ReviewsCliff "Kid" Bastien & George Berry
You will know from a previous review that New Orleans Delight is one of my favourite bands. The reason is quite simple – any track of theirs has only to be a few bars old and I find myself smiling and my foot patting. They’re a happy band, totally absorbed in the idiom and capable within those few bars of transporting the listener to the source – the Crescent City. On this particular CD they’re joined by the great Kid Thomas admirer Cliff “Kid” Bastien and by the infectious, propulsive tenor sax of George Berry. It’s an incendiary combination and as you’d expect from my use of that adjective – it’s hot music all the way. Great stuff, great solos on great tunes but above all packaged within that wonderful New Orleans ensemble sound that so few capture but which is the inner magic of the music. This is rare stuff – Cliff is tragically no longer with us so treasure these tracks, which include twelve of him on solo trumpet. They are the priceless legacy of a legend.
Don’t get fooled by this CD as I was. It uses the same photo as volume 1 with just a slight colour change to the cover background. Originally I thought it was a re-issue of the earlier CD with 12 new short tracks with Kid accompanied by piano. I did get it, listened to the extra tracks, and then passed it to my late father. I did not come across it again until sorting out his estate, but it was only after exchanging e-mails with NOD leader, Kjeld Brandt about another CD that I found out it was volume 2 and contained tracks that had been left off of the earlier CD. Silly old me; it must be an age thing!
The tunes are a mix of popular songs from the turn of the centaury, gospel, folk, and jazz standards. Many of the tunes are played strict tempo for dancing: from waltz to quick step to foxtrot & you can even samba. The result is that if you can stop just foot tapping and actually get out on the dance floor! I can see why a second volume of the SeaSide Jazzklub session was issued as the music is in no way inferior to those on volume 1; indeed it must have been hard when issuing vol 1 to have decided which tracks to omit.
I would warn any Frenchmen reading this that Kid sings some songs in French and manages to mangle the language as only an Englishman can.
This CD concludes with some delightful vignettes of Cliff playing 11 short clips accompanied by piano**. The recordings were made in the front room of Marilyn Rodgers, who accompanies him on piano. I asked Kjeld what the story was & he replied:
“We were already very familiar with Kid’s style before we asked him to come. The tunes were new to us, and Cliff wanted to play them. That’s why he is straight to the melody line all the time. They were never recorded to be published, but I think they tell something about Cliff’s beautiful tone and his control of the trumpet.”
Having listened to them I feel that his style when playing with the band is much freer and more expressive than in these 11 tunes.
Im Spätjahr 2002 lud die dänische New Orleans Delight Band den Trompeter Cliff „Kid“ Bastien und den Tenorsaxophonisten George Berry zu einer kleinen Tournee nach Dänemark ein. Beide in England geborenen Musiker waren in jungen Jahren nach Kanada ausgewandert und feierten in der dortigen Jazzszene große Erfolge.
Kid Bastien verfügt über einen fließenden, lyrischen Trompetenstil und eine ausdruckvolle, unmanirierte Stimme, mit der er vor allem dem aus Quebec stammenden Volkslied „ Quand on s´est vu“ eine ganz persönliche Note gibt. George Berry spielt sein Tenorsaxophon mit dem für den New Orleans Stil typischen knorrigen und vibratolosen Ton; bei „Over the waves“ glänzt er mit einem besonders mitreißenden Solo. Die Gastgeber, die New Orleans Delight Band, erweist sich als führende Band im klassischen New Orleans Stil. Die überaus swingende Rhythmusgruppe unterstützt die Solobeiträge mit viel Verve: Bengt Hansson spielt in bester Tailgate-Manier seine Posaune mit einem fast ansatzlosen, weichen Ton. Und bei Bandleader Kjeld Brandt scheinen die Töne seiner Klarinette mit elfenartiger Leichtigkeit zu tanzen, wie bei „I can´t escape from you“ besonders schön zu hören.
Als Zugabe auf dieser CD gibt es 12 Stücke, die Cliff Bastien zu Hause mit gestopfter Trompete und mit der Pianobegleitung von Marilyn Rodgers aufnahm; es handelt sich um einige Chorusse verschiedener Stücke, die er zur Vorbereitung der Tour seinen Musikerkollegen in Dänemark schickte. Trotz der mäßigen Tonqualität zeigen die etwa jeweils einminütigen Proben die große Liebe von Bastien zum New Orleans Jazz. Diese CD ist ein letztes gemeinsames Tondokument der beiden englischen Musiker; denn Cliff „Kid“ Bastien starb wenige Monate später im Februar 2003, George Berry im August 2004.
