No visiting American jazzman need feel lonely in London these days; they turn up on nearly every corner. But for our extraordinary weather, it might happen one of them might pause long enough to sing us a song.
Twice recently I have run across a jazz character in circumstances which only a few years ago, would have seemed fantastic. Calling for a jug at a very small country pub the other day, I was confronted by one of Britain’s foremost session men. ‘Pity you weren’t in five minutes earlier’ he said, ‘you just missed Quincy Jones’. And that right in the heart of the country.
Last Sunday, I was again partaking of liquid refreshment, again in a small house not known to many. The door opened and the sun was blocked out by the enormous frame of Memphis Slim. ‘What do you think of the present day English rock and rollers?’ he asked. Then before I could think up the snappy answer, ‘Hooker and Spoon are both on their way in – don’t miss them, whatever you do!’ And what he said was true, they musn’t be missed.
Spoon, a big city blues shouter, is something of an innovation for the Ronnie Scott club, but what an artist. I have always loved his records, but to hear him in the flesh is as always just that much better. He has a great big rhetorical voice, with a throbbing built-in vibrato which provides a thrilling beat. His lyrics are the words of the city, not the folk blues as we have heard them recently, but the word-arabesques he builds up paint a wonderfully vivid concrete picture.
Like an instrument, he will sing a sudden quick, sharp phrase, then silence as the rhythm behind him carries on the beat. His timing is perfect, and he shows a stagecraft of a very high order. In fact this is jazz singing with a punch which swings with the harmonic motion of a pendulum. He is finely accompanied by the Ronnie Scott Quartet, who the night I heard them wisely attempted no embroideries, but stuck to the rigid beat.
