Development of the British Blues and Rhythm
  --- show 27 ---   4-22-2015     (Jazz)

Ronnie Scott                               1956, 1957  
Tubby Hayes                              1957, 1966
Ken Colyer                                 1950, 1951
Humphrey Lyttelton                   1948, 1951, 1956
Johnny Dankworth                     1955-1961

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What with KKUP’s annual Jazz Marathon so close at hand, it is once again time for me to put in my two cents on the Jazz that I enjoy.  In keeping with our ongoing Brit Blues theme, I kept the talent from within the U.K.  Unlike last year when I tried to cull some jazzier tunes from John Mayall’s recordings, etc., I have purchased CDs from some of the true Jazzmen whose names kept coming up in my readings and have found an excess of show-worthy music for today.

The opening two sets feature a drummer I have come to enjoy: Phil Seamen.  Ginger Baker spoke of him in reverential terms and considered him the main drummer he wanted to emulate.  It is unfortunate that the few albums put out in his name are not readily available but I do have a few sessions with him as a sideman.  His career was hampered by his drug use and, while many were impressed with his skills, he was just not reliable as far as showing up to gigs.

I am not necessarily a fan of drum solos but felt that the best way to focus attention on Seamen was to open with Phil’s Tune, a number that, as it progresses, pushes the drummer more and more center stage.  The set is culled from a two CD anthology of Ronnie Scott’s 1956-1962 output titled Soho Blues and were originally released on the album Presenting the Ronnie Scott Sextet.  Recorded in July 1957, along with tenor saxist Scott and drummer Seamen, the players were Kenny Napper on bass, Derek Humble on alto sax and Jimmy Deuchar on trumpet.  Norman Stenfalt is pianist on most of the set but Stan Tracey is heard on Bass House and Squeeze Me.

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Today’s blog is a little bit shoddy as I intended to only post the playlist and then kinda changed my mind and then put in some half-assed commentary, although the Dankworth entry is pretty much complete but not proof read.

Anyway, I left out Tubby Hayes completely on the initial posting and that is unconscionable because he impressed me the most.  Our second set of the day pairs him up with Seamen, bassist Jeff Clyne and pianist Terry Shannon on three numbers.  We only focus today on his rapid tenor sax playing but he was also fluent in the languages of the vibraphone and the flute.

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We heard a little bit about Ken Colyer on our very first show of this series as part of our Skiffle presentation.  Crane River Woman sounds much like Skiffle to me except for the more Trad Jazz instrumentation and its 1950 release predates the Skiffle rage by a few years.  The rest of the set is more Trad, or Dixieland as it was known here, and came from the earliest of four CDs in a set which includes a full disc of his Skiffle sessions from 1954-1957.

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My first purchase of a CD by Humphrey Lyttelton was inspired by the fact that Ian Armit, longtime piano player with Long John Baldry, was included on the 1960 recording sessions (also, its title Blues in the Night didn’t hinder the decision), but it was enjoyable enough to add the 2CD set of previous recordings, As Good as it Gets, from which the music presented today was gleaned.  His early music strikes me as maintaining much of the Trad Jazz feel but later more akin to Swing.  It was primarily to distinguish this difference that I included the dates on the playlist, and note that I put the three pre-50s tracks at the end to kinda break up the two styles of British Jazz.

Humphrey was born in 1921 at Eton College, where his father was a professor.  While attending the school himself, trumpeter Lyttelton put together a band as he did again when he moved on to Sandhurst.  After service in World War II, he joined George Webb’s Dixielanders in 1947 but by 1948 he was again running his own group and had made his first recordings.  The Lyttelton ensemble was part of two tours by Australia’s Graeme Bell band and he did several recordings with them,

In 1949, the Lyttelton band backed the legendary American alto saxophonist Sidney Bechet on a recording session, after which Bechet praised the playing of Humphrey’s clarinetist Wally Fawkes.  Also noteworthy was the Grant-Lyttelton Paseo Band who added Caribbean rhythms to their Jazz base.

