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Bebop Spoken There

Spasmo Brown: “Jazz is an ice cream sandwich! It's the Fourth of July! It's a girl with a waterbed!”. (Syncopated Times, July, 2024).

The Things They Say!

Hudson Music: Lance's "Bebop Spoken Here" is one of the heaviest and most influential jazz blogs in the UK.

Rupert Burley (Dynamic Agency): "BSH just goes from strength to strength".

'606' Club: "A toast to Lance Liddle of the terrific jazz blog 'Bebop Spoken Here'"

The Strictly Smokin' Big Band included Be Bop Spoken Here (sic) in their 5 Favourite Jazz Blogs.

Ann Braithwaite (Braithwaite & Katz Communications) You’re the BEST!

Holly Cooper, Mouthpiece Music: "Lance writes pull quotes like no one else!"

Simon Spillett: A lovely review from the dean of jazz bloggers, Lance Liddle...

Josh Weir: I love the writing on bebop spoken here... I think the work you are doing is amazing.

Postage

17346 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 16 years ago. 630 of them this year alone and, so far, 35 this month (Sept. 11).

From This Moment On ...

September

Fri 13: Jeff Barnhart & Neville Dickie @ The Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 1:00pm. Two pianos, two pianists! SOLD OUT!
Fri 13: Noel Dennis Quartet @ The Old Library, Auckland Castle, Bishop Auckland. 1:00pm. £8.00.
Fri 13: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 13: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 13: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 13: Dilutey Juice @ Old Coal Yard, Byker, Newcastle. 7:30pm. £11.00. adv..
Fri 13: Ray Stubbs R & B All-stars @ The Forum, Darlington. 7:30pm. Classic blues.

Sat 14: Jeff Barnhart’s Silent Film Fest @ St Augustine's Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm. Darlington New Orleans Jazz Club.
Sat 14: Customs House Big Band w. Ruth Lambert @ St Paul’s Centre, St Paul’s Gardens, Spennymoor DL16 7LR. 7:00pm (6:45pm doors). Tickets £10.00. from the venue or tel: 01388 813404. A ‘BYOB’ event.
Sat 14: Emma Wilson @ Claypath Deli, Durham. 7:00pm. £12.00. Acoustic blues.
Sat 14: Rat Pack - Swingin’ at the Sands @ Billingham Forum. 7:30pm.

Sun 15: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 15: Jude Murphy, Steve Chambers & Sid White @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Sun 15: Tweed River Jazz Band @ Barrels Ale House, Berwick-upon-Tweed. 7:00pm. Free.
Sun 15: Panharmonia @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm.

Mon 16: Swing Manouche @ Yamaha Music School, Blyth. 1:00pm. £9.00.
Mon 16: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 16: John Hallam with the James Birkett Trio @ The Black Bull, Blaydon. 8:00pm. £10.00. A Blaydon Jazz Club 40th anniversary concert!

Tue 17: Vieux Carré Hot 4 @ The Victoria & Albert Inn, Seaton Delaval. 12:30pm. £13.00. Tel: 0191 237 3697. ‘Indian Summer Afternoon Tea’.
Tue 17: Jam session @ The Black Swan, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free. House trio: Joe Steels (guitar); Paul Grainger (double bass); Abbie Finn (drums).

Wed 18: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Wed 18: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 18: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free.
Wed 18: Hot Club of Heaton @ Elder Beer, Heaton, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘third Wednesday in the month’ session.

Thu 19: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 19: Merlin Roxby @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Ragtime piano. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Thu 19: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman’s Club, Middlesborough. 8:30pm. Free. THC with guests Kevin Eland, Dan Johnson, Jeremy McMurray, Ron Smith.

Saturday, September 09, 2023

A Study in Frustration

No, this isn't a reference to the legendary four LP set that acknowledged the importance of, arguably, the first great big band leader and arranger, Fletcher Henderson. Having said that, anyone out there who'd like to post something about Henderson please do so as this is what BSH was intended to be all about in the first place, hence my own frustration.

Okay, so Henderson wasn't a bopper although he did record with perhaps the original bopper Charlie Christian, that's by the by. My original intention was to set up a blog where musicians and fans  could chat and share opinions rather than to become a listing of local gigs and repetitive reviews of local bands and albums by bands from both here and abroad.

I know trying to compete with Facebook is an impossible task - they said that when David got into the ring with Goliath - which is why I share BSH blogs on F/b which keeps us in the fight. However, that's as maybe and nobody's ever going to beat the behemoth that is F/b although I do hear a rustling in the undergrowth ...

What I'm trying to get across here is that, whilst we will continue to review and list gigs, albums and whatever it would help to ease my frustration if you could email me your thoughts and opinions on any jazz related subject, other than self-promotion, that is suitable for posting. Lance (lanceliddle@gmail.com)

3 comments :

Steve Andrews said...

As a total Fletcher Henderson fan, I agree he wasn't a bopper but would note that in the 1940s he employed, amongst others, Dexter Gordon, Art Blakey, Linton Garner, Ed Gregory (Sahib Shihab), and Sun Ra, along with many less well-known but worthy young swing-to-boppers. Check out the 1944/45 airshows on YouTube. Smack's last band in 1950 featured the wonderful Lucky Thompson on tenor!

Tony Charlton said...

This post prompted me to dig out one of my favourite 78s - My Gal Sal / Business In F by The Stokers Of Hades (aka Fletcher Henderson) on Parlophone R1196. To my now-antiquated ears, this offers superior sound quality to what is available on the 1961 LP set or subsequent CD reissues.

I have heard Steve Andrews play Business In F with the NCRO. Given that this piece is the work of Archie Bleyer, known in his words as "King Of The Stocks", would this indicate that the arrangement is still currently published? Having read up a bit on Mr.Bleyer, I
find that by the late 1950s he was the father-in-law of an Everly Brother and producer of the duo's famous hits, having had a hit
of his own a little earlier with Hernando's Hideaway. All of which is a far cry from Coleman Hawkins just over twenty years earlier!

Business In F didn't make it to the Frustration set neither, perhaps more surprisingly, did It's The Talk Of The Town, Hawkins' first fully-fledged ballad solo on record. Does anyone have any suggestions why? Some anti-Hawkins bias on the part of John Hammond maybe...

Steve Andrews said...

Re: Tony Charlton's comment, yes, the NCRO played Business in F off the Archie Bleyer stock arrangement (perhaps altered a bit by Dave Kerr, I can't remember now). I doubt that the stock is still available, but Dave seems to have the happy knack of finding them from his sources around the world! I DO remember starting it on the wrong note at Whitley Bay Jazz Festival - because the title is Business in F, I was thinking in concert key, and started on a C rather than a D (concert C on Tenor sax). Sadly for me, this cock-up is for ever immortalised on Youtube! Thanks for the fascinating further history on Bleyer, too.

As to why Hammond omitted those two great Henderson tracks on the LP set, I guess it was simply down to space available and the positive wealth of material that Fletcher left on record. They were both recorded on Columbia, so would certainly have been candidates. It's perhaps strange that he omitted Talk of The Town because it was from a session for English Columbia & Parlophone that Hammond arranged and supervised, so perhaps it WAS anti-Hawkins bias on his part - he certainly was a Lester Young man after the mid-'30s!

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