Mart Rodger Manchester Jazz

Allan Dent, Mart Rodger Manchester Jazz

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As regular visitors to Jazz on Sunday over the years, Manchester Jazz have unfailingly attracted above average attendances and this Valentine’s Eve’s outing at Castleton’s New Town National Club proved no exception.

Roger Browne on piano took charge in Mart’s absence , the returning Alan Dent was on trumpet, John Hallam on reeds, Eric Brierley on trombone, Louis Lince on banjo and guitar, Alan Wilcox on bass and Chris Pendlebury on drums and as ever they combined to deliver an-other thoroughly enjoyable evening’s traditional jazz entertainment.

Jazz “oriented” rather, since whilst they played many of the types of tune that have come to typify Mart Rodger inspired performances - ‘Riverboat Shuffle’, ‘Algiers Strut’, ‘Stevedore Stomp’, ‘Muskrat Ramble’ for example (“the broad, the brassy and the aggressively dramatic” as the music was described by an early critic) here too were doffs of the hat to the film world by way of ‘High Society’, and ‘Run-ning Wild’ (with John to the fore on both), ‘Easy To Love’ and ‘I’ll Never Smile Again’; to Tin Pan Alley standouts - ‘Stardust’, ‘Mood Indigo’, ‘Once In A While’, ‘Jeepers Creepers’ - and also examples from those earlier genres of American popular song of both the pre and post-World War One vintages which went on to become standards in the revivalist and subsequently in the trad catalogues - numbers like ‘Jazz Me Blues’, ‘The Sunshine Of Your Smile’, ‘Red Wing’ and, perhaps most notably, the seminal and iconic ‘Original Dixieland One-Step’.

As ever they brought us blues - ‘Apex Blues’, a positively epic ‘Stormy Monday’ from Eric, the hymn - ‘Just A Closer Walk With Thee’, legendary trumpeter Buck Clayton’s intriguing, if infrequently heard, ‘Stan’s Dance’ with Alan up front, Louis going solo on banjo with his own composition ‘Take Your Pick’ and finally Roger in fine voice but sadly ‘Nobody’s Sweetheart Now’.