Ken Ingram’s Eagle Jazz Band
1919 March
Irish Black Bottom
The Gateway Jazz Band
Eccentric
Where Did You Stay Last Night?
Bill Croft’s Blue Star Jazzmen
It’s A Long Way To Tipperary
Buddy’s Habit
Archie Semple’s Capitol Jazzmen
Mississippi Mud
Clark & Randolph Blues
After You’ve Gone
Mick Gill’s Imperial Jazz Band
Black Bottom Stomp
We Shall Walk Through the Streets of the City
The Zenith 6
Dusty Rag
Steamboat Stomp
Riverside Blues
Just A Closer Walk With Thee
The Back o’Town Syncopators
Ragtime Tuba
Royal Garden Blues
London Blues
Waiting for the Robert E Lee
The Avon Cities Jazz Band
Greasy Rag
Study in Sepia
Swing Out
Recorded 1949-62
[76:50]
Humph used to play a lot of records by so-called Territory Bands on his much-missed BBC Radio show. He savoured the loose-limbed and lesser-known outfits
that roamed the States. It’s probably more romantic to refer to British bands thus, because ‘British Traditional Jazz at a Tangent; the Regional Bands’ has
something of a prosaic ring to it; all waiting at Crewe Station and mugs of cocoa. Instead we criss-cross the country, North to South, taking in local
heroes and indeed those who later made a national name for themselves.
Ken Ingram’s band hailed from Birmingham, the second city and industrial powerhouse, and these rare private 78s show a committed band sporting an Old
School tuba in 1959. The Gateway Jazz Band – thus named because it was formed in Carlisle, gateway to Scotland - was led by trumpeter Mick Potts. The sound
is very telescoped on these equally rare live 1951 tracks – compiler and Lake eminence grise Paul Adams really has done some digging to acquire
these and many others for issue. Nine of the 23 tracks are in fact first-ever releases which should gladden the heart irrespective of some sound
limitations. This band in any case has a really nice front line. Bill Croft’s Blue Star Jazzmen came from Newcastle and were recorded in that city in 1959.
The trumpeter here is Derbyshire-born John Walters, later better known as producer for John Peel on Radio 1. Hearing his lead re-writes my own personal
history. Now I know why Peel would very, very occasionally spin a Bunk Johnson disc. The first time I heard Bunk’s band, when I was a boy, was
indeed on Peel’s programme, and it must have been Walters behind it, given that he sounds saturated in the New Orleans Revival. So I salute Walters, and
Peel, who both began my enthusiasm for the music.
Archie Semple, from Edinburgh, is a known quantity of course but these cramped live, rare and previously unissued 1951 sides aren’t. Alex Welsh is the
cornet player, yet to really sound like the great lead and lyricist he was to become, whilst John Semple, Archie’s brother, is at the piano. Archie takes
his most distinctive solo on After You’ve Gone; the band was enthusiastically rough at this stage. The earliest tracks are the 1949 trio from Mick
Gill’s Imperial Jazz Band, from Nottingham. Tight instrumental work here in solid Revival fare, let down by that insistent, rather leaden rhythm section.
Drummer George Hopkinson, long associated with Humph, loosened up later. The Zenith 6 recorded for Tempo. These four pieces were recorded live at the Royal
Festival Hall in London in 1955 and feature John Barnes on clarinet, the band’s stand-out personality – he takes a really fine solo on Riverside Blues. The Back o’Town Syncopators – Paul Adams is dead right here – rather sing from The Firehouse Five hymn book. That’s not
necessarily a bad thing, it rather depends how far one takes things. In my book, though, two banjos in one band is at least one too many. But there’s
compensation inasmuch as none of these four tracks has been released before. Finally there’s the much better known Avon Cities Jazz Band from the West
Country. They are spruce and neat, and full of good arrangements in their trio of pieces. This is fine mainstream playing and trumpeter Geoff Nichols
reveals his Red Allen-inspired chops on Swing Out.
This is a good continuation of this invaluable series, complete with excellent notes and restoration as good as we could reasonably expect.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
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