Young horners blew oldies by Bostic, Dizzy, Prez and Mulligan in Solihull. Martin Longley was glued to the dancefloor.
The Amy Roberts/Richard Exall Jazz Band
Solihull British Legion
March 8th
Shockingly, this regular club at Solihull British Legion, so accustomed to traditional New Orleans trotters, had booked a band that specialises in jazz from a slightly later time period.
Precedents already existed, though, and the regulars have occasionally been sighted dancing to bebop and swing numbers. Of course, it’s completely outrageous to ignore the fact that saxophonists such as Lester Young and Gerry Mulligan are themselves deeply established traditional players, now that we’re around 70 or 80 years down the line.
Nevertheless, it seems that reedsman Richard Exall (who commented on this) was responding to an isolated remark made during the interval. The majority of the crowd were enthusiastically applauding the wide-ranging songbook, even if the dancefloor was somewhat sparser than usual throughout this early afternoon session.
Exall and co-leader Amy Roberts are atypical youngsters on the old school scene, and only bassman Bill Coleman was representing the accustomed generation for such a retro combo. This time out, he’d brought out his electric axe, but only due to a vehicle malfunction.
Locally-living pianist Dave Ferris looks even younger than the bandleaders, and has been making his presence felt on Birmingham’s more modernised, electrified scene, not least with his organ trio Three Step Manoeuvre. It turns out that he’s an old colleague of Roberts, both of them having been sprouted down in Cornwall. The line-up was completed by the ubiquitous sticksman Nick Millward.
Roberts has been gigging with Chris Barber for the last four years, and is also playing with the Magnificent 7 Jazz Band, alongside Exall. Barber himself has always enjoyed mixing up the jazz/blues styles, and the Roberts/Exall repertoire shimmies from mainstream jazz to Latin, and from r’n’b to classic show tunes. They have a current fetish for keening altoman Earl Bostic, proffering three of his old numbers during their two sets, not least the evocative Harlem Nocturne.
In a similar spirit, they took Louis Jordan’s Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby? at a slower-than-usual pace, savouring its feel. Exall’s tone on both alto and tenor leans towards the hard side, perhaps exaggerated by the p.a. speakers. Roberts mostly blows flute, but frequently flits to clarinet or alto saxophone. She sported a sober suit, but with odd-coloured Doc Martens, one electric pink, the other powder blue.
Most of the numbers were vigorous chasers, a robust rush of solos flashing past, as horns or flute changed hands with almost equal speed. Gershwin’s Lady Be Good was given flute life, Exall sung the Jordan tune, then the band’s substantial Latin focus led, adventurously, to Dizzy Gillespie’s Tanga. Louis Armstrong’s Black And Blue was given an instrumental reading, with clarinet and tenor saxophone solos, and the second set opened with Night Train, after the Bostic fashion, ruggedly rolling.
A more traddy excursion was taken via The Sheik Of Araby, with some twin-clarinet action, then Roberts gave one of her best flute solos during the John Kirby arrangement of Chopin’s Minute Waltz, with some fast-fluttering staccato phrases. The band headed for the climax with Lester Leaps In, managing to hurl in solos on clarinet, alto and tenor, between them, topped by a lightning exchange with Millward’s drums. T
he encore took the feel down to a glide, with twinned clarinets creaming through “Creole Love Call”, closing up a pair of sets that had skipped around several schools of jazz composition, always traditional, but in markedly different modes.
