Wonderful. Brilliant musicianship
5
By fredstat
Coming from the states, I'd never heard of the Trad Jazz (and then Barber's Jazz and Blues Band) until a local AM station had Kenny Ball's Midnight in Moscow in their rotation. I started listening to him, and through some research, became interested in Chris Barber.
The music grew on me, and I picked up a song here or there - and then saw them do Stardust in a concert, that was on Youtube. So, I looked for the album, and found it here on iTunes. After sampling each song, I bought the whole album.
From toe-tappers, to slower tunes, the music, the arrangements, the production, everything, is top-notch. The album starts off with "The Man I Love", and each of the 4 (sax, clarinet, trumpet, and trombone), and it grabs you from the go. the title track slows us down a bit, and then it's uptempo and down a bit, through the album. Their versions of "Bei Mir Bist du Schoen" and "Lover Come back to Me", with the first 2 tracks, are worth the price of the album.
This is a splendid set of songs and I recommend it highly.