After Saturday night's party atmosphere on the streets of Newcastle's city centre, by comparision, Sunday night was relatively quiet. Perhaps the weather had drawn the populace to the sun-kissed beaches of Whitley Bay or South Shields. Certainly the sun hadn't enticed them to the Globe even though it shone brightly through the jazz bar's windows daring the curtains to be drawn to create an intimate jazz club atmosphere. Alas King Sol won the day and the curtains remained undrawn.
At first it looked as though the band were going to outnumber the audience but, as the Hewer Collective prepared to kick start proceedings with a belting original - Westfield Blues - the ratio had risen to over 3:1 in favour of the audience. I was beginning to feel claustrophobic.
Sun or no sun the room should have been crowded. What was there not to like? Without a Song, with a nod towards Sonny Rollins from Richards and to Joe Pass from Hewer (he even looks like the late maestro). This had the hard bop feel of a night at, say, the Village Vanguard. This was good and it was getting better by the minute.
Bass and tenor were new names to me and both were called Elliot/Eliot. I've never came across a band where half of them were called Elliot or a variation of but it seemed to be a good formula.
Polka Dots and Moondreams is a beautiful ballad, despite Johnny Burke's lyric which didn't do the 'pug-nosed dream' any favours as Eliot the sax pointed out. Nevertheless, the tune made up for it as did the band's sympathetic approach.
Back to Bopland for Bud Powell's John's Abbey with a fantastic bass and drums workout. Roffe gets a great bass sound and, even though he isn't called Elliot, Hanley produced some magical sounds from the means at his disposal.
The set concluded with You Stepped Out of a Dream and the band stepped out to catch the setting sun. The audience stayed put. Nobody was leaving.
Cole Porter's Everything I Love was beautifully rendered. A nice easy swing that preceded Hewer's own Lean In To It which in turn was followed by Embraceable You. The Gershwin tune didn't quite cut it for me although this was possibly because it was bookended by the aforementioned Lean In To It and Benny Golson's Stablemates - two Derby winners.
Danish drummer Snorre Kirk's Going Up inspired a couple to put some dance moves to the music. The two genres synchronized well.
To finish, what could be better than Dizzy's Woody 'n' You? Some good old bebop served up for today. If you missed it in favour of Acapulco or Cullercoats just remember that your sun tan will eventually fade but music like this is timeless. Lance
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