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Do you like dates? I know I do. One of my favourite dates was 22 September 1958, when Stan Kenton recorded all twelve titles for his terrific Stage Door Swings album. How did they manage to do that? And now, another favourite date is 4 March 2008, when Chris Dean’s Syd Lawrence Orchestra recorded all seventeen titles for this album. How did they manage to do that? Well, for starters, you have to have a band which is ‘on a roll’, a band which is disciplined, confident, tackling some fresh material, stuffed with talent and keen to strut its stuff. The Syd Lawrence Orchestra is on such a roll.
The Orchestra’s latest album Stricly Big Band features 17 tuneful and swinging numbers unique to the Syd Lawrence Orchestra. Nobody else plays ’em! There are Syd’s original charts the perfect tempo and loose swing of Basin Street Blues March, Girl Talk written and played as if it came straight off Count Basie’s Atomic Mr. Basie album (which it didn’t, of course), the high-kicking writing for the whole band on One from A Chorus Line, the adapted transcriptions of Glenn Miller’s I Dream Of Jeannie which he never recorded commercially, of Ralph Flanagan’s Miller-styled My Hero, and of Frank Comstock’s dynamic arrangement of Slaughter On Tenth Avenue for Les Brown. Then there’s Roland Shaw’s take on Cherokee (Ray Noble wrote it, Charlie Barnet had a hit with it, but Roland updates it and throws in a touch of Miller-ish voicings for the saxes), an up-tempo Lover and a swinging Hallelujah where the chart has Syd’s pencilled scribbles all over it but to my ears the overall voicings suggest Roland’s hand. NDO arranger Alan Roper is represented by Autumn In New York and Lullaby Of Broadway - an intricate and fascinating arrangement he wrote originally for Geraldo. Then there are a couple of little gems. First, the late Ronnie Hazlehurst is represented by Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home?. Second, there’s Just In Time. Trombonist George Chisholm arranged it to carry with him if he was invited to guest with a big band. And how did Chris get hold of it? Well, George gave it him as a present after they’d been working together. The brand new material starts with Trevor Brown’s two magnificent settings for the singers. Maybe September was made popular by Tony Bennett and Trevor preserves that gentle and respectful treatment of it, and in contrast Before The Parade Passes By from Hello Dolly has every swaggering trick in the book, from flourishing flutes to captivating key changes and mucho razzmatazz in the final chorus. (‘Mucho razzmatazz’ is a technical term, you understand.) Colin Skinner contributes a gentle version of Under a Blanket of Blue with tastefully muted trumpets, and a swinging vocal setting of Steve Allen’s signature tune This Could Be The Start Of Something Big.
Amazingly, it was all wrapped up in a day. But note that the band was recorded and balanced as you would hear it on stage saxes on the left and brass on the right, with all the clarity of the big name bands who famously recorded in stereo in ‘Studio A’ at the Capitol tower in Hollywood. Perfect!
1. Lover
2. Basin St Blues March
3. Autumn In New York
4. Before The Parade Passes By
5. My Hero
6. Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home
7. Maybe September
8. Cherokee
9. Girl Talk
10. Lullaby Of Broadway
11. Just In Time
12. Under A Blanket Of Blue
13. This Could Be The Start Of Something Big
14. Hallelujah
15. I Dream Of Jeannie
16. One
17. Slaughter On Tenth Avenue |
