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Home , Alan Skidmore, Georgie Fame

: Lost In A Lover’s Dream (Three Line Whip)

Friday, 14 September 2012

Though the wonderful Georgie Fame's been in the business for over fifty years and recorded over 20 albums, he's always looking for something new and different and on this new 12 tracker he's crafted something very, very different (for him, that is!). Here, you see, Georgie takes a very low key, intimate approach - working with just two other musicians – guitarist Primoz Grasic and bass player Mario Mavrin and for the first time (I think) he leaves behind his beloved Hammond B-3. Grasic is a Slovenian and Mavrin hails from Croatia and Fame first came into contact with them when he played a festival in what was then Yugoslavia in 1980. Through the 80s and 90s Georgie became a regular at the BP Jazz Club in Zagreb and on his last album he wrote a whole tune about the place. Logical, then to record with some of the players who perform there... and the Balkan twosome provide a wonderful backdrop for Fame's unique vocal style.

Apart from that instantly recognizable voice, the other Fame constant on what we've said is a "different" album is the selection of material. Here, as ever, we get an enigmatic mix of jazz standards, pop covers and Fame originals. Of those originals 'Blossom' shines out. It's Georgie's rather late tribute to jazz vocalist Blossom Dearie (who in the 60s recorded her own tribute to Georgie) and on it our man shows his mastery of all things jazz, segueing into 'Moody's Mood For Love' midway through. He lets his guitar man do something similar on his version of 's 'Wide Eyed And Legless' (a song he previously recorded on 'Charlestons'). Right at the end Grasic breaks into 'Do You Know The Way To San Jose' ... quite delightful.

Other Fame treats here include 'I Can't Get Started With You' (complete with name checks to stars he's worked with including Tony Bennett and ), 'Don't Blame Me' and the gentle self- penned title track. Like everything else on the album, all delivered with complete originality... testament to the fact that even with fifty years behind him, Georgie Fame still has genuine creativity foremost at the centre of his game.

Why the evergreen Georgie Fame is peerless Of all the acts at the London Jazz festival, there is no one to compare with the sixtysomething star

I try to keep learning things': Georgie Fame in 1960. Photograph: David Redfern/Redferns

Dave Gelly The Observer, Sunday 7 November 2010

The 10-day London Jazz festival opens at London's Barbican on Friday night with Jazz Voice, the vocal extravaganza we have now come to expect on this occasion. The blurb this year looks a bit ominous, promising "stars from the world of jazz, rock and soul", but jazz lovers will be reassured by the presence of China Moses, Jacqui Dankworth and, above all, of Georgie Fame.

Georgie is special, not just because he has been a fixture on the scene for longer than most can remember, but because of his remarkable musical persona. It's not hard to spot his main influences, but at first glance they make a pretty unlikely collection – Ray Charles, , Chet Baker and Dr John, to name but a few. For the best part of five decades, he's been picking up sounds that catch his ear and weaving them into a distinctive style of singing and keyboard playing that embraces rhythm and , cool jazz, ballads, big band swing and straight-ahead grooving.

How it all comes together is a mystery but, having talked to him quite a bit over the years, I have noticed that whenever he mentions something that has impressed him he will tell you where he first heard it, who introduced him to it and what was special about it. And once it goes in, it sticks.

Last week, in the course of listing some songs he was preparing for the Barbican concert, he mentioned "Everything Happens to Me" and how he loved Chet Baker's recording of it. Georgie's version includes a passage with words set to Chet's trumpet solo. "They were written by my oldest friend, Mike O'Neil," he says. "He put me up in his flat when gave me the sack in 1961. He had a great record collection and I listened to the lot. That's where I first heard Chet Baker. Mike's responsible for me being where I am now, really. Among other things, he introduced me to the Flamingo all-nighter." The Flamingo, a basement club in Wardour Street, , was a haunt of African-American GIs in the 60s and where Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames made their name. "Guys would come up and ask, 'Have you heard Mose Allison, King Pleasure, Booker T?' They were so keen for me to hear stuff, they'd lend me their own records." He even remembers some of their names and where in the States they came from.

Nowadays, along with everything else, he tours with 's Rhythm Kings, the band of veterans the ex-Stones bass player has been leading since 1997. According to Georgie, Bill has "an encyclopaedic memory" of popular music from the year dot. I should imagine you'd need an A-level in the subject simply to follow the conversation, once the pair of them get going.