Humphrey’s first of many autobiographies, I Play as I Please, sold well after its 1954 publication and it was around this time that he moved away from the Trad Jazz (not so coincidentally matching the departure of Fawkes in 1956), much to the consternation of his current fans, and he became just as popular in the mainstream Jazz field.

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Alto sax player Johnny Dankworth had one of the most successful British Jazz bands of the fifties and sixties in a career that spanned from the 1940s into the new millennium.  Johnny began with lessons on the violin and piano but switched to clarinet after hearing Benny Goodman Quartet recordings before he turned sixteen.  It didn’t take long for him to take up the alto saxophone after listening to Johnny Hodges’ records.  Johnny got training at the Royal Academy of Music in London, but they did not encourage his desire to play Jazz.  Very much a contemporary of Ronnie Scott, the two men served together as musicians aboard ocean liners specifically to take in the Jazz scene when they ported in New York City.  Upon returning to London, the pair had been so impressed with Bop that they opened the Club Eleven in 1948 to present the music to Londoners.  Johnny would soon join the Tito Burns Sextet as well as perform and arrange for the Ambrose band.
Dankworth actually got to play with Charlie Parker in 1949 at the Paris Jazz Festival, and it was Parker’s recommendation that hooked him up with the legendary Sidney Bechet for a short tour of Sweden.  Johnny wound up being voted Musician of the Year for 1949.
The first band of his own, the Johnny Dankworth Seven, would hold together until 1953 but when their debut performance at the London Palladium as part of the Ted Heath Sunday Swing Session on March 5^th 1950 was met with less than a rousing reception, Dankworth realized the way to survive would be through compromise, toning down the Bop influence. 
While the 2CD set The Best of Johnny Dankworth contains tracks dating back to 1953, all of today’s choices come from 1955 and later.  None of these include the vocals of Johnny’s soon-to-be wife Cleo Laine, who joined the group in 1951.  To my taste, many Jazz vocalists serve to clog up a free-flowing instrumental motif.  For the Blues, of course, vocals are an integral part of the story.  The couple would ultimately be knighted individually as Lord John and Dame Cleo for their contributions to the nation’s music scene, but Cleo would leave the ensemble in 1958, beginning an internationally successful singing career as well as transitioning into acting in musical plays, at least two of which were written by her husband.  In March that year, the two were wed.
From the seven piece band Johnny would expand to a 17 piece orchestra featuring three vocalists, Miss Laine of course being one of them.  The band performed their first American concert at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 3^rd 1959.  According to a critic from The New York Times, ”Mr. Dankworth's group ... showed the underlying merit that made big bands successful many years ago – the swinging drive, the harmonic color and the support in depth for soloists that is possible when a disciplined, imaginatively directed band has worked together for a long time. This English group has a flowing, unforced, rhythmic drive that has virtually disappeared from American bands". 
His band also played at New York City’s prestigious Birdland and later joined Duke Ellington’s band for several concerts and even had Louis Armstrong join them onstage for a set of a concert at New York Lewisohn Stadium.  Johnny disbanded the orchestra in 1960, only to form a new one later in the year that continued until 1964.
In 1959, Dankworth became chair of the Stars Campaign for Inter-Racial Friendship, set up to combat the fascist White Defence League.  Also late in the fifties, Johnny expanded his list of accomplishments as he took on composing for film and television, most notably including the theme for The Avengers (used from 1961 to 1964) and the score for the 1966 movie Modesty Blaise.
1956’s Experiments with Mice opens our Dankworth set, a fun little number mimicking some of the jazz greats and very similar to the closing number from the following year., Big Jazz Story.  The second song of our set, African Waltz, hit #9 in its 21 weeks on the 1961 U.K. charts and Johnny granted Cannonball Adderly’s request to record it for the American audience. 
His 1964 album The Zodiac Variations included American artists Clark Terry, Zoot Sims and Phil Woods, among others, and he appeared as himself in the film All Night Long with Dave Brubeck and Charlie Mingus.  His British and European tours of the sixties included Nat “King” Cole, Sarah Vaughn and Gerry Mulligan while he also appeared in concerts and on radio with Lionel Hampton and Ella Fitzgerald.  Some of the other American Jazzmen he performed with included George Shearing, Toots Thielemans, Benny Goodman, Herbie Hancock, Hank Jones, Tadd Dameron, Slam Stewart, and Oscar Peterson.
Some of the British names I have become familiar with who appeared at one time or another in the Dankworth bands include comedian and musician Dudley Moore, trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar, trombonist Eddie Harvey, tenor sax man Don Rendell, guitarist John McLaughlin and tenor saxist Tubby Hayes.
Dankworth took over as his wife’s music director in 1971 and cut the band down to ten pieces before trimming it to a touring quintet in the early 80s.  Johnny maintained his friendship with Duke Ellington right up to his death in 1974, after which he recorded an album of symphonic renditions of Duke’s tunes and played with the Ellington band under the leadership of Duke’s son, Mercer Ellington.  Other symphonic recordings included with Dizzy Gillespie and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra
In 1968 the Dankworths purchased Wavendon, an estate about 50 miles north of London, and converted the stables into a 300 seat concert hall.  In 2000, a larger version called The Stables was opened next to the original plot.  1969 saw the formation of their charitable Wavendon Allmusic Plan, presenting international performers with the goal of breaking down barriers between classical, popular and other music forms.  Another charity, the Wavendon Foundation, began in 1998 to financially assist both young musicians and organizations creating musical education programs.  As a professor of music at London’s Gresham College between 1984 and 1986, Johnny gave free lectures open to the public.
In order to reissue some of his past recordings (and some new ones as well), in 2003 Johnny set up his own Qnotes label.  Following an American tour with his wife, Johnny took ill in October of 2009 and passed away February 6^th 2010 at the age of 86.  Both the Dankworth children are musicians, son Alec having played bass with his father’s band and daughter Jacqui, a vocalist.