Andreas Geyer
New Orleans Music
Incoporating Footnote
Vol. 14 No. 6
louislince@neworleansmusic.demon.co.uk
By 1969 the late Cliff Bastien, an English-born banjoist, had emigrated to Canada, taken up the trumpet, reinvented himself as Kid Bastien, and set out musically to emulate his hero Kid Thomas Valentine. For many, the Thomas Band offered an alternative approach to New Orleans jazz, to that of the American Musics, the Climaxes, and the George Lewis Ragtime Band. In line, possibly, with audience expectations, what we have here, aided by George Berry's Manny Paul-styled tenor saxophone, is music played enthusiastically in the manner of Thomas as he sounded on tour as the guest of various US and European revivalist bands, rather than at venues like Speck's Moulin Rouge or The Tip Top Ballroom where his band supplied a functional dance music. Bastien, though, did adopt his mentor's flexible policy regarding repertoire and, while we have Over the Waves, You Can't Escape From Me (mis-titled, as usual, and mis-attributed, as always, to Robin & Whiting), and the obligatory Kid Thomas Boogie Woogie (Algiers Strut is on Volume 1), we also have Quand On C'est Vu, a French-Canadian folk song that fits nicely into the idiom, C'est Magnifique, and Laughing Samba, a lesser-known item from the Thomas canon.
But it's the second part of this CD that provides the most interesting music. Bastien, accompanied on piano by Marilyn Rodgers, recorded brief versions of several out-of-the-way tunes onto cassette to demonstrate to the members of New Orleans Delight the sort of numbers, ranging in their sources from Lil Hawthorne to Rev. F.W. McGee that he preferred to play. Brian Towers' sleevenote rightly says that Bastien's playing on these tracks shows little trace of the Thomas influence, but on Rivers of Babylon he does blow a few of the Kid's phrases perhaps to convince doubters that The Melodians' 1970 track was a worthy vehicle for New Orleans music. The Melodians were from Kingston , Jamaica , and the inclusion of this tune with its reggae beat shows that Bastien was aware of the affinities between the music of New Orleans and that of the Caribbean Islands . A sub-Beat poem appended to the extensive and well-illustrated sleevenote memorialises Bastien as a beacon (or a bastion, even?) of authenticity in a world supposedly benighted by “cell phones and computers and CD players and fancy polyester”. Kid Bastien's many fans will, presumably, embrace the technology long enough to play the item here under review. I'm sure they won't be disappointed.
- Robert Greenwood
CD REVIEW in EARLYJAZ
by Bert Thompson
This CD contains tracks from the Bastien/Berry 2002 visit with New Orleans Delight that were not included on Music Mecca CD 4024-2 (which was vol. 1, although not so designated there), reviewed here in the October, 2003, issue, and also some “bonus” duet tracks.
To start with the latter, these were tunes that Bastien wanted New Orleans Delight to play during the tour. He laid them down on a cassette tape, the melody line (muted trumpet) and the chords (piano), and sent them to the band so the members could learn them. Almost all of the tracks are simply “once or twice through” each strain of the tune and will, I think, be of somewhat limited appeal, although I did enjoy hearing Bastien's conception of the lead lines.
The first ten tunes contain the meat of the CD and are a worthy follow-up to the first CD. Here, as there, all participants are in fine form, Bastien displaying the Kid Thomas influence-the flares, the aluminum derby mute work, the phrasing-as we might expect, and Berry providing solid support as well as contributing excellent solos, inventive and fluid. The rest of the band evidence what has become their accustomed mastery of the New Orleans style.
The tune list contains a couple of eyebrow-raisers. I have never heard another New Orleans band tackle The Laughing Samba, but New Orleans bands played “for dancing” and had a repertoire to accommodate that, so no one in New Orleans of yore would have been surprised. The other, new to me, was Quand On S'est Vu, a simple, single-strain French-Canadian folk song, much in the vein of Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler, and quite catchy. Most of the others will be familiar to most readers, but as always it is good to hear how they are treated by these musicians. I wish that there could have been a little more variety in tempos (the only “slow” tune being Moonlight Bay), but then I don't know if there was enough other suitable material in the vault to allow for the inclusion, say, of a blues or two. However, there is nothing to fault in the renditions of these tunes here.
Since neither Bastien nor Berry are still with us, permission to issue these tracks had to be sought from the respective estates, and fortunately that was forthcoming, thanks in large part to the good offices of Brian Towers, whose notes in the accompanying booklet are most informative and contain many marvelous pictures. He knew Bastien well, having been a member of the Magnolia Brass Band which was led by Bastien. The notes give a full account of Bastien's and Berry's backgrounds and their coming together.
This is a disc well worth having, and ordering information can be obtained by contacting neworle@nsdelight.dk (e-mail) or visiting www.new-orleans-delight.dk (web site). I'm unaware of any plans for other distribution.
Learn more at New Orleans Delight's homepage