Ray Foxley
Froggie Moore Rag
Aunt Hagar’s Blues
Heliotrope Bouquet
If I Could Be With You
Liberia Rag
Johnny Parker
Canine Stomp
Number Sixty-Nine
The Fox’s Tail
Up There
Hold That Thing
Mr Freddie Blues
Bob Kelly
Whisky Blues
Spoutmouth
Something Else
Good Halfpenny Blues
Pat Hawes
Rave With Dave
Snowy Morning Blues
The Sheik Of Araby
My Daddy Rocks Me
Tate’s Blues
Jive At Five
Ron Weatherburn
The Entertainer
Original Rags
Maple Leaf Rag
Finger Buster
rec. 1955-62; Liberia Rag recorded 1994
A quintet of British ivory-ticklers
takes the stage in Lake’s latest release documenting
some heady days on disc. First on stage is
Ray Foxley in 1955. A couple of years later
he was to join Ken Colyer but here he lays
out some stylistic wares. We hear his early
immersion in Morton in Froggie Moore Rag
but for a Morton and Rag expert Foxley
was not deaf to the blandishments of other
styles. I hear some Teddy Wilson in If
I Could Be With You. Liberia Rag is a
much later cut, dating from 1994 – and the
intervening forty years have done little to
dampen either his ardour or his style.
The ever–excellent Johnny
Parker will always be remembered as one of
the engine room boys in Lyttelton’s band.
The tracks here, set down when he was still
a member of the band, came out under Parker’s
own name (his Washboard Band and Barrelhouse
Four). Five of the six songs are Parker originals;
he mines gospel in Up There – a Humph
interest as well – and allows plenty of space
for his guitarists, Denny Wright and especially
Cedric West, a fine player. Glaswegian Bob
Kelly was a Boogie specialist and plays his
own tunes. Whisky Blues has some contrived
tempo variations but the Yancey style is well
absorbed. Spoutmouth sounds like a
speeded up Pallet on the Floor and
Good Halfpenny Blues is his humorous
riposte to the Lyttelton hit Bad Penny
Blues.
Pat Hawes is still very much
with us – a fine player and critic as well.
He was playing with Dave Carey’s band at the
time of these sessions but was already a cosmopolitan
swinger, having far outgrown his more Back
to the Delta past. He clearly took a lead
from Basie and maybe Nat Pierce as well, though
he never, in Jelly Roll’s words, denied his
name – there’s a tribute to James P Johnson
in Snowy Morning Blues. He also shows
familiarity with Meade Lux Lewis’s celesta
recordings – Hawes switches from celesta to
piano in Tate’s Blues and it sounds
good to me but then I have a terrible weakness
for those Lewis sides.
Ron Weatherburn was a deceptive
player. The quartet of rags here, played on
as beat-up a beast as could be found (for
"authentic" reasons no doubt) are
probably the way he’s best remembered. As
a member of Kenny Ball’s band he would take
rag solos and this was reflected on Ball’s
LPs as well. Towards the end of his life though
Weatherburn left behind some very touching
examples of his playing.
To pack as much music onto
this disc the gaps between tracks have been
reduced to a minimum. That’s all right by
me. I wish the original recording details
had been more explicit – which albums, which
record companies and that sort of thing –
but that’s a very minor point.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
LAKE LACD 247 [79:47]
