BBC Jazz Club "Retrospect Through 21 Years Of BBC Jazz Club" Jazz Club Stomp: I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Rate: Farewell Blues (Billy Munn and Tne Jazz Club All Stars): I Hear Music: The Slider (The Johnny Dankworth Seven(/Shiny Stockings (The Alex Welsh Band): Struttin' With Some Barbecue: Wild Man Blues (Humphrey Lyttelton with The Alex Welsh Band): Newtyme Waltz: Storm Warning (The Harry South Big Band). Philips 0 5BL7869 (12 to., 37s. 8d.).

The BBC's Jazz Club was a central feature of the post-war surge of interest in jazz. I certainly recall that, for much of its first twenty years, it was an obligatory date for me personally, and I still miss it now that I live outside the range of non-VHF broadcasting. These recordings are not taken from actual programmes but are contemporary performances, specially recorded, by musicians who have been particularly popular on Jazz Club. Pianist Billy Munn's group includes George Chisholm (trombone). Tommy McQuater (trumpet according to the sleeve, though it sounds rather cornet-like to me; a cornet-trumpet?), Cliff Townshend (clarinet) and Jimmy Skidmore (tenor saxophone) as principal soloists; all tried and true professionals, relaxing in the kind of Dixieland which characterized the early days of Jazz Club. I still love Dixieland, and the opening strains of Jazz Club Stomp, a pastiche with all the right chords, specially written by Munn as signature tune for the programme, were most nostalgic for me. There are occasional lapses of taste—Chisholm's overdone first break on Jazz Club Stomp and one or two moments when Munn or Townshend tries to be too elementary, but the general standard, particularly the solos of McQuater and Chisholm, entirely makes up for such trivialities. Dixieland, but with stronger New Oreleans overtones, reappears when a rather subdued Lyttelton leads Alex Welsh's hand in Struttin' With Some Barbecue; Roy Williams's lazy trombone and Fred Hunt's rhythmically crafty piano steal the honours here. Wild Man Blues, featuring Alex Welsh's and Lyttelton's trumpets (in that order) is the weakest track; Shiny Stockings has Welsh's group on its own with tenor saxophonist Al Gay in notable form. Here and there on the sides with Welsh's band one hears traces of the amateur origins of these musicians—moments of faulty intonation or wobbly vibrato by the trumpeters: the lapse in rhythm just after Johnny Barnes starts his baritone saxophone solo on Shiny Stockings—but again the overall standard is excellent. Dankworth's Seven brings us back to unassailable professionalism; on both tracks Dankworth's own solos are splendid and, on the bluesey The Slider, Don Rendell plays a 'Col trancy' solo on tenor saxophone whose mood Dankworth picks up very neatly two choruses later, after trombonist Keith Christie and trumpeter Eddie Blair have had their say—a remarkable track. Finally, Harry South's big band has too many musicians to list completely but I cannot resist naming the saxophone section: Alan Branscombe, Tubby Hayes, Ronnie Scott, Tony Coe, Dick Morrissey, Harry Klein—the British equivalent of those Metronome All-Star line-ups of the forties. Not that they all get a blow, but with musicians of that calibre South's tracks are as good as British jazz can be. For British jazz is good, and the BBC's Jazz Club played an important part in making it so. J. P.