A consistently stirring trumpeter who caught the tail-end of the trad jazz boom in England and has since worked as a writer, broadcaster, and the founder of The National Jazz Archive and the Jazz Center UK, Digby Fairweather has recently been reissuing some of his best recordings from the past 55 years.
Notes From A Jazz Life Volume 4 is the fourth two-CD set that he has compiled for the Acrobat label. Its 33 selections are loosely in chronological order and feature Fairweather in a variety of different settings. My personal favorite is his mid-1970s group Velvet which has the trumpeter-cornetist in a quartet with guitarists Denny Wright and Ike Isaacs plus bassist Len Skeat. Each of the string players had worked in recent times with Stephane Grappelli and their seven numbers with Fairweather, which are mostly swing standards, are very much in the Hot Club vein. The interplay and tradeoffs between Fairweather and Wright are a real delight.
Second place would be Fairweather’s beautifully played duets with pianist Stan Barker: “Gone With The Wind” and “You Turned The Tables On Me.” Two songs by the Dixieland sextet Fairweather Friends include a memorable rendition of “Lonesome Road,” four numbers by his New Georgians are from the Nat Gonella Songbook, a hot rendition of “Original Dixieland One-Step” (along with “Prelude To A Kiss”) is offered by the ten-piece ens
