CD 1
Travelling Blues (version 1 #1)
St Louis Blues
White Hart Blues
Indiana
Ole Miss Rag
Savoy Blues
Dippermouth Blues
Don't Go 'Way Nobody; (version 1 #1)
Storyville Blues
Come On And Stomp, Stomp, Stomp
Dippermouth Blues (#2)
Travelling Blues (version 1 #2)
Don't Go 'Way Nobody (version 2 #1)
Indiana (version 2)
CD 2
Travelling Blues (version 2)
Willie The Weeper
Delia Gone
Dardanella
Franklin Street Blues
Gladiolus Rag
Easter Parade
Marching Through Georgia
Blaze Away
C.R.E. March
El Abanico
Under The Double Eagle
Jump In The Line (version 1)
Higher Ground
Carry Me Back
Louisian-I-Ay
Jelly Bean Blues
Careless Love
Marie Elena
Bye & Bye
Don't Go 'Way Nobody (version 2)
Jump In The Line (version 2)
Acker Bilk (clarinet) with Johnny Bastable's Chosen Seven; and the
Paramount Jazz Band
Recorded 1958-59
We start here, chronologically speaking, in February 1958 with a
pick-up band recorded under banjoist Johnny Bastable's name. Because
Ken Colyer recorded for Decca he couldn't be used on the date, so
the resultant group was a Colyer-Bilk mix - the Chosen Seven.
The set features the throbbing, steam hammer rhythm section that
propelled, if that's not too generous a word, the band. Its forte
was not subtlety but its galvanic End of the World emphases at least
provided a platform for the contrapuntally weaving front line to establish
its credentials. Certainly the pervasive studio echo was not helpful
but in point of fact it did little to impede Bilk, Ken Sims or Mac
Duncan. There's a bit of studio 'production' to Ray Foxley's piano
intro to White Hart Blues but the frontliners turn in good
solos. Savoy Blues is taken at the good relaxed tempo that
always works best with a particularly good, heavily on-the-beat solo
from Bilk. On Storyville Blues the clarinettist inclined more
to George Lewis than to, say, Albert Bubank, and there's a guttural
Duncan 'bone solo into the bargain. There sounds like a false entry
from Acker just before Foxley's solo on Storyville Blues but
it's a rompingly good performance. Note that there are two extra issued
takes of Travelling Blues, Don't Go 'Way Nobody and Dippermouth
Blues.
The second disc gives us the Paramount Jazz Band. We have a familiar
friend in Delia Gone but there's an especially fine retrieval
from late 1920s New Orleans in the shape of Louis Dumaine's Franklin
Street Blues. The rag playing in Gladiolus Rag is respectful,
bright, and very Colyer-like. Marching Through Georgia is another
number from this time that's been anthologised over the years. C.R.E.
March is named in honour of Bilk's old regiment (the Corps of
the Royal Engineers) whist we get some Caribbean groves in Jump
In The Line of which there are two versions here. Six tracks were
not issued at the time, and they end the second disc.
Admirers of Bilk and his various bands can be assured that the good
work of volume one continues here. A word about the artwork; Mary
Blood has done her usual straightforward but evocative best and this
adds to the pleasure of another finely transferred and annotated release.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
LAKE LACD 281
