With the slight delay for negotiating the building site, I just heard the end of Dave’s introduction, “we’re going to play a few standards with a bit of free improvising.”

The gig was previewed in the morning’s Metro, which had helped fill the seats from conversations I overheard. Saxophonist Coxhill (b. Lowen, 1932, Portsmouth) has a 50-year career in which he’s played with mixture of artists such as, Rufus Thomas (with the television and video release of soul-funk classic, ‘Walking The Dog’), The Damned (on ‘You Know’ off the album Music For Pleasure) and Virgin’s Kevin Ayers, David Bedford, Mike Oldfield and Steve Miller.

Renowned for his versatility and humour (check the shirt for a 73 year old) he’s teamed up with Dave Green. Apart from being the answer to a recent Gilles Peterson Worldwide competition, Dave is “is one of Britain’s best known double bass players” and childhood friend of Charlie Watts.

Lol was definitely on form and when Green plays on his own, I get this voice in my head of Peterson talking over it like he did in the old ‘Jazz with Attitude’ days so samplers wouldn’t be able to use it. I admit I didn’t recognise many of the ‘standards’ as some older members of the audience but their ‘A Night In Tunisia’ was worth turning up for on it’s own.

Lol promised us a better second-half and by ‘better’, I think he meant ‘freer’. Certainly the first tune went off at a pace and Lol’s soprano going off into the stratosphere. This is where Coxhill feels most at home at the extremes. A little while later they got stuck into a little of ‘Rock Around The Clock’ before getting into something that sounded like ‘Chattanooga Cho Cho’. They ended with ‘All The Things You Are’ and got a great ovation as Dave stood back as he announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the great Lol Coxhill’. The 150-200 that had showed up certainly agreed. For a soulless cast concrete clad beam and pillar foyer, it was a great sound.

The last time I had seen Dave was at Royal Festival Hall in the Matthew Herbert Big Band at the 2003 London Jazz Festival. Goodbye Swingtime was the album and it was Gig Of The Year (with 2 Banks Of 4 supporting). Dave told me after the show that he remembers the gig well and has great respect for Peterson for raising the awareness of British jazz with his Impressed series.

He also said that he used to play with Lol his band (appropriately called) ‘Fingers’ back in the eighties with the late Bruce Turner on alto saxophone and clarinet . He’s known Lol since the sixties but this was the first time they had played together for 4-5 years. Hopefully it won’t be such a wait for the next one featuring the greats Dave Green and Lol Coxhill.

Links:
Lol Coxhill
Miller/Coxhill:Coxhill/Miller, Virgin Caroline C1503 [1973]
Lol Coxhill - Spectral Soprano
Dave Green
Charlie Watts
The Damned