Very, very occasionally I receive fan mail from a reader who has enjoyed one of my articles. Often it’s about one of my “forgotten ladies” pieces—those deep dives into the lives of jazzwomen whose pioneering contributions have been all but neglected by the history books (often leaning heavily on the research of musicologist Sherrie Tucker). I’m always grateful to receive these emails, thanking me for shining a light on the reader’s favorite lesser-known artist—or else introducing them to someone they hadn’t come across before.
But I was especially excited to get a message about my Max Jones retrospective (ST of February 2023), in which I summarized some of the late British jazz writer’s most interesting interviews with the stars of yesteryear. Not because I was particularly proud of that piece, but because the very complimentary message came from one of Max’s close friends—someone I had long admired both as a jazz musician and a jazz journalist: none other than British trad revival icon, prolific jazz biographer, and BBC broadcasting veteran Digby Fairweather.
If you aren’t hip to Dig (which is how he signs off his emails), you really should be. The cornetist participated in a post-war trad boom which saw Dixieland storm the British pop charts. While the Beatles were busy breaking the US, bandleaders like Acker Bilk, Chris Barber, and Kenny Ball saw NOLA-insp
