Martin Longley discovered Moseley’s hidden Sunday lunchtime jazz treat.
The Fat Chops Big Band
Moseley All Services Club
September 14th
This monthly Sunday lunchtime session moved clubs around a year ago, but is still flourishing in this new location. The Fat Chops Big Band was formed around two decades ago, their membership comprising a host of Midlands musicians, several of whom lead their own bands. Trumpeter John Ruddick Jr is the musical director, whilst his father John senior plays lead trumpet, and sister Jo plays piano.
The band usually invites a guest artist to front each gig, and this occasion it was singer Catherine Marcangelo, set to nudge their repertoire in the direction of Ella Fitzgerald, amongst others. She was the spiritual source, given the nature of Marcangelo’s scatting. The bulk of each set was taken up with the regular Fat Chops arrangement book, which meant that the audience were going to be blasted by a sequence of full-throttle horn-exploding runaways.
It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing) provided a low-end start, barging in with baritone saxophone and a pair of trombone solos, followed by a couple of duelling trumpets. The band couldn’t have laid down a more powerful statement of intent, spreading out their formidable wares. Trombonist Andy Derrick presented his Prometheus arrangement, with ensemble horn blasts rapidly alternating with Neil Bullock’s rampant drumming micro-solos, bassist Ben Markland chasing with his own solo, in quietened space, before the piece flared back into action once again.
The instrumental section of the first set climaxed with Ain’t Nothing But The Truth, arranged by Thad Jones, with Bullock again busily bombastic on the drums. He takes stickwork to its ultimate level, stoking the entire band to thrilling heights, with sharp punctuations and glorious detonations. Marcangelo swept on, selecting Night And Day, then At Last, and the best choice of her first run, A Foggy Day Tomorrow, making a pleasing tribute to the often overlooked Mel Tormé, breezily swinging towards the interval break.
Bullock was astounding once again, near the second half’s start, but didn’t get a namecheck until gig’s end, presumably because it’s the horn solos that invariably make their mark, the drums being constantly in motion.
It wasn’t all bounding riffs and swinging propulsion, John Coltrane’s Naima contributing an interlude of softness, with an expressive, and extended tenor solo from Sam Craig, moving into a buoyant middle stretch, until the tenor resumed with another substantial declaration.
Marcangelo returned for Sweet Georgia Brown bringing back the momentum, the tunes coming quickly and in shorter versions, as with her scatting at high speed through A Night In Tunisia, ending up with New Dawn and an encore of Blue Skies. The Fat Chops are one of the land’s best big bands, so it’s a shame that they don’t seem to tour, or play any bigger one-off gigs. They can certainly hold their own in any contest of dynamism.