Nothing could be further from the Rhythm Kings than the 41-piece orchestra that will conduct on Friday. In recent years, they've been one of the best things in the whole festival, packed with the cream of London musicians, creating a broad, sumptuous sound that no technology can replace. Some singers rise to the occasion, some are overwhelmed by it, but very few can take it in their stride like Georgie Fame.

Since 1964, when he spent every penny he had on a single recording session with a 16- piece group, he has sung with big bands, especially Holland's mighty Metropole Orchestra, and other top European radio groups. He sounds at home in this setting, relaxed and expansive, although he says Friday night will be rather special because he has known Guy Barker since hiring him as a young trumpet player with the Blue Flames – "and now he's the musical director of the whole show".

For his part, at 67, "I stay away from categories and pigeonholes. I avoid the media circus, keep my head down and try to keep growing and learning things. I don't listen as much as I'd like because I'm always out playing. And I really should do more practice. I'm just happy to be part of it, playing in the band. It's like playing your life, really."

GEORGIE FAME AND THE BLUE FLAMES ’s, London March 7th 2009

It’s a full house at Ronnie Scott’s as a trim and dapper Georgie Fame takes to the stage for the first show of the evening. It’s the end of a seven-day residency – “it’s been a long week – and now all we have to do is blow our brains out for ninety minutes – twice”.

Fact of the matter is that Fame and his band were probably holding a little in reserve for the second set (veteran saxophonist was certainly trying to avoid bleeding lips so early in the evening), but no-one in the audience was going to complain about that. Just like Ronnie Scott’s (this year celebrating a fiftieth birthday), where he’s been playing an annual residency for four decades, Fame is a British jazz institution. And this early Saturday evening audience – birthdays, anniversaries, you name it, they’re celebrating it - are looking for the sort of entertainment that Fame and his band are guaranteed to deliver. And it’s not just music, fantastic solos almost casually thrown out with the sort of charming insouciance that one might expect from British jazz musicians, that we get. We are, after all, in the presence of one of the great personalities of UK music. Someone whose list of collaborators reads like a who’s who of jazz, R&B (as we used to call it) and even rock. Fame gently reminds us of his rank after song number two, ‘Get on the right track baby’. He leans forward over the keyboard of his Hammond organ (Fame, it is claimed, was among the first British musicians to adopt the Hammond) , and seems to manage to catch the eye of

everyone (even those looking at his back) in the audience. He speaks with the authority of a benevolent uncle who brooks no contradiction. “Now, I personally believe that Ray Charles’ popularity in Europe was solely down to , who brought his love of Charles’ music to England when he toured here in 1960. That of course was the infamous tour when he died in a car- crash just outside Chippenham. I was his 16- year-old piano player”. There’s no bullshit here: Fame, whose face and grey hair may give away the years, but whose voice is astonishingly timeless, is the real thing, and he oozes an effortless coolness. And who wouldn’t be cool with a band like this? Fame’s two sons, Tristan and James Powell, are on guitar and drums. Alec Dankworth, of the great jazz dynasty, is on bass. Anthony Kerr is playing vibraphone,Guy Barker trumpet, and Skidmore, apparently unencumbered by a bandaged hand, saxophone. It’s a band that’s been playing together for 15 years or more. There are more reminiscences from Fame: in “the obituary section” he plays a song he wrote for the recently-deceased Blossom Dearie, who had penned one for him after seeing him perform for the first time in the 1960s, and also recalls composer Steve Gray, who died last year. “This song needs an obituary too”, he says, before introducing ‘Yeah yeah’, his chart hit. Skidmore rips his way through a solo on ‘Birdy birdy’ (“it’s as close to rock and roll as I can get these days”). And with his own Mose Allisonesque lyrics Fame sings some new songs – ‘All I know’, an exploration of the memory loss that comes with advancing age, and ‘Guantánamo by the sea’, thoughts prompted by a frustrating attempt to get a work permit at short notice to play at New York’s Blue Note Club. This is a more than satisfactory performance. The playing is outstanding, the band all in equally good humour. And it’s not that we haven’t seen Fame perform before, by himself and with Van Morrison, it’s just that he simply belongs here – ‘forty years at Ronnie Scott’s and nothing changes’ he complains as he struggles to adjust the piano stool. He is, as we sometimes say, ‘in with the bricks’. So if you visit London, and get a chance to see him at Scott’s, then don’t hesitate to get a ticket, whatever the cost. - Nick Morgan