The biggest audience of the festival mustered for one of the only three performances in 1986 by the Charlie Watts Big Band. Thirty-piece swing bands are a rarity (and ones with three drummers even more so!) which no follower of that music can afford to miss, particularly when composed of much of the best home-grown talent available.
This makes the appalling acoustics of the first half doubly regrettable, but the second half got the sheer power of this band home to us all. They did not always gel (which must, I feel, be put down to the virtual impossibility of finding adequate rehearsal time), but, brother, when they did . . . Robin’s Nest, Flamingo and the (perhaps) inevitable closer Flying Home shook the rafters in a manner it was a rare privilege to experience.
Since nearly everyone took at least one solo (the nominal ‘leader’ excepted!), I would hesitate to single out any one player, but perhaps by contrast to the power-house setting, the two-vibes feature on Moonglow by Bill Le Sage and Jim Lawless impressed, as did Stan Tracey’s typically quirky Prelude To A Kiss. But it was the pure power that gripped – jazz’s equivalent to The Rite Of Spring! Just a bit more rehearsal and somebody must record them.
