Ken Gallacher selects the best new jazz releases with true festive spirit.
It IS a quarter of a century since the World's Greatest Jazz Band of Yank Lawson and Bob Haggart released a Christmas album by that stellar group of swing era musicians and sparked
off a spate of festive jazz recordings.
Some have been compilations, others have been done by groups or solo artists, but all of them provide strong, swinging jazz for the holidays. What more can we ask for? The Arbors label is first in the lists after company owner, Mat Domber, let loose trumpeter Charlie Bertini and a few friends on an imaginatively chosen repertoire. The band includes clarinettist Alan Vache, who was in Glasgow a couple of months back, and he demonstrates again the invention and facility which increasingly mark his work. Listen to him on the Jerry Herman song We Need A Little Christmas to see what I mean.
Bertini admits in the sleeve note: ''When Mat Domber asked us to record a sequel to Christmas Cookies, Randy Morris, Dave Gannett, and I began compiling a list of songs we'd like to play. Thinking 'There can't be many tunes left' (we recorded 20 on volume one) we came up with 26 more titles.''
They recorded 17 and that's where the imagination came in because where there are always repeats - it's impossible to avoid that on any themed album, I guess - Bertini and Company have unearthed such Victoir Herbert items as March Of the Toys and Toyland, as well as Meredith Wilson's It's Beginning To Look Like Christmas. The result is as tasty as the recipe for Bertini's Christmas Cookies appears to be from the sleeve note baking instructions!
The Texas-based Jim Cullum Jazz band released their Hot Jazz For a Cool Yule album a couple of years back, but I have only just unearthed it. It has been worth waiting for.
Again, Vache appears on five of the tracks and there are various guest artists, including the superlative Clark Terry, whose reading of The Christmas Song steals the album - and Terry has strong competition from pianist Dick Hyman, soprano saxophonist Bob Wilber, and bass giant Milt Hinton. Pick up, too, on Little Drummer Boy, where the band has cleverly invited tap dancer Savion Glover to work with them.
Then we come to Scotland's own Jim Galloway, the Toronto-based saxophonist who has joined forces with his old buddy, blues pianist Jay McShann, in a session which was made six years ago but has now re-appeared on a Sackville CD.
Galloway plays soprano - his number one horn - tenor, and baritone, and his work on the latter continues to impress. He is a major voice now and his recording credits prove that beyond question. The guy keeps the very best of company.
McShann, who arrived for the session with some Christmas song books, imbues every note of every tune with that Kansas City blues touch which has long been his trademark. Even the traditional hymns reek of those mid-West blues and, as an added bonus, the pianist sings on Hootie's Christmas Baby, which carries some traditional blues couplets. Catch the Monkish opening to Silent Night and when we come to the bells you could do worse than play Galloway's loping version of Auld Lang Syne, where he takes up his tenor to salute the New Year as if he was back in his home town of Kilwinning.
Also available is pianist Dave McKenna's album, Christmas Ivory. Alison Kerr mentioned this last year - unfortunately, at that time the Concord label was going through some distribution difficulties and the CD couldn't be found. That seems to have been remedied and it has been worth waiting for.
At the weekend McKenna gave his audiences in Edinburgh and Glasgow - where he was playing alongside Scott Hamilton - samplers
from the CD with two Christmas medleys.
Those of you who heard them and enjoyed can be assured the full programme is even more formidably put together. Again he has managed to find some fresher material, including Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride and Julie Styne and Sammy Cahn's Christmas Waltz.
So simmer the mulled wine, prepare the egg nog, and enjoy.
n Jazz Treats For the Holidays Volume Two, Charlie Bertini, on Arbors ARCD 19201; Hot Jazz For a Cool Yule, The Jim Cullum Jazz Band on Buena Vista RWCD5; Jim and Jay's Christmas, Jim Galloway and Jay McShann on Sackville SKCD2-3054; Christmas Ivory, Dave McKenna, Concord CCD 4772-2.
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