Get Happy
Broadway
I Want Every Bit Of It #1
Swingin’ The Blues
Some Of These Days
Makin’ Whoopee
I Can’t Face The Music
Northwest Passage
Joshua
Oh Baby
Foolin’ Myself
Untitled Fast Blues
Ma He’s Making Eyes At Me
Aint Misbehavin’
Shine
I’m Confessin’
All Of Me
Blues
I’m Forever Blowin’ Bubbles
Who’s Sorry Now
I Want Every Bit Of It #2
Archie Semple (clt) with Colin Smith (tpt),
Roy Crimmins (tbn), Fred Hunt (pno), Bill
Reid (bass), Johnny Richardson (dms) plus
Nat Gonella (tpt and vcl), Beryl Bryden (voc)
and Chris Staunton (bass)
Recorded London c.1956 and 1958
The essence of this Lake
disc is a session for Doug Dobell’s 77 label
made in 1958. It was originally called Jazz
at the Cottage – a club – and also featured
two guests, Nat Gonella and Beryl Bryden.
By a piece of intensive investigative research
(reading a book) I’ve found that Bryden was
the teenage secretary of Gonella’s pre-War
Georgians fan club. And reading the Gonella
Discography leads me to note that two tracks
originally recorded – the ubiquitous Gonella
hit Georgia on My Mind and Georgia
- are both omitted from this re-release. There
are also some c.1956 tracks with a Semple-Crimmins
front-line and with Johnny Staunton stepping
in on bass.
The band utilised was that
of Alex Welsh though minus the leader whose
place was taken by Terry Lightfoot’s trumpeter,
Colin Smith. Lake has done decidedly well
by the Welsh band in its extensive series
of reissues so this gives us a chance to hear
Semple, Crimmins, Hunt, Reid and Richardson
operating under a somewhat different flag.
They build up a fine Chicagoan head of steam
in Get Happy and also pursue some small
band Basie influences to fine effect; versatile
and well rehearsed. Fred Hunt, one of the
band’s – indeed one of the country’s - most
articulate and significant players reveals
just those qualities in his comping and filigree
fill-ins in Makin’ Whoopee. However
bad the piano, and the Cottage’s wasn’t that
good, Hunt rides the problems with total sang-froid.
In this song, one that might have produced
a tired run-through, we also find Roy Crimmins
mining the Vic Dickenson songbook with witty
awareness.
The album’s figurehead is
actually Archie Semple whose devotion to Pee
Wee Russell never precluded either freedom
or an individual voice. His adulation is at
its height in Oh Baby but he plays
throughout with fine tone and imagination;
his very early death was a great loss to the
scene. The third of the front line is the
young Colin Smith whose hustling lead on Untitled
Fast Blues serves notice of the great
talent that was to emerge – the Condon style
trades at the end are very Welsh.
The guest stars add piquancy
to the performances. Gonella was going through
a rough time in the later 1950s, his best
days long behind him and the surprising Dutch
Hit Parade times yet to arrive. He takes an
unpromising vehicle such as Ma He’s Making
Eyes At Me and grafts his bugle-toned
trumpet lead to it with great resilience.
His Louis-derived scat vocals enliven things
as well – as does the rather unusual straight
ahead blues he plays on Blues though
Crimmins is by a long shot his master here.
Beryl Bryden essays her Bessie Smith inspired
double entendres in accustomed fashion; she
always sounded rather too spick and span to
be a down home momma but she always gave the
best of value.
A couple of the tracks
have suffered some brief but ineradicable
damage; it’s over very quickly. As if in compensation
there’s a second take of Bryden’s I Want
Every Bit Of It. Another excellent Lake
release restores the core of the Welsh band
to the catalogue and allows us in particular
to hear Gonella – one of the earliest and
best of the British jazz proselytisers.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
LAKE LACD240 [62:42]
