As the review CDs pile up I'm in the horns of a dilemma. Our local binmen are on strike and charity shops frown at being overloaded with more of the same - particularly with jazz CDs. So, in the forlorn hope that the hustlers out there will ask me first before dumping 'the latest thing' on me, I decided to listen to some of the albums that I've treasured over the years that I no longer find the time to listen to.
The recordings by Norman Granz's JATP were among the earliest ones I got hooked on after I'd graduated from Goodman, Dorsey, Miller and the big bands of the swing era.
Initially on double-sided 78s then on 10" and, eventually, 12" vinyl they were slow in appearing in the UK and, when they did, were expensive. However, tracks often showed up on AFN and other European stations - usually late at night. For a pubescent youth it was magic and I guess this was how teenagers, as they were soon to be called, felt when they were hit with rock and roll.
When the albums became more generally available I bought them all - concerts from 1944 to the early 1960s. However, there was one vital track missing from the concert recorded live at Carnegie Hall on Sept. 27, 1947. I had Perdido and Mordido but not the final track Endido which was akin to buying a symphony without the last movement! Fortunately, all three 'didos' were eventually collated on Mayhem in Manhattan plus the more sedate I Surrender Dear.
The critics hated JATP, they probably still do! I loved them as, apart from Illinois and Flip slugging it out and driving the audience wild, you also had Howard McGhee reaching for the moon and Bill Harris producing sounds from a slide trombone that Jack Teagarden never dreamt of! However, to maintain a degree of sanity, there was also Hank Jones, Ray Brown and Jo Jones to temporarily cool things down. The final chorus of Endido makes local jam session finales seem like a Palm Court Orchestra playing for dowagers and retired colonels in bath-chairs at a seafront spa on the south coast. Lance
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