Georgie Fame’s group was one of the first of the recently current wave of excitement vendors to be noted by the knowing. It was not only a rhythmically stimulating band but the leader had more than a passing acquaintance with jazz. While this may be true of several of the pop groups, it is certainly not always apparent in their performance.
Yeh, Yeh showed a very good use of a jazz theme in the pop manner – in that case a Wardell Gray phrase – without making it infantile, which so often happens with commercial popularisation. If you look for anything similar here, you won’t find it.
Unfortunately, this is a dull record and it says something for its standard that the best track is a calypso sung in a mock West Indian accent. The fact that most calypso accompaniments are pretty square by jazz standards, without losing their essential charm, provides some sort of oblique comment.
Commercial pop music, for all the injections of more vital material which occur from time to time, is indelibly sentimental and rhythmically stodgy enough to appeal to a child-orientated machine culture. Both these qualities are all too obvious in this collection.
An LP by former pop idols such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Carl Perkins and many others more recent, who really have their boots in the blues, makes sense and holds our interest. This, when put together for forty unbroken minutes, is just plain dull.
Discography
Sweet Thing; See Saw; Ride Your Pony; Funny How Time Slips Away; Sitting In The Park; Dr. Kitch (19 min) – My Girl; Music Talk; The World Is Round; The Whole World’s Shaking; Last Night (20 min)
Edward Thornton (tpt); Peter Coe (alt/ten); Glen Hughes (ten/bari/flt); Georgie Fame (org/vcl); Cliff Barton (bs); Colin Green (g); John Mitchell (d); Speedy Acquaye (African percussion).
(Columbia SX 6043 32s.)
