom cupboard (at one point the designer had planned to put the loos behind the band area until it was pointed out that this may not be the best location).   

In another brilliant move they placed the band directly above the most expensive cabins and didn’t sound proof the floor so one bar of Dancing Queen and you wake ‘em all up.  I suggested a simple solution to this – which was give the de-luxe cabins to the band so they’re empty when we’re playing.  Oddly this brilliant idea was turned down.

Dancing Queen by Abba

Now once upon a time if you had a room full of OAPs you’d give them a waltz, a cha cha, a foxtrot, a dashing white sergeant and then start all over again and all was simple.  Then it all changed.  Those 70 year olds dozing off whilst you play Moon River were of course 20 year olds in mini skirts, skintight hipsters, Biba dresses and John Stephen of Carnaby Street striped suits and kinky boots.  This is alarming as this wasn’t supposed to happen to that generation and quite honestly I don’t recognise any of that swinging 60’s crowd amongst the comatose over 70’s.

Moon River, Breakfast at Tiffanys, Audrey Hepburn

But then you get fed up with the empty dance floor, crack into I can’t Get No Satisfaction and bloody hell, they’re all over the place.  Then it’s the funky chicken, the mashed potato, the hucklebuck, the hippy hippy shake.  And then the ship’s doctor is called, the dance floor closed with incident tape and the band can finally go to bed.  When did these OAPs get so damned funky?