The Jelly Roll Jazz Band • Tradding Uncharted Ground

When I’m reviewing a record, I’ll often comment on how professional the production sounds. It’s always noted as a positive—from a quick word search of past articles, I’ve never once used the words “too slick” or “too polished.” I’ve even commented, once or twice, on how a band’s stylistic choice of retro recording techniques has been to the detriment of the listening experience.

So I wasn’t fully expecting to like Tradding Uncharted Ground, it being “recorded outdoors while actually walking around the 2024 Royal Lancashire Agricultural Show… a field recording in the purest sense” (from the liner notes). But what The Jelly Roll Jazz Band have created here—deliberately or serendipitously—is a fascinating format which makes me nostalgic for my childhood (we vacationed almost exclusively in the UK) and gives overseas listeners an amusing insight into rural English life. Oh, there’s also some decent jazz in there…

The album opens with a distant PA mentioning a beer tent, a pig market, and livestock farming displays, before the boys—Michael A. Grant on clarinet and cymbal, Dan Wackett on banjo, James Ure on sousaphone and squeezy pig—launch into Ary Barroso’s “Brazil.” Their set list, which we hear them discussing as they wander between songs, also includes favorite numbers by Bechet (“Si Tu Vois Ma Mere”), Jones and Kahn (“I’ll See You In My Dreams”) and Young and Harris (“Sweet Sue, Just You”).

The three of them make some nice little arrangement choices: the way in which the intro to “Mr Sandman” is played by cycling through the three instruments, each playing one note at a time. Is it sophisticated? Hardly. Is it smooth? No. Is it funny? Absolutely, as is the way the trio dial up the syncopation right at the end of “Everybody Loves My Baby” so it sounds like a one-man band skipping over cobblestones.

The music is very listenable, if not perfect—there are times when one player sounds a little flat, when a solo wobbles somewhat, or when Ure is accosted mid-song by someone selling him a raffle ticket. (“That would be a good ending to the recording, actually,” one player comments. And he isn’t wrong—it made me laugh, anyway.) But it’s the blending of music and ambiance which make this record really fun.

The constant questions about what Ure’s brightly-painted instrument is form a running gag throughout, with the boys’ witty replies showcasing that dry Northern sense of humor I’ve been missing since moving down south. These little exchanges with the audience are a reviewer’s dream, too, providing snippets about the band which mean I’ve done almost no Googling for this write-up. From them I’ve learned that the players are not brothers, they’re all from Scarborough but Wackett lives in London, and that Ure painted the rainbow sousaphone himself. (And that it’s definitely not a tuba…)

There are also moments giving listeners an insight into musician life—a little sigh at the end of “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby,” as a competing bagpipe player (Bagpiper? Bagpipist?) strikes up, is a relatable comment on the trials of performing in outdoor spaces with little control over one’s environment. (As a children’s entertainer, I feel you brother.) The pesky piper returns half way through “I Get the Blues,” to cries of “oh no” from the players—but they keep on going, hardly missing a beat. (Though he does manage to cut short their rendition of “I’ll See You In My Dreams.”)

On the other hand, “Bye Bye Blackbird” ends with a very sweet conversation between the boys and the Bishop of Blackburn, who is forcibly introduced to them before the crowd even finishes applauding. And in which Ure patiently explains and even spells sousaphone for the curious cleric. So just this once, abandon your ideas about recording fidelity and studio production values, and go on a swinging promenade around the county fair with the ever-patient Jelly Roll Jazz Band. You can find them on Bandcamp, where the new CD is around $10.

Tradding Uncharted Ground
The Jelly Roll Jazz Band
thejellyrolljazzband.bandcamp.com