TRACKS
CD One * Dippermouth Blues * Dream A Little Dream Of Me * Willie The Weeper * Medley: The Sunshine Of Love - Alice Blue Gown - The Whiffenpruff Song * Fifty Blues * Dans Les Rues d’Antibes * Christopher Columbus * Scottish Satire * S’Wonderful * Time On My Hands * The Drummer Man * Black and Tan Fantasy * Dardanella * Shine * Secret Love * Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me * Heurt ’M Doar Sloan.

CD Two * Promenade Aux Champs Elysees * Sugar (Suiker) * Cute * I Wanna Be Like You * Buddy Bolden’s Blues * Russian Eyes * Medley: If I Had My Way Dear – You Are My Sunshine * As Long As I Live * Every Time We Say Goodbye * Cornet Chop Suey * Eye Ball * The Music Goes ‘Round And Around * Medley: September Song – Ma Marleone – As Tu Le Cafard? * Oh! Lady Be Good * When It’s Sleepy Time Down South * Poor Skins * Linger A While.

Timeless Records, P.O. Box 201, 6700 AE Wageningen, Holland
CDTTD 642 and 643 – Time: Over 2 hours Double Album
Recorded over 3 days in last quarter of 2000 at Studio Wisselaar 9, Oosterhout.

A 25 years' member of the Dutch Swing College Band, (DSCB) drummer Huub Janssen has travelled far and wide over the world. He has enjoyed the benefits of playing in the company of such great names in the jazz world as Teddy Wilson, Billy Butterfield, Lillian Boutte, Bob Wilber, Bud Freeman, Ruby Braff to mention but a few, and during that time he has gained several special awards along the way.

This double CD album with over two hours playing time, covering thirty four numbers is a worthy memento-keepsake, celebrating his fifty years stretch in the music business – say, in the drum chair of Dixieland jazz.

The year 1945, the place, in The Hague, and later forming their own jazz club, the DSCB held regular broadcasts on radio “Free Holland” and from Hilversum. In July 1948 after cutting their first recordings Apex Blues and Strange Peach the band became internationally famous.

The Lyn Dutton Agency brought this famous band to the UK on several occasions during the 80s, and I can recall on 21 April 1989, when trumpeter Kenny Baker who depped for vibraphonist Peter Appleyard in the - When The Swing Comes Marching In - concert at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon, and so too will Huub, to whom I‘ll name his colleagues in photo line-up, Dick Kaart, Hank Bosch van Drakestein, himself, Peter Schilperoort, Bert de Kort, Jaap van Kempen, Bob Kaper, in memory.

The Amazing Jazzband has produced a good blend of ballads, evergreens and tunes that feature particular instrumentalists, and a scattering from the Louis Armstrong Hot Seven stable.

On Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me one can hear a four and a quarter minutes drum solo, a smooth delicately executed, articulated integration of harmonies, encapsulating all the finest attributes of drumming that one is ever likely to hear. It was from listening to this drumming masterpiece as it moved non-stop into Heurt ‘M Doar Sloan a vocal refrain by the whole band, that I was able to comprehend the influence that was making the group perform in such a professionally enjoyable manner, as if by playing live, rather than them attending a recording studio for the purpose of this production.

A similar ending but to a lesser degree is to be heard on Poor Skins and Linger A While, which leads me to mentioned of the infectious, pleasing dialect of the vocals on all counts, it’s catching on My Way and on My Sunshine, with adding pleasure to them, is the sensual, warbling, melodic voice of Daisy Ooterhuis on Lady Be Good and on her other songs.

There are enough numbers here for the many to choose their favourites from, for me, the played to perfection Cornet Chop Suey the clarinet comes to mind in it, a tune where Johnny Dodds on that instrument helped make it renowned. Trombone and soprano saxophone on Secret Love shines through. Baritone saxophone and piano on Buddy Bolden’s Blues are pointers. On Willie The Weeper, there is an excellent rollover, where the banjo holds its own. It’s all there and where there is more.

There’s an in depth affinity with the music of Scotland of this day, and of yesteryear - Scottish Satire is where on the quadrilles, or an eight-some reel, for real, no sham, lively dances can be gone into with the accompaniment of this accordion on this number. Great stuff.

The quartet of drums, soprano, piano and string bass on Cute gives one the encyclopaedia of this double album’s quality recordings' performance.

But to take the biscuit, with its Armstrong-esque trumpeter to the fore, it has to be for me the quintet of the Amazing Jazzband on When It’s Sleepy Time Down South, as that number played here will take a stunning performance from somewhere else world-wide to beat it.

A wealth of talent, a wealth of melodies, listening to them alone - is wealth.

Ian King
Kings Jazz Review
Tuesday 19 March 2002