Artist: Billy Jenkins

Date of Release: 05/07/2011

Catalogue no: VOCD116

Label: VOTP

Price: £9.99

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Track Listing

July 5 2011. Billy Jenkins turns 55. What could be more appropriate than a retro 'Fifties late night jazz album. Taking tunes from, amongst others, the Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday & Nat King Cole songbooks - it's a celebration of that thing called jazz - another cliché in the land we call jazz. NO! STOP! We don't want no more of that groovy dinner jazzy lounge piano soft-focus wide screen smooth talking tasteful jazz thang. Man, jazz gives me the blues! Jazz is the blues. Blues is the new jazz......

Billy takes these old jazz standards and does unmentionable things to them, lyrically and musically metamorphosing them into something new and strange - reinterpreting the hackneyed old images, injecting anger where anger never was, blueing the jazz. The guitar, that guitar, still strikes like lightning, illuminating as it incinerates, but the emphasis here is on mood - a fifties late night mood for a fifty-somethin' guitarist.

Billy Jenkins – electric guitar, voice, harmonica
Finn Peters - alto saxophone & flute
Jim Watson – NORD organ
Mike Pickering – drum kit

PRODUCED BY CHARLIE HART IN ONE TAKE REAL TIME

Reviews

21/08/2011 'Jazz Line Up' BBC R3

'....one of the great characters of the British blues and jazz scene, the very definition of 'alternative' is his music and conception. He carves out a most individual and honest expression of the blues with his unique signature brittle guitar sound.'

Julian Joseph

17/07/2011 The Observer

'....he is abetted by his Trio Blues Suburbia, the superb Jim Watson on organ, saxophonist Finn Peters and drummer Mike Pickering, who create the kind of subdued groove that some other musicians strive for and never quite achieve. My favourite track is "I'm Just a Lucky So-And-So", with Mr Jenkins essaying a vocal-guitar unison which comes out sounding like George Benson on acid'.

Dave Gelly

05/07/2011 londonjazz.blogspot.com

'Memorably assisted by a crack band, Jenkins taps into the blues spirit of the likes of Jimmy Smith, Fats Waller collaborator J. C. Johnson (via his Ethel Waters/Billie Holiday song 'Travellin' All Alone') and the man of whose musicJenkins 'just can't get enough', Duke Ellington, to produce an album packed not only with the Bromley bluesman's trademark scrabbling, eloquent guitar playing, but also with all the punch, power and emotional urgency that have led Claire Martin to comment:
'He mixes elements of the blues with the spirit of punk rock all beautifully gift wrapped with the joy of jazz'.

Chris Parker

21/06/2011 allaboutjazz.com

'An intensely, joyously visceral, up-against-the-wall album, and one of Jenkins' recent best.

Chris May

18/08/0011 thejazzbreakfast.wordpress.com

'The musical equivalent of Duchamp’s moustachioed Mona Lisa.'


Peter Bacon

06/08/0011 The Times

'.....he teeters between pastiche and homage (pamage?) but it’s an absorbing tightrope act.'

John Bungey

17/06/0011 The Guardian

'...A standards set, give or take a few rude noises, crunching disonances and nightmare wailings, is what this is. Jenkins enlists Jim Watson's organ-grooving and cutting edge saxist Finn Peters' ingenuity for his personally demented take on low-lights smooth jazz.'

John Fordham