A Big New Band From Britain - Dave Lee

Piece Of Cake

A Big New Band From Britain
Dave Lee
His Piano and His Orchestra
Produced by Sonny Lester
Album Design by Maurer Studio
Top Rank International RM 336
1960

From the back cover: Dave Lee is a British pianist who has already been heard to vigorous effect in Top Rank's album of the Johnny Dankworth band, recorded at the 1959 Newport Festival, Bundle From Britain (RM 314). Lee has since left Dankworth; and among other recent activities he has written the score for New Cranks, an incisively witty review by John Cranko who was responsible for the original and marvelously mordant Cranks that helped to thoroughly establish Annie Ross' reputation among the New York Opinion-makers in the days before Lambert-Hendricks-Ross.

The concept of this album, recorded in London, was that of an enlightened dance band that could provided uniquely stimulating music for the ballroom floor and also keep listeners-only involved.

Lee is the principal soloist, and as is evident from the opening Lover Come Back To Me onward, he plays with considerable drive and a strong feeling for the blues. His favorites include Bud Powell, Art Tatum and Horace Silver, among others. His sidemen consist of a crack assemblage of British players, including several representatives of the then Johnny Dankworth band and also some form the Ted Heath Guards. Trumpet solos in the album are by Welshman Bert Courtley, currently playing jazz with Ronnie Scott in a combo, and tenor saxophonist Tubby Scott, an enfant formidable of the "hard school" of British jazz.

Dave Lee his piano and orchestra like functional, clear-lined scores of Manny Albam. Amblingly relaxed is Georgia On My Mind, while Chloe reflects the urgency of the search for the enigmatic protagonist of the song.

Piece Of Cake is a British expression for something easy to do, as this arrangement purportedly was. Note the trenchant contributions of Courtley and the robust Tubby Hayes as well as Dave Lee's own straightaway digging for roots.

You You You is a crisply accented reanimation of the standard. London Derriere is a highly personal tale of a traveler's woe, a graphic program piece cued by the profusion of low baritone saxophone and trombone plaints. Blue Denham is not an ode to the weaving industry o Britain but rather a salute to a pleasant residential outside of London with Dave Lee forcefully showing the way.

I Cover The Waterfront is a change of mood and geography with Lee indicating he can be tender as well as aggressively assertive. Note the Eastern (U.S.A.) shakes the arranger has introduced into the trumpet section here and elsewhere. Cheek To Cheek is treated with unpretentious directness and is followed by one of the few jazz-like arrangements of Charles Trenet's usually rhapsodic Beyond The Sea.

The British jazz and popular music scene has changed remarkably since the Original Dixieland Jazz Band arrived in London in 1919. By the 1960s, there is at least one imaginative jazz big band (Johnny Dankworth) and one brilliantly disciplined dance band (Ted Heath). Several striking soloists have been developed, among them West Indian Dizzy Reece (now in America), altoist Joe Harriott, vibist Vic Feldman (now in America permanently), Tubby Hayes, and baritone saxophonist Ronnie Ross, among others. Add to this roster pianist Dave Lee as well as the increasing capacity of British sidemen to grasp the big band idiom and to play with a thrust and verve that indicate how strongly the jazz influence has reached into British popular music practices.

This album, as noted, is for dancing as well as listening; and it also serves to introduce in a framework tailored to him an invigorating British pianist – Dave Lee. – Nat Hentoff

From Billboard - October 17, 1960: British pianist Dave Lee leads this tight, propulsive big band, which can be closely identified with the Basie idiom, thru a series of 11 masterfully played tracks. Most of the cuts are at a very danceable tempo