I first saw DFTC at the London Jazz Festival in 2018 and the band consisted of a mere nine members. I’ve seen them several times since and watched as, like Topsy, they just grew and grew. In this most recent concert, augmented by strings, they were able to boast 30 members.
Polished and well-drilled from the start, they appear, incredible as it may seem, to get progressively better and better which is, on paper, impossible – not unlike starting out at the summit of Everest and climbing steadily upward. Thus the concert to which I was privy, on 12 October at Cadogan Hall, was the best yet: 28 numbers all out of the right bottle; and although 15 of them fell on either side of the 1940s, the decade most identified with DFTC, it mattered not a jot to the audience nestling comfortably in the palm of the band’s hand.
In Lydia Bell DFTC has not only the best singer in the band but the best female singer currently working the jazz, pop and cabaret circuit; the only thing separating her from the ones who get all the ink is hype. Though all of her numbers were light years ahead of the opposition moving units out there, her After You’ve Gone was to die for, and it was difficult to remember that this war horse by Turner Layton and Henry Creamer first flew out of Tin Pan Alley in 1918.
Ms Bell was also in fine form on the Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn nod to servicemen being reunited with wives/sweethearts in 1946, It’s Been A Long, Long Time. It was also great to hear the band flex their Latin American chops via Osvaldo Farre’s 1947 hit Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps, and then – aware that countries besides the US and UK were capable of dotting the odd crotchet – weigh in with a great quartet reading of Henri Betti’s international success from 1947, C’est Si Bon.
If someone doesn’t stop me I’m likely to name-check all 28 numbers, and then where would we be? Suffice to say the audience had a ball, as they have done each time I’ve seen the band. If you haven’t, look for them. From 17 November they’re everywhere as they begin their 2024 Christmas tour – https://www.downforthecount.co.uk/live-dates/