Images and sounds from a different time and space with Alan Dearling
Imagine a time capsule. This one was on a mission to transport an entire music audience back to the 1930s – a return into the heart of Jazz Age. At the controls were the good captains, Colin Bostock and Steve Hemsworth. Steve gently caressed his guitars to lyrical life, whilst Colin crooned and played sax and more.
The setting was The Three Wise Monkeys, an intimate music and Thai restaurant venue located in the cobbled Water Street in Todmorden. It was filled with mostly gentle jazz cafe vibes. It was nearly spring, but ‘Autumn Leaves’ were falling and lots of ‘Spells were put on you’! Mellow, laid-back, melodic. Resonant and redolent of bygone times, of black and white films, Bogart and Bacall, ‘Casablanca’ and most famously, ‘Play it again, Sam’. In those old days, ‘smoke really would get in your eyes’.
I was minded of Clerkenwell in London, and the venue with a rather wonderful name, Merlin’s Cave. I used to frequent it on Sunday afternoons where George Melly and his Footwarmers would be putting on the style, gently swinging. But Bostock and Hemsworth evoked wave upon wave of such nostalgia. It conjured up a lovely patina, appreciated by a number of professional and amateur musicians in the crowd. The set ended with an homage to Fats Waller, with, ‘When somebody thinks you’re wonderful’.
Jazz guitarist Steve Hemsworth plays with the Leeds Jazz Orchestra, Sonny Intervals Jazz Duo and others:
http://sonnyintervalsjazz.com/
Ted Greene’s Slow Blues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJj1SuAOorU
But that wasn’t the only entertainment served up. Midway through the evening, the swords, clogs and music of the Blackstone Edge Rapper, a Morris side, livened everything up! And it wasn’t even Folk Festival time! They are a female, non-binary Rapper Sword Morris side. They describe themselves as: “The Littleborough Rapper team”, which is constructed from, “ millstone grit, fried chicken and dirty beer. 2024 DERT Open Champs!” (Dance England Rapper Tournament).
The Blackstone Edge Rapper was formed in 2019 and definitely bring the ‘party’ with them wherever they visit. And like many other revivalist Rapper sides, they often go into pubs to put on a show, as part of a Rapper Pub Crawl!
Here they are live in Whitby 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4XNPwmfANo
