Our penultimate ‘Jazz at the Junction’ evening for this year on Wednesday 19th November featured Wil Robinson’s ‘Last Minute Five’ in an excellent session of the British strand of Traditional New Orleans Jazz. Wil himself on trumpet, Liam Byrne reeds, Andy Bramall guitar/banjo, Al Harris double bass, Rob Cotterell drums. Plus Wil, Andy and Al all took turns on vocal duties.
With instrumentation and style possibly more reminiscent of the Alex Welch or Humphrey Lyttelton 1960s approach than that of the Ken Colyer, or more commercial British ‘trad’ bands of the time, we were treated to some rousing renditions of the staple tunes of the genre. The stand out performance for me however was their version of Humphrey Lyttelton’s ‘Bad Penny Blues,’ Wil Robinson’s replication of H L’s skilfully crafted muted trumpet ‘lead’ being perfectly executed.
The interesting footnote to the original recording (which was remarkably a ‘Top Twenty’ record for HL in 1956) is the fact that Johnny Parker’s wonderful barrelhouse piano intro to the song was ‘appropriated’ by Paul McCartney for the structure of his Beatles’ No. 1 hit ‘Lady Madonna’. Inventively – given the absence of piano in Last Minute Five’s line-up – the guitarist played the intro, note for note, with no loss of momentum.
Another full house evening, an enthusiastic reception, plus we’ve decided to carry on next year after all; starting from March or April 2026.
