An excellent trombonist who was born in Wales, Roger Marks took up his horn when he was 14. In his career he worked extensively with Rod Mason, recorded with a variety of the United Kingdom’s top jazz musicians (including Dick Charlesworth, Pete Allen, Bruce Turner, and Danny Moss) and led several versions of the Armada Jazz Band.
Marks recorded extensively with his groups for his Leap Frog label. The music on Blowing A Storm was originally part of a four-CD series and features his band in 2006-07 playing live at the Odd Wheel, Wernbury, where they had a weekly gig for 18 years. Marks’ unit features trumpeter John Shillito, Ken Rennison on soprano and occasional alto, banjoist Eddie Edwards, Bob Jarvis on electric bass, and drummer Terry Lidiard.
There is plenty of hard-charging Dixieland on this release but the results avoid being predictable. Many of the songs, such as “Royal Garden Blues,” have a few more ensembles than expected. The horn soloists are consistently excellent with Marks tastefully displaying his virtuosity and Shillito playing with an attractive tone. Marks’ duet version of “Sweet Sue” with banjoist Edwards is quite memorable and the repertoire includes a few offbeat choices including “Beautiful Dreamer,” “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon,” “Moose March,” and a treatment of “Marie Elena” that is worthy of Wilbur DeParis’ New New Orleans Band of the 1950s.
This is fun music that is very well played. I bet that the Armada Jazz Band in its various versions was always a great band to see live. Fortunately the excitement and joy is well captured on the well titled Blowing A Storm.
Blowing A Storm
Roger Marks’ Armada Jazz Band
Upbeat URCD 344
www.upbeatmailorder.co.uk
Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings.
Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.