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Our closing set features Seamen along with bassist Lennie Bush and pianist Tommy Shannon in the Dizzy Reece (trumpet) Quartet with Ronnie Scott on Out of Nowhere (a tune I actually heard first as the title track of New Orleans guitarist Snooks Eaglin’s CD just about twenty-five years ago) and Scrapple from the Apple.  Again the tracks came from Soho Blues, originally released as an EP and recorded July 1956.  Much later, August 1966, Seamen and Hayes performed Night and Day (from a live five song CD of the same name) with bassist Bruce Cale and pianist Mike Pyne.

Scott and Hayes would combine in putting together the dual tenor ensemble Jazz Couriers, lasting between 1957 and 1959.  Maybe we’ll hear from them next year.

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Phil’s Tune
Give Me the Simple Life
Squeeze Me
Avalon
All This and Heaven Too
This Can’t Be Love
Bass House
I.P.A. special
Pittsburg Opener
It Don’t Mean a Thing
 (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)
   Ronnie Scott (with Phil Seamen)

Tin Tin Deo

Sunny Monday
The Surrey with the Fringe on Top
   Tubby Hayes (with Phil Seamen)

Crane River Woman   1950

   Crane River Jazzmen & Ken Colyer
Savoy Blues   1951
Creole Song   1951
Hiawatha Rag   1951
Black Cat on a Fence   1951
Moonshine   1951
Salutation Stomp   1951
   Christie Brothers Stompers & Ken Colyer

*Skeleton in the Cupboard   1956

Echoing the Blues   1956
Sweet and Sour   1956
Love Love Love   1956
Swing Out (LIVE)   1956
Miss Jenny’s Ball   1948
Yes Suh!   1951
Randolph Turpin Stomp   1951
   Humphrey Lyttelton

Experiments with Mice   1956

African Waltz   1961
*Indiana   1955
Moanin’    1960
Idaho   1959
You Go to My Head   1957
Jim and Andy’s   1959
Kool Kate   1960
*Export Blues   1957
Big Jazz Story   1957
   Johnny Dankworth

Out of Nowhere

Scrapple from the Apple
   Ronnie Scott (with Phil Seamen)
Night and Day
   Tubby Hayes (with Phil Seamen)

Development of the British Blues and Rhythm

  --- show 26 ---   4-8-2015 

Savoy Brown (episode #2)            1968-69

Brunning Hall Sunflower Band    1968-70
Joe Cocker

For quite a while now I have been aware that Bob Brunning was the original bass player with Fleetwood Mac, but much more than that was out of my realm of knowledge.  It appears that prior to that, he was part of the band Five’s Company which released three singles in 1966 on the Pye label. 

