Take A Note From The South
Open House
Apples Be Ripe
Midnight Creep
Small Hour Fantasy
Friendless Blues
Original Jelly Roll Blues (version 1)
Fat Tuesday
Mam’selle Josephine (version 1)
Original Jelly Roll Blues (version 2)
King Porter Stomp
London Blues
Mike’s Tangana
Muskrat Ramble Mam’selle Josephine (version 2)
Hoppin’ Mad
Don’t Monkey With It
Forgotten Woman’s Blues
Sweet Muscatel
Get It
Stay With It
Ugly Duckling
Hook, Line & Sinker
Backroom Joys
Hullo Jim Eadie
Turn Up A Card.
The Bell-Lyttelton Jazz Nine; The Bell-Lyttelton Jazz
Twelve; The Bell-Lyttelton Jazz Ten; The Grant-Lyttelton Paseo Jazz
Band; The Lyttelton Paseo Jazz Band; Humphrey Lyttelton & His Band
with Ade Monsbourgh; Lazy Ade’s Late Hour Boys with Humphrey Lyttelton;
Lazy Ade’s Late Hour Boys
Lyttelton
admirers will rejoice to see this collection. It consists of his early
1950s recordings with a variety of bands. The title of the disc is derived
from a chapter in his autobiography and adeptly sums up what’s on offer.
We
happen to open with one of the best. Take A Note From The South
was a Graeme Bell tune and featured a meeting of Lytteltonians and Bellites
in Anglo-Australian alliance. It’s a great song with a relaxed yet driving
beat, fine ensemble work and first class solos all round. Bell’s instrumental
voicings in Apples Be Ripe – in terms of the title presumably
a close relation of that more recent Kenny Davern-Bob Wilber paean to
alcohol, The Grapes Are Ready – are masterly. The Ellingtonian
clarinet trio is evoked with precision, with Humph playing clarinet,
as he was wont to do from time to time. The ‘baroque’ front line ensemble
figures prefigure what Humph was to do with his much later bands and
the Cubano/Mexican trumpet adds to the colour, along with the down home
Chicago drive. It’s a packed tune, filled with the seedbed of much experimentation
to come. One wonders yet again what would have happened had, say, Ade
Monsbourgh joined Humph’s band as he was invited to do.
The
tracks contain plenty of colours; a celeste - jazzers never call it
a celesta - and two trumpet front line on Midnight Creep – the
other player was Johnny Sangster. Wally Fawkes blows a passionate Bechet
tribute in Small Hour Fantasy whilst Teddy Wilson has inspired
Mike Mckenzie when he and a powerful West Indian contingent join Humph
for a famous series of sides. The Grant-Lyttelton Paseo Jazz Band is
best heard in small doses I always feel. In bulk the sides can pall
but heard in isolation they show just how discriminating Humph was,
how alive to other rhythms, other sounds. There are two different versions
of a couple of the songs – and I always feel that fine though these
sides are, a little of Leslie Weeks’s bongos go a long way. It’s the
glorious Benny Carter inspired Bertie King who steals the honours, especially
on Mike’s Tangana.
When
Humph and Lazy Ade recorded again South Side Chicago was explored –
plenty of Jimmy Blythe’s ghost haunts these tracks with Ade’s hoarse
hectoring alto to the fore. Don’t Monkey With It is simply one
of my favourite tracks. Again we hear rare things; Fawkes on bass clarinet
on Sweet Muscatel and the brass bass of Lou Silbereisen on Turn
Up A Card, as well as the Doc Poston-Jimmy Noone evocation on Hullo
Jim Eadie – these two last tracks by the way are bonus tracks by
Lazy Ade’s Late Hour Boys.
Fantastic
stuff here from some great bands. The sides have been expertly transferred
and annotated. If you buy one Humph disc this year to remember him by,
make sure it’s this one.
Jonathan
Woolf
CD Reviews
LAKE
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