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Kenny Graham

Presenting Kenny Graham

Vocalion CDNJT 5301

As this compilation’s title implies, tenor player Kenny Graham is a somewhat undersung figure in UK jazz. He served his apprenticeship in outfits such as Johnny Claes’s band (early 1940s), and with the likes of Leslie ‘Jiver’ Hutchinson (mid-1940s), Nat Gonella (1948) and Victor Feldman (1949), but it was his leadership role with the groundbreaking Afro-Cubists (1950­late 1960s, with numerous breaks) for which he is celebrated today, and whose music forms the bulk of this album (information from John Chilton’s invaluable Who’s Who of British Jazz).

Featuring some seminal figures in British jazz (George Chisholm, Stan Tracey, Phil Seamen and the flaringly brilliant trumpeter Joe Hunter among them), there are fifteen Afro-Cubist tracks (plus a couple of bonus tracks from All the Winners) on this intelligently compiled recording, and they provide, as Richard Cook (his Jazz Encyclopedia an unfailing source of perceptive, pithy commentary) suggests, ‘a strange fusion of bop, small-band swing and an exotic kind of expressionism’. Their material ranges from smart, subtle reworkings of nuggets from the Ellington book (‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore’, ‘Rockin’ in Rhythm’, ‘Time’s a’ Wasting’) to Graham originals illuminated both by the aforementioned Hunter and by the dignified, full-bodied, ripe tenor playing of Graham himself.

As the name of the band suggests, Cuba and its alternately loping and peppy rhythms is a prime source of inspiration, and on tracks such as ‘Cuban Fantasy’ and ‘Bongo Chant’ the mix of Caribbean and London is what makes Graham’s music so individual and special. A valuable and enlightening ­ as well as wholly enjoyable ­ hour’s worth of music from a genuine original.