In July of 1967, he auditioned for the Mac gig and helped them get established but it was agreed that he was just holding down the bass job until John McVie would leave John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, which happened in November.  He immediately found work with Savoy Brown, but that gig became short-lived as well when he questioned the band’s manager, bandleader Kim Simmonds’ brother Harry, about financial matters.  He was there long enough for two things to occur.  He was included on one single (I have no verification, but the timing seems to make it Walking By Myself) and he struck up a friendship with the band’s piano player, Bob Hall.

As far as the other half of today’s second band’s namesake players, I was much more familiar with Hall if for no other reason than his appearances on the first four albums of Savoy Brown.  It was natural for Bob to pick up playing piano as his father was also a piano player, and he became interested in Boogie Woogie in the early fifties.  This extended into the Blues after listening to records as well as the Voice of America radio broadcasts.  His first band was the Bob Hall Quintet in 1956 and about the same time he could oftentimes be found in the audiences of Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies when they were with Chris Barber’s band or listening to the Yardbirds as they backed up Sonny Boy Williamson, among other performances.

Sometime late in 1963, Hall answered a Melody Maker ad and joined the Dollar Bills, whose guitarist Tony McPhee would morph the band into John Lee’s Groundhogs, whom we already heard backing up John Lee Hooker and are coming up on their own, most likely the first half being two shows from now.  Bob also began to gig regularly with guitarist/vocalist Jo Ann Kelly, a musical synergy that lasted years despite his popularity as a part-time performer in several bands.

Hall joined John Dummer’s band early in 1966 but left to join Savoy Brown later in the year and thus was not involved in their first LP recorded in 1968, but he did join them for part of the related tour and appeared on their second album.  Another band we’ll be hearing from soon.

To Brunning’s surprise, in 1968 Saga records accepted his offer to have his band record for them so he had to hastily throw a band together.  Bob contacted Hall for the project as well as Colin Jordan, formerly Brunning’s guitar mate from his college band Five’s Company, and drummer Jeff Russell.  He actually got guitarist Mick Halls and vocalist Peter French to join by pretending to be auditioning as bassist for their band. 

The resulting LP Bullen Street Blues was issued under the name Brunning Sunflower Blues Band.  “Big Sunflower” was in reference to a fictional character Hall had created whose musical story was even the subject of an article in a reputable Jazz magazine.  The album received mediocre reviews and French was disappointed and answered a Melody Maker add to join the Black Cat Bones, taking his cousin Halls with him.

In November of 1968, Savoy Brown wanted Brunning to rejoin the band for an upcoming U.S. tour but he declined.  For their next album, Peter Branham took over on drums and Brunning used his friendship with Peter Green to get the guitarist to lay down four tracks; I have those on a different album so did not feel the need to purchase the Trackside Blues album.  All four open up our second Brunning set and are followed by selections from the third album, I Wish You Would.

Besides the Trackside sessions, Hall managed to stay busy in the studio throughout 1969 with the eponymous second Dummer album, Blue Matter and A Step Further for Savoy Brown and Dave Kelly’s first solo release, Keeping it in the Family.  But perhaps the most noteworthy was another project with Brunning that was called Tramp because, as Brunning explained, “We wanted a name in which we could utilize the skills of any musician who felt interested enough to work with us”.  First to be invited was Peter Green, who declined, but Fleetwood Mac was well represented by drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Danny Kirwin.  As if that wasn’t enough, there was also the Kelly siblings, Jo Ann and Dave.  I have not been able to come across the album and, if I did find it I’m sure it would have a heavy price attached to it.  The same cast cut a second Tramp album in 1974 and that might find its way into a future show.

