Vic Parker? The Quebec Hotel? Forgotten musicians and venues have a nostalgia quotient in jazz. These two reflect a modestly thriving Cardiff jazz scene before it fountained into the Welsh Jazz Festival, which in turn decamped 42 miles north on the A470 to become the Brecon Jazz Festival and find a place in international jazz history.
In her sleeve note, Val Wilmer describes the self-effacing Parker as “a Cardiff legend deserving of wider recognition”. He was a guitarist but, she says, “outsider arbiters” were reluctant to describe him as a jazz musician. On the evidence, this seems over-anticipatory and a little too harsh on the arbiters, who probably never arrived to arbitrate: it’s youthful trumpeter Chris Hodgkins who comes bright and buzzing out of the stalls, with Parker second and drummer Jed Williams, woefully under-recorded, a game third. The recording is amateur, even for 46 years ago, and complete with inattentive and noisy pub regulars.
Parker here is essentially a rhythm guitarist, a chords man even when taking solos, but with a sure harmonic sense which Hodgkins clearly finds solid and dependable. Some of the chordal solos are interesting if chunky, including the one on Bill Coleman. The tracks without Williams, who is no great loss, find the mic closer to the musicians and are clearer as a result. Williams, of course, was himself a Cardiff luminary who steered the Brecon Jazz Festival into the firmament.
Were he not himself self-effacing and a thoroughly good egg, Hodgkins might have issued these tracks under his own name as leader, while still acknowledging Parker as he is revered on this album. There’s quality trumpet playing here, as Parker knew full well.
Discography
(1) Indiana; Cheek To Cheek; Georgia On My Mind; You Took Advantage Of Me; Bill Coleman; Deep Purple; Solitude; Undecided; I’ve Found A New Baby; Ida! Sweet As Apple Cider; I’m Putting All My Eggs In One Basket; (2) C’est Si Bon; At Sundown; Blueberry Hill; As Long As I Live; China Boy (68.39)
(1) Parker (g); Chris Hodgkins (t); Jed Williams (d). Cardiff, 14 January/4 February 1976. (2) as (1) but Williams out.
Bell CD 521
