The Smoky City Jazz Band c1976

Reproduced in full from "Melody Maker", August 19th, 1978. Reviewer Ray Coleman

WONDERFUL! There's nothing quite so reassuring as a jazz band of today that recreates with loving care the originals of yester­year, showing a proper regard for history with­out resorting to sheer imitation.

The Smoky City Jazzband possess that X-factor that stands them apart from the rest, and this robust little album is a joy, delivering the spirit of jazz in its truest form.

If there is a spirit alive who doesn't bend to the beauty of "A Hundred Years From Today', I don't wish to meet him, and Sheila Collier's vocal on this, sung against a winding trombone solo, possesses every nuance necessary to con­vince the listener that she understands the subtlety of the lyric, the accuracy of the sentiment.

The Jack Teagarden version will always be unbeatable, but Sheila has a canny way of making it live again, and her audience will undoubtedly warm to her intuitive reading of the message.

This is a Manchester band, and it sounds like it. No frills. no posing, no messing about with fancy tunes - the band gets well and truly stuck into the heart of a neat blend of Chicago (New Orleans/Dixieland to present a balanced view of the best of traditional repertoires, with "Jelly Bean Blues" presenting the vocal of Sheila against a superb trombone background and trumpet attack, while "Was I Drunk" really swings in that indefinable way that Northern pub bands can.

"Black And Tan Fantasy" - a well-worn classic - receives a refreshing new twist here, with inspired solo by Terry Brunt's trombone. Pure magic!

And "Wrought Iron Rag" can stand forever as a testimony to this band's aggressive drive. Full of stab and swing, the track is a steaming tribute to the best of New Orleans jazz.

Sheila sings with warmth and understanding, the alto sax work of John Hallam blends perfectly, and all adds to a splendidly hot band that must be one of the best working the Northern scene.

It's a revealing, reassuring album that should attract all lovers of jazz's roots. - R. C.

 Manchester could have been built for jazz; a joyful noise bursting out of the warm boozers into the raw wet streets. It has a long tradition too. In the fifties jazz was stomping out everywhere and even during the sixties. when most musicians sadly put away their horns, the Mancunian jazzers, with that admirable obstinacy and unshakable belief in themselves which is a general characteristic of the city, kept going until the crowds came back.

Sheila Collier's Smoky City Jazzband was one of the first to offer me a guest spot out of London when the tide was turning, and until 1 went back fulltime with John Chilton, I found myself often in their company and always with delight.

This LP brings back those wild nights and, although studio recorded, has the lively feel of a smoky room rocking to the righteous sound of the band and listening with affectionate enthusiasm to its leader's eloquent vocals The selection is typical of the breadth of material and wide variation of instrumental voicing which makes an evening with "The Smoky Cities" so much more of a subtle pleasure than finding oneself listening to a band stuck with a trad line-up and a predictable repertoire to boot. Not that Sheila's boys can't belt out a stomp or wail a blues of course, but they are equally at ease with a slow 30's ballad, a subtle Ellington composition or a down-home clap-your-hands gospel shout.

On this record for example the slim blonde Sheila sounds just as at home in the shoes of the short gold-toothed Ma Rainey as she does smoothly creaming out the wry sentiments of the Jack Teagarden ballad "A Hundred Years from Today" She can put the wink in her voice on Georgia White's saucy vaudeville song "Was I Drunk? Was he handsome and the joyful sob necessary to move her audience into clapping (usually alas on the onbeat. the jazz man's burden) their hopes of pie in the sky on "Can't Trust Nobody". Yet through everything she does there is no feeling of straight imitation. Her voice is its own instrument. She reinterprets, although always displaying a profound knowledge and love of the originals.

The members of her band are very different each from the other and yet musically they think and play as one.

Bill Smith on trumpet is an extrovert with the jazzman's almost traditional eye for them hot babies. He however seems positively shy and retiring in comparison with trombonist Terry Brunt with his passion for steam engines and hot-air balloons and his wild stream-of-consciousness humour. John Hallam is a quiet man who can be a relief after a bout with Bill and Terry! He talks through his music, playing with equal authority, clarinet, alto sax, soprano and flute. Roy Tweedie on banjo /guitar, Brian Morrison on bass, and Bob Jones on drums lay down that rarest of sounds in British Jazz, a steady beat which at the same time swings. Roger Godfrey is not only a sensitive piano-player but a sharp wit at the microphone and, although not of course simultaneously, a fine abstract painter.

The band numbers on this record are thought through in their own terms, "Jackass Blues" for example has Terry on euphonium which takes us all back a bit but works perfectly, while "Black and Tan Fantasy" manages, with alto, muted trombone and piano, to invoke the impressionist tone colours of the great Duke. What's more, behind Sheila, they display tact and feeling, not a universal gift among jazz musicians, and then step forward to take their own solos with fine technique and spirit.

The LP is a joy, and not only for those who want to recall &great evening in a Mancunian boozer, but for all lovers of real jazz anytime, anywhere.

GEORGE MELLY

Roger Godfrey (piano) : Brian Morrison (Bass) : John Hallam (Clarinet, Soprano Sax, Alto Sax and Flute) : Bill Smith (Trumpet and Flugel Horn) : Roy Tweedie (Banjo and Guitar) : Sheila Collier (Vocals) : Bob Jones (Drums) : Terry Brunt Trombone and Euphonium