Trad. Nostalgia. But no one wears bowler hats or sports weird little triangular beards (that we know of). No Midnight in Moscow, no Stranger on the Shore. It doesn’t feel like the 1950s and yet on a certain level it lives there. It isn’t dixie but what’s here has more in common with early jazz than bebop. Trad is like heavy metal. It is not mentioned in polite, or any, company given a pervasive tendency among jazz critics to fetishise the freak out instead, applaud the cacophony, hob nob with the plinky-plonk-erati. Ah, style banditry and tribal punditry is a thing not necessarily of beauty. And we all know what we like … don’t we? Let the mud wrestling begin.
At the end of this fun record there’s a rendering that takes you to Buck Owens’ ‘Crying Time’ made famous by Ray Charles and pretty decent it is too. The Jools crowd never knowingly underboogiewoogied is catered for elsewhere. Trumpeter Olivia Cuttill who graduated from the Leeds Conservatoire a couple of years ago isn’t avant garde. No kidding, Sherlock. I’d place her style a bit on the English jazzer side like Peter Horsfall a bit. Other blanket scattergun comparisons are available but bear in mind the wise George Melly caveat:
“One of the great dangers in absolute jazz criticism is the part nostalgia plays with the critical faculties. One cannot judge sounds as one does a steak – this one is better than that. Nostalgia always enters into it.”
Good Time George, interviewed in a 1959 edition of the English magazine, Jazz Journal
Vocals from singer Issey Chivers are quite a potent factor and are heard best on ‘I Won the Lottery’ where Chivers is shiveringly a little like a cross between Emma Smith and Doris Day stylistically. ‘Linger for a While With the Sun’ has a more adventurous vocal intro. There’s larks to be had with the Cuttill approach. She writes decent tunes that don’t muck about. Intellectuals may be bamboozled by the notion of being allowed to smile. But sigh if it has a fault the whole thing is a bit corny – personally a lot of early jazz revivalism brings me out in a rash and I can go along with what’s here only so far.
Cuttill had an album out called The Whole Damn Plan in 2023 which has several of the personnel on it who return here. Clearly no slouch she has other records as well.
‘There’s A House Down By the Station’ again is in Emma Smith territory. Best horn work and arrangement is on the jumping ‘Show Biz Casino’ where we are in Ray Gelato territory – it’s a Louis Prima sort of thing, Gelato’s main influence. ‘Busy’ indicates a debt to Wynton Marsalis perhaps a tiny bit. Personnel include Chivers, pianist Tom Harris, bassist Josh Vadiveloo, drummer Miles Pillinger and tenor saxophonist Alex Fisher plus various Cuttill family members chipping in past and present. Out on 29 August
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