The Old Fashioned Love Band - Jazz on a Sunday

Photo: Valerie Bracken

The Old Fashioned Love Band

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The Old Fashioned Love Band play a relaxed style of jazz, and are always popular visitors.

Twelve months ago, their integral reeds player Mike Turner lost his battle with cancer, and various stylists have played this role as commitments have allowed. For their visit to Rochdale, Yorkshireman Andy Wallace joined the band for the first time, and his smooth silky clarinet tones blended as if he had been part of the band for years.

With the Love Band, you will not hear raw blues and a ‘hell for leather’ front line, only melodic tunes played to the highest quality, with vocals shared by leader and trumpeter Mel Hill, trombonist Mike Pembroke and the ‘Al Bowlly’ strains of Jake Reeves as he accompanies himself on guitar or banjo.

You also get quality with quantity, as a first set offering of nine numbers included Pembroke vocals of “When You’re Smiling” and “Exactly Like You”. Hill vocals of “Sweet Sue” with Wallace’s clarinet caressing the tune, and an accompanying trumpet in “Embraceable You” with an interlude for double bass with Harry Forelius.

“Nobody’s Sweetheart Now” had the front line in full flow whilst Reeves took centre stage with vocal and guitar in “My Honey’s Loving Arms”. The set concluded with a neat calypso arrangement of “Isle of Capri” - well, they had to, hadn’t they?

For those aficionados who have not seen the band before, there is always something new to enjoy, and Reeves’ party piece of “Mississippi Sandman” is sure to leave the ladies in raptures. “Dark Town Strutters Ball” had the trombone of Pembroke strutting about, with everybody joining in with “Margie”.

If there is one bugbear for a jazz scribe, it is the ridiculously long titles of the songs!
“If I could be with you for one hour tonight” well crooned by Hill had the full musical attention of the front three, Pembroke’s vocal of “Shine” included a neat duo for trombone and Moe Green on the drums.

“I’m building up to an awful let down” (what did I just say) was the perfect vehicle for the voice and guitar of Reeves, before the second set wound down with “Someday Sweetheart” and almost a crescendo as Hill delivered “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans” bringing back reminiscences of when Freddie Cannon took this jazz number up the pop charts.

Hill set ‘part three’ in motion with “I won’t give you none of my Jelly Roll” to be contrasted with a smooth Reeves dance tune/song of the thirties “The New Yorker”

“China Boy”, which has musical chords to savour, was opened for the extraordinary six minute drum solo of Moe Green (did anyone warn his neighbours?).

The clarinet of Wallace with its mesmerising resonance was silenced whilst his sax solo in “You came to me right out of nowhere” gentle yet powerful incorporated a neat duo for guitar and double bass.

Hill then told his audience “I Can’t believe that you’re in love with me” and on the same theme. Reeves was re-iterating “You’re a Heavenly Thing”.

Smooth trombone, gentle trumpet and lazy sax nuances created a well crafted arrangement backing the vocal of Hill in “It Had to be You” and the voice of Pembroke led out the band with the evergreen “Dinah”.

Wild and woolly it was not, but with voices which can sing and accomplished musicians, this was jazz entertainment at the optimum level.