- California Here I Come
- Mean To Me
- Yes Sir, That's My Baby
- You Went Away Once Too Often
- Chinese Whispers
- The River And Me
- When The Saints
- Walking My Baby Back Home
- The Girlfriend
- Walking With Susie
- Symphonic Raps
- You'll Never Know
- Louisiana Bo-Bo
- My Extraordinary Gal
- Just Imagine
- The Way You Look Tonight
- Forgetting You
- Cooking Breakfast For The One I Love
- Brotherly Love
rec. February 2009, Courtyard Theatre, Norden Farm Centre for the
Arts, maidenhead
The Chasers are one of the best recreationist bands around. They
plug into the circuitry of 1920s and 30s dance music and le jazz
hot with conviction and having absorbed the lessons of their models
they are freer than most to set loose with the repertoire.
The virtues of a good period ensemble sound are evident throughout;
rhythms are spruce and voicings are adept. The choice of tune selection
is good too, mixing up old favourites with less well known numbers,
which is as it should be. Mean to Me is taken at a nice, loping
tempo with Martin Litton providing a peppy accompaniment to percussionist/singer
Debbie Arthurs’s very English vocal. On Yes Sir, That's My Baby
there’s a strong Red Nichols’ Varsity Eight sound world and note
Martin Wheatley’s banjo support as well. Maybe You Went Away Once
Too Often was inspired by Charlie Kunz’s 1929 recording – but
even if not, we can still admire the well voiced saxes, and the shadowing
of alto by tenor.
Duke Ellington recorded The River And Me back in 1931. Here
James Evans, clarinettist extraordinaire, dons the Chick Bullock mantle
and obliges us with a vocal whilst Andy Hillier adds a trombone obbligato.
The Jungle sound is well recreated. Adeptly they wander down to New
Orleans for When The Saints where their style changes to embrace
piping parade clarinets, before moving into a dance rhythm and a Louis
Armstrong (trumpet) impersonation follows. There’s more Louis and
Earl Hines too in Symphonic Raps, that marvellous Carroll Dickerson
band recording of 1928. Arthurs and Wheatley are on their own on Walking
My Baby Back Home where she perhaps evokes Annette Hanshaw and
he Eddie Lang. But the sound that perhaps most precisely captures
the band, despite their versatility, is that of the California Ramblers
– rhythmic trumpet, sinuous saxes and they are clearly not averse
to some Hal Kemp influence either, as Walking with Susie shows.
The Way You Look Tonight is a lightly swinging sax fest but
all of the titles have virtues – of arrangement and orchestration,
of solo and corporate strengths.
As I said the Chasers are experts in the field – worthy ambassadors
for the music.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
Lake LACD 275
