Looking up at the sky at night, I often wonder whether there's another us out there in a parallel universe. You know, like on the Twilight Zone or in science fiction novels. A world where there are people who look and sound like us but have had different outcomes and made different contributions. When it comes to jazz, America's parallel universe is the U.K.
Listening to British jazz artists such as Tubby Hayes, Johnny Birch, Ronnie Scott, Harold McNair, Dick Morrissey, Phil Seaman, Bill McGuffie and dozens of others, I can't help but think how remarkable they play and how much they share the American jazz sound and ambition. Mind you, I'm not saying that each American jazz artist has a British sound-alike. Just that the London jazz scene was remarkably similar to ours in the 1950s and '60s, largely because the British jazzers were highly gifted swingers and adept at absorbing the American idiom.
One of these British jazz artists was Kenny Baker (above). A professional musician at 17, the trumpeter played in the Royal Air Force band during World War II. After the war, Baker joined Ted Heath's band and often was featured on songs such as the rip-roaring Bakerloo Non-Stop in 1946. Heath, of course, was Britain's answer to Stan Kenton. Throughout the 1950s, Baker performed and recorded with a wide range of British musicians and led his own ensemble called the Baker's Dozen.
One of Baker's finest albums is Kenny Baker and the Baker's Dozen: Blowin' Up a Storm. Recorded for Columbia in February 1959, Baker's band featured Kenny Baker, Albert Hall, Stan Reynolds and Ron Simmonds (tp); Eddie Harvey and Ken Wray (tb); Ray Premru (b-tb,b-tp); Mike Senn (as); Don Rendell and Art Ellefson (ts); Johnny Scott (fl,ts); Ronnie Ross (bar); Bill LeSage (vib); Norman Stenfalt (p); Jack Seymour (b) and Jackie Dougan (d).
Baker arranged all of the songs on the album: his Blowin' Up a Storm, the standard More Than You Know, Call of the Flute (with Johnny Scott on flute), Le Sage's Cambridge Blue, his Influential Character, Andre Previn's Jazzman, Ray Bryant's Threesome, and the Glenn Miller hit Sunrise Serenade.
Baker could swing, and his horn crackled with enthusiasm. He was soulful and stratospheric on power ballads and hard-charging on uptempo numbers. The beauty of the Baker's Dozen here was the diversity. They could sound West Coast (More Than You Know) or East Coast (Blowin' Up a Storm), or cook with the flavor of Ellington (Influential Character) Glenn Miller (Sunrise Serenade) or Kenton (The Call of the Flute), especially on brassier numbers. There even was a loping British touch featured on Cambridge Blue.
Kenny Baker was a pretty player and is well worth investigating. Blowin' Up a Storm is a good entry point. Baker died in 1999 at age 78.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Kenny Baker's Blowin' Up a Storm paired with Bill Russo's Russo in London here.
To read my post on Russo in London, go here.
JazzWax tracks: Here's Jazzman..
And here's Blowin' Up a Storm...
Bonus: Here's Ted Heath in 1946 playing Bakerloo Non-Stop, with Kenny Baker's non-stop solo...
