CD1; Mr Halcox & Mr Barber
New Orleans Hop Scop Blues
Who’s Sorry Now?
I Love My Baby
Old Stack O Lee
Blue Turning Grey Over You
The Mountains Of Mourne
Do Right Baby
Shine
Georgia On My Mind
Rent Party Blues
Somewhere Over The Rainbow
Buddy Bolden's Blues
Some Of These Days
Blues On Trumpet
Oh Baby
Working Man Blues
Isle Of Capri
CD2: Pat Plays Away
With Colin Kingwell’s Jazz Bandits
Give Me Your Telephone Number
With Sonny Morris & The Delta Jazz Band
Wabash Blues
With Don Ewell
Rosetta
Confessin’
With Art Hodes
Tin Roof Blues
With Alex Welsh’s Band
I Found A New Baby
Undecided
With Humphrey Lyttelton’s Band
Blues For Humph
With The Pat Halcox All-Stars
Blue Orchid
Apple Honey
I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart
Recorded 1955-98 [79:35 + 75:45]
If ever a player deserved remembering it is Pat Halcox, the stalwart and imaginative trumpeter whose playing graced Chris Barber’s band for decades. He
died in February 2013 and I have nothing but fantastic memories of his musicianship in concert and on disc. This double CD is genuinely a twofer – twofer
the price of one – and it enshrines performances with Barber’s band on the first disc and a variety of ensembles in the companion disc. There’s so much
going on here for devotees of Barber and of Halcox that a brief resume is the best course of action to direct listeners to this release’s many delights.
The tracks start c.1957 with a gully low Old Stackolee, reminiscent of Bechet and Albert Nicholas’s recording, with just Monty Sunshine
alongside in the front line, Barber himself sitting things out. Slow blues was a real speciality. Barber also sits Blue Turning Grey Over You
where Halcox joins with Alex Welsh on a live club date where Alex sings. Ottilie Paterson is a galvanizing presence on I Love My Baby where Pat’s
muted obbligato keeps up the temperature, and also on a sensitively shaped The Mountains of Mourne. Talking of fellow brass players Halcox and
Kenny Ball joust excitingly on Shine live from 1963 and, once more back in the bosom of the Barber band, shows in his slow spare playing on Georgia a fund of lyric-melancholic ideas conveyed via an almost tactile tone. In a number of these tracks Halcox fronts the band during a solo
feature and thus we hear far more of him in concentrated fashion than had the usual solos been parcelled out amongst the whole front line. We hear him
essay the flugelhorn in Somewhere Over The Rainbow with the accompaniment of Johnny McCallum, Vic Pitt and Norman Emberson. This first disc has
varied personnel, eminent guests, and a fine spectrum of tunes and tempi, stretching in recording terms from 1955 to 1998.
The second disc has fewer, but longer tracks. He guests with Colin Kingwell in 1992 and with Sonny Morris four years later dovetailing very attractively,
driven on by Colin Bowden at the drums. He slots into the Welsh band in 1980 perfectly, and it helps to have Jim Sheppard alongside and Don Ewell guesting
at the piano stool. He is one of two star Americans in this second disc, the other being Art Hodes who plays entertainingly on Tin Roof Blues,
where Wally Fawkes’ sinewy playing is a tonic. Pat even steps into Lyttelton’s shoes in Blues for Humph where the latter’s band provides support,
although Malcolm Emerson is prone to some naughty quotations - something of a feature, it has to be said, of the Barber band itself. There are some very
engaging examples of Halcox’s work from the 1960s to the 80s in this second half of the second disc, but I should warn prospective listeners that my copy
has a track listing problem. What you see is not what you hear; Some of these Days and Undecided have swapped places and so have several
other tracks. But if you can navigate through this you’ll enjoy Bruce Turner, the flexible if slightly erratic (but interesting) pianist Roger Munns, and
much else besides.
All these tracks are previously unreleased so this is no compilation of studio-bound sides. Sound quality is inevitably variable, given the in-concert
nature of some tracks, but never less than listenable and often extremely fine. The notes are outstanding and there is a fine selection of small but
excellently reproduced photographs. This is a most rewarding and heart-warming selection.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
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