Digby Fairweather - trumpet, cornet
Roy Williams - trombone
John Barnes - alto, baritone, flute, clarinet
Roger Nobes - vibes, drums
Fred Hunt - piano
Jim Douglas - guitar, banjo
Pete Skivington - bass
01 But Not For Me
02 A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square
03 Serenade To A Jobsworth
04 Fascinating Rhythm
05 A Kiss To Build A Dream On
06 Like We Do
07 Once In A While
08 Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams
09 Southern Comfort
10 Struttin' With Some Barbecue
11 Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone
12 One, Two Button My Shoe
Label: Gold Star 15031 Stereo
Recorded: January 15 1975
Lineage: LP>FLAC
Scans: Front rear LP cover
British jazz has come a long way since the days of the Six Swingers and other studio groups of 30s, dance band musicians churning out pallid imitations of the real thing.
The 40s saw the development of the jam session, which offered little in the way of ensemble playing, and for a while, in the late 50s and early 60s, it looked as if the whole thing was going to come to a grinding halt again with the onset of the
‘Trad’ boom.
Fortunately, this fad soon passed, leaving in its wake a generation of jazzmen who had profited from their mistakes and gained an increasing willingness to tear down jazz’s artificially created barriers. Trad, Dixieland, Mainstream, Bop, Modern — few of these categories exist any more as increasing numbers of bands are discovering a public with
a catholic taste for ‘just jazz'.
Many of the Trad Bands vanished on the winds of change that swept the jazz world in the 60s, and of those remaining Chris Barber has embraced Rock and Pop, while the bands of Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball and Alex Welsh are playing better than ever in a swinging Mainstream/Condon style. The John Barnes-Roy Williams Jazz Band is actually an offshoot of the Alex Welsh band, and their debut album is notable for this new stylistic freedom which, far from destroying the band’s jazz spirit, actually enhances it.
Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone is, it’s true, vaguely trad-styled, but no greater proof of the jazzman’s new-found freedom could be offered than the smooth and sophisticated bossa nova arrangement of the old Louis Armstrong favourite Struttin’ With Some Barbecue. Maybe not the gospel according to the Hot Fives and Sevens, but certainly a fascinating example of modern music based on a tune from another era.
Originals like John Barnes' Serenade To A Jobsworth, Roy Williams’ Like We Do and Tony Osborne’s Southern Comfort fit like a glove in the free-wheeling context of such great standards as Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams, But Not For Me, Fascinating Rhythm etc, and it’s the greatest possible tribute to the wit and imagination of the joint leaders and their cohorts that not one of these tunes receives the conventional treatment you would expect.
It is this sort of fresh thinking which is constantly ensuring that British jazz
is no longer the poor relation, and keeps it alive as a vital and far from moribund art form.
Arthur Jackson
AllMusic Review by Scott Yanow
British mainstream musicians John Barnes (on clarinet, alto, baritone, and flute) and trombonist Roy Williams co-lead this fine swing LP from 1975. The septet, which also features trumpeter Digby Fairweather, swings such numbers as "But Not for Me," "A Kiss to Build a Dream On," "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams," and "Struttin' With Some Barbecue" (which is taken as a bossa nova) with creative invention within the tradition of mainstream jazz. The style of music may have been out of vogue in the mid-'70s, but these musicians do not let that fact slow down their ideas.
