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THE HAPPY PALS NEW ORLEANS PARTY ORCHESTRA Miss Noonie New Orleans North CD-015

1. Over in the Gloryland

2. Far Away Blues

3. Apple Blossom Time

4. On the Road to Home Sweet Home

5. Blue Hawaii

6. I Couldn’t Keep It to Myself

7. Når Lygterne Tændes [aka Red Sails in the Sunset]

8. Beneath Hawaiian Skies

9. The Old Rugged Cross

10. One Sweet Letter from You

11. Milk Cow Blues

12. Kid Thomas Boogie Woogie

Patrick Tevlin – Trumpet, vocal (tracks 1, 4, 6, 11)

Toby Hughes – Sax, vocal (track 5)

Kid Kotowich – Trombone

Roberta Tevlin – Piano

Alex Ralph – Banjo

Chuck Clarke – Drums, vocal (Track 10)

Featured Guests:

Kjeld Brandt – Clarinet

Karl Kronqvist – Bass, vocal (tracks 3, 7)

Special Added Guests:

Janet Shaw – Clarinet (track 4)

Brian Towers – Trombone (track 4)

Joe van Rossen – Trumpet (track 1)

Recorded live a Grossman’s Tavern, Toronto, Canada, Feb. 4-5, 2011.

From the time leader and trumpeter Cliff “Kid” Bastien died and Patrick Tevlin took over the Happy Pals band, each year a celebration—the “Kid Bastien Forever Jazz Party”—to keep alive the memory of Bastien has been held at the band’s stomping ground in Toronto: Grossman’s Tavern. This recording was made in 2011 at the eighth such get-together, and a rip-roaring time the two-day event was, as is evidenced by this recording. As Bastien was, Tevlin is a devotee of the Kid Thomas school of playing with its smears, growls, flares, etc., and the rest of the band play their part in recreating the Thomas band sound, including the two musicians who traveled from Europe to join the group for the occasion, Kjeld Brandt and Karl Kronqvist.

The opening number, a rousing rendition of Over in the Gloryland, sets the tone for what follows. The band, along with Tevlin on vocals, is cheerfully urged on—and joined—by the rambunctious crowd in attendance, everyone obviously having a whale of a time. As we are informed in the liner notes, “Noonie Shears, Toronto’s famous ‘Umbrella Lady,’ led the parade at Grossman’s Tavern every Saturday for decades.” She was a great favorite of the band’s, to the extent that when she was terminally ill, they even assembled in her hospital room to serenade her; and for the last song, being an aficionado of Kid Thomas, she requested his Kid Thomas Boogie Woogie. Since it had been recorded at the party at Grossman’s, the band thought it appropriate to include it on this disc, which is dedicated to her.

At these parties the band was often joined by other local musicians present. Such was the case here: on Over in the Gloryland it is augmented by Joe van Rossen (trumpet) resulting in a nine-piece band with a two-horn lead (with another trombone the band would have had a full New Orleans brass band line-up); and on On the Road to Home Sweet Home it is joined by the husband-and-wife team Brian Towers (trombone) and Janet Shaw (clarinet) making for a ten-piece band. There is some very nice harmonized improvisation by the two clarinets, Brandt and Shaw, on the latter.

The tune list on this disc contains some songs not often heard on traditional jazz albums, although to many moldy figs they might be somewhat familiar. Apple Blossom Time, On the Road to Home Sweet Home, and Beneath Hawaiian Skies would qualify as such, and I suppose we might be more accustomed to hearing Blue Hawaii done by the likes of, say, Elvis Presley. But as we can hear here, they can be effectively rendered as traditional jazz. The last two songs on the list are from the Kid Thomas repertoire and have not been picked up by many other bands to my knowledge. It should be added that Når Lygterne Tændes is better known as Red Sails in the Sunset, here sung in Swedish by Kronqvist.

One tune that will be familiar to all, however, is The Old Rugged Cross, which is led off beautifully by Kjeld Brandt playing in the low register, after which he ascends to the high register and is joined by Hughes on sax, after which the rest of the band come in, playing very softly until the coda. Brandt, who was the leader of the fine Danish band New Orleans Delight, was felled by a devastating stroke the year after this recording was made, which sadly has ended his musical career. So this disc is also a kind of musical memento of him.

This is a CD that will delight those who appreciate the New Orleans style of playing jazz, with its roughness and exuberance; it may well work to convert the others. At the web site www.tevlin.ca one can get more information on this recording.

Bert Thompson

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