CD Review Bert Thompson
Disc One: Mr. Halcox & Mr. Barber – playing time 79m. 37s. 1950s: New Orleans Hop Scop Blues; Who’s Sorry Now?; I Love My Baby; Old Stackolee 1960s: Blue Turning Grey over You; The Mountains of Mourne; Do Right Baby; Shine 1970s: Georgia on My Mind; Rent Party Blues; Somewhere over the Rainbow 1980s: Buddy Bolden’s Blues; Some of These Days; Blues on Trumpet; Oh Baby 1990s: Working Man Blues; Isle of Capri. Recorded between 1955 and 1998, no locations given.
Disc Two: Pat Plays Away – playing time 75m. 47s. Give Me Your Telephone Number; Wabash Blues; Rosetta; Confessin’; Tin Roof Blues; I Found a New Baby; Undecided; Blues for Humph; Blue Orchid; Apple Honey; I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart. Recorded between 1964 and 1996, no locations given.
Personnel: All tracks include Pat Halcox on cornet, trumpet, or flugelhorn. Others, too many to list in full, include Chris Barber, Monty Sunshine, Wally Fawkes, Sonny Morris, Art Hodes, Don Ewell, Alex Welsh, Kenny Ball, and Ottilie Patterson. All data are given in the CD booklet.
Jazz has had several memorable musical partnerships, including those of Oliver/Armstrong, Armstrong/Teagarden, Ellington/Strayhorn, Brubeck/Desmond, Lyttelton/Fawkes among others, that engendered some exquisite music. Few, if any, however, have outlasted the fifty-odd years of the Pat Halcox/Chris Barber collaboration. This set is not so much a celebration of that alliance as it is a showcase for the talents of Mr. Halcox, so there is not much of the two of them playing together on these discs, despite the title of the first, “Mr. Halcox & Mr. Barber.” The first of these two discs presents selections from the first five decades of the Barber band—there are none from the 2000s prior to Halcox’s retirement in 2008 from full time playing with the band due to health issues from Parkinson’s disease, although he did not give up playing entirely at that time. Only five of these selections include both Barber and Halcox, the others being various combinations of personnel from the Barber band, all supporting Halcox. None of these tracks has been previously issued. In the Chris Barber band of 1953, Halcox had played cornet but was reluctant to “go pro” when the others did, being replaced by Ken Colyer, who had just returned to some acclaim from a visit to New Orleans where he played with some of the pioneers of the revival, ending with a stint in the New Orleans jail for overstaying his visa. A year or so later, as most people know, the band left Colyer, and Halcox, now prepared to take the professional plunge, rejoined. The first cut, a hard driving New Orleans Hop Scop Blues, is from the next year, 1955, and is a tune seldom played by traditional jazz bands. On it Halcox plays cornet in a tight front line, as he did for the first year or two before switching to trumpet, and he displays some of the fairly broad vibrato that was part of his technique at that time. With his change to trumpet, the vibrato diminished somewhat, as we hear on the second number, Who’s Sorry Now? which, apart from the coda, is largely a solo vehicle for Halcox, accompanied only by the rhythm section. He is equally adept with slower tempos, of course. I have never heard Working Man Blues played this slowly—but it comes off, and I like to think Messrs. Oliver and Armstrong would have approved.
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