Sometimes you hit lucky ...

When Simon Spillett began doing the rounds of the various charity shops, during  the course of which he amassed an ever growing library of jazz vinyl, he also created an adjective that will surely, in time, be in the Oxford Dictionary. I refer to 'Spilletting'.

Today I did some spilletting of my own going down the mean streets of Jarrow to the Viking Shopping Centre - a complex named after those ravaging Nordic hordes whose main occupation was pillaging.

My previous sorties had yielded little fruit as obviously Simon or the Vikings had got their before me. However, today I got the jump on them discovering two big band albums.

The Kenton was of  particular interest as it was recorded at the Albert Hall, Nottingham and at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon. I wasn't at either of those concerts but I did hear them at the City Hall, Newcastle on that same 1973 tour.

The Nat Pierce Orchestra was very much of the period (1947-50) mixing up-tempo bebop with lush, yet harmonically advanced, ballads very much reminiscent of  contemporaries such as Claude Thornhill, Boyd Raeburn and Woody Herman. Nat Pierce did, of course, become a vital part of later Herman outfits.

Another future Hermanite was Ralph Burns whose previously unissued three part suite - Red Hills and Green Barns - can be seen as a prequel to his better known Summer Sequence. 

Charlie Mariano blows some fine alto and there's excellent vocals by Teddi King including on one by trumpeter Bill Adams' cleverly titled Goodbye Mr. Chops. 

At a pound a punt this made for an enjoyable afternoons spilletting. I even passed on several Shearings and a Cleo as well as an interesting one by the Robert Walton Trio with Lennie Bush on bass and Bobby Orr on drums! Maybe tomorrow. Lance