1970’s third album again had the Kellys, Dave providing guitar and vocal work but Jo Ann only singing, Steve Rye on harmonica, drummer Mel Wright and John Altman blowing the sax, flute and clarinet.  Hall and Dave Kelly also recorded a duet album, Survivors, in 1970 and we may include some of it in some later show but not today.

For the band’s final album, Hall’s true name actually made it into the group’s name with the 1971 album title finally being the Brunning Hall Sunflower Blues Band.  Throughout the band’s existence, neither of its leaders was a fulltime musician and instead opted for more financial stability from their chosen professions, Brunning being a teacher and Hall earning his living as a patent attorney.  Just before his July 1967 audition with Fleetwood Mac, Brunning graduated from Marjons College of Education in London.

There were a few American connections for the band in 1972 as they backed up Eddie Burns in concert and in the studio for his album Bottle Up and Go, and then one of my old favorites, bottleneck master J.B. Hutto for his Live in London LP.  I’ve loved J.B.’s raspy vocals ever since 1967 when I was exposed to Vanguard’s vinyl trilogy, Chicago, The Blues: Today, but this London album is no longer available.

Also in 1972, harmonica player Johnny Mars joined the group.  Johnny is an American, more specifically from the San Jose area who put together a Blues band based out of San Francisco in the 60s.  I had gotten to know his guitarist from that group and he brought Johnny to the studio when he was visiting from the U.K. very early in my radio show’s history.  I’ll get more into that story much later in this series when our timeline hits 1984 or so and we feature a couple of albums he turned me on to, but since we are still in the late 60s that is quite a while away.

I would like to close out this segment with the fact that just about everything in this portion came from my favorite reference book, the Blues-Rock Explosion.  Their write-up of Brunning Sunflower was less than three and a half pages, the shortest article in the book despite the fact that the authors got Brunning to write the foreword.

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As we mentioned already, Bob Hall’s piano playing was included on the first four of the Savoy Brown albums (on the first LP and previous recordings they went by the longer name Savoy Brown Blues Band), three of which are represented prominently on today’s show.  Rivers Jobe was the bass player on the Getting to the Point album and played on the first two tracks on the studio side of Blue Matter (Train to Nowhere is heard today), but Tone Stevens took over bass duties on the rest as he joined drummer Roger Earle and guitarist “Lonesome” Dave Peverett, both of whom were already on the Getting to the Point album, as was vocalist Chris Youlden.  Youlden who would depart the band for a relatively unsuccessful solo career before the Looking In LP which, along with the album Raw Sienna and likely some live material from their tour promoting the Jack the Toad LP and their Boogie from A Step Further, will all be presented on the next edition of Savoy Brown currently scheduled for July 8^th.  The three instrumentalists would remain at Kim Simmonds side through all of these albums, Kim being the only constant in the Savoy Brown saga.

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Stay with Me Baby
The Incredible Gnome Meets Jaxman
Give Me a Penny
Getting to the Point
Walking By Myself
Big City Lights
You Need Love
   Savoy Brown

Gone Back Home
Hit That Wine
Bullen Street Blues
No Idea
Shout Your Name and Call It
Take Your Hands Off Me
Something Tells Me
Big Belly Blues
Sunflower Boogie
Rockin’ Chair
   The Brunning Sunflower Blues Band

Cry Me a River

Feelin’ Alright
The Letter
Jealous Kind
Love Is Alive
High Time We Met
   Joe Cocker

Train to Nowhere

She’s Got a Ring in His Nose
     and a Ring on Her Hand
*Vicksburg Blues   (add if time permits)
All Around the World
Don’t Turn Me Away From Your Door
Made Up My Mind
Sitting in the Bamboo Grove
I’m Tired / Where Am I
   Savoy Brown

Ride with Your Daddy Tonight

If You Let Me Love You
Uranus
It Takes Time
I Wish You Would
On the Road
I’m a Star
Bob’s Boogie
Mean Old 57
Bad Luck
All Right with Me
Good Golly Miss Kelly
   The Brunning Sunflower Blues Band

Louisiana Blues

   Savoy Brown