PERSONNEL
Chris Watford (cl vcl); Charlie Connor (sop-sax cl vcl); Peter Tabois (pno); Bill Stotesbury (bjo ten-gtr); John Arthy (str-bs sousa); Jerry Card (drms)
TRACKS
Wild Man Blues * East Coast Trot * Old Fashioned Love * Frog Tongue Stomp * Come Back Sweet Papa * Pickin’ On Your Baby * Little Bits * Ape Man * Cast Away * Don’t Give All The Lard Away * Dans Les Rues D’Antibes * Memphis Shake * Drunk Man’s Strut * Candy Lips * The Fish Seller
Azure Records AZ-CD-19. tel: 020 8907 5583
32 Kenton Lane, Kenton, Harrow, Middx, England HA3 8TX
Recording: Dick Hammett, Red Gables Facilities Ltd.
Playing time 67m 18s. tel/fax 020 8578 7285
Cover Illustration, Jenifer Mount from an idea by Mike Pointon.
Credits to: Brian Rust - Grove - KJR
Exemplary sound quality on an absorbing repertoire of fifteen 1920s jazz Classics, providing the best of jazz orchestration in excess of what is thought possible, namely, that coming from a solitary sextet group.
The liner notes of July 2002 by trombonist, jazz radio presenter, Mike Pointon give a potted history of the Watford Feetwarmers personnel, with an informed history insight on the album’s fifteen tunes, selected out of a sum total of 22 recorded during a nine hours period at Greenford, Middx, noted on a day of that year.
Unlike the King Oliver 20s epoch, Chicago, when his Creole J.B. featured two cornets, the other being the famous Louis Armstrong at the ill-fated venue cornering, 31st Street and Cottage Grove, a two-clarinet lead is still very much today an unknown phenomenon of a Jazzband.
The Chris Watford leader clarinettist playing akin to the Johnny Dodds style, employing quivering, feather tonguing, vibrato accentual, all to good effect, giving fine lilt to chosen tunes, such as Pickin’ On Your Baby? (Are They), on how Chris feels is desired, thus this, contrasting to the playing of the featured jazz clarinettist, Charlie Connor in the main on soprano saxophone Sidney Bechet styled, is an important element in how great this Feetwarmers group performs.
The opening number Wild Cat Blues sets the scene here of Classic jazz delights, reminiscence soprano saxophonist, Sidney Bechet with the Clarence Williams’ Blue Five, 1923 New York, and en suite remembrance, of the Chicago era embracing the Model-T motor car factory workers, visualizing doing an updated cakewalking babies, "KJR scat-tapping" jive of an evening - it’s real enjoyment is Wild Cat.
I first met Charles Connor at the 1989 Caster Jazz Weekend run by George Webb, then, he was playing a curved saxello, soprano sax. The "Doin' That Frog Tongue Stomp" album cover, characterizes two anuran creatures, whose habitat is lush evergreen pool pastures coming out to play after dark. The larger of the two is blowing an instrument which looks like a Stritch (a straight Eb soprano), whilst Charles on the photo here is on a Bb soprano ! - a picturesque enigmatic enigma I’d say - let’s all do a Bb stomp and enjoy it.
One could well counter the claim that the string bass is more flexible in jazz playing than the sousaphone. From the very fine handling of the music by John Arthy, noted on Candy Lips (I’m Stuck On You) of Clarence Williams’ Jazz Kings fame - indeed, as are on the other four Arthy sousaphone featured tunes identified on the CD documentation. However, as I listen to his string bass on the other numbers, I’ll leave it up to those who acquire this album to decide for themselves.
Don’t Give All The Lard Away is a catchy, naughty who knows, number well sung by Chris, coming from the same stable as Memphis Shake of the Dodds and the Dixieland Jug Blowers.
With tracks accredited to past great piano composers, Lovie Austin, and her Blues Serenaders for the title tune, Jimmy Blythe, inter alia, of the Chicago Footwarmers for East Coast Trot, Little Bits and Ape Man, James P. for Old Fashioned Love, Fats Waller for Wild Cat are perfect testimony to adulate over how pianist Peter Tabois interprets their skills to his own application of them, covering this album of tunes, effects, much to be savoured with admiration at his playing.
In 1989 Come Back Sweet Papa was noted in the Louis Armstrong Hot Five series in Kings Jazz Review as being a tribute to Joe "King" Oliver whom he left in 1924 during the summer of that year. The Watford Feetwarmers’ rendition of this much loved tune is distinctly of their making, which is a first class stamp of the knowledgeable, professional, musical personality sustained overall the album.
The Fish Seller, a Latin-American tinge track by Sidney Bechet, also of Bechet, Dans Les Rues D’Antibes, a popular number with Jazz bands which here has a Feetwarmers’ jaunty, self confident feel to it, making any pairs of human legs, march down any street, circumlocutory all over the world.
Cast Away is a three beat tempo close-to-hand tune, nicely changing into a four-four glide, featuring piano and a Dodds styled clarinet, with Drunk Man’s Strut to accede to showmanship articulation of the clarinettist Jimmie O’Bryant, Tennessee Ten 1921 vaudeville kind.
I unreservedly raise a glass of usquebaugh to Old Fashioned Love for its stunning grace and beauty. The smooth Jerry Card drum sticks rim shots and dancing tempi movements that have kept the album in trim, the tenor-guitar strings from Bill Stotesbury, the Johnny Dodds style clarinet of Chris its leader, and, the superlative Charlie Connor soprano, all in balance, providing the core roots of this six and a half minutes number. In emphasis, the opening three minutes with Peter Tabois on piano, the John Arthy string bass and notable Charlie Connor vocals, are unique in the annals of this style of jazz - such, that that warrants alone, full media special attention.
I’ll go along with the album’s title "The Sleeping Giant of British Jazz" sentiments. Your voice is with you where you are.
Ian King
Kings Jazz Review
Friday 14 February 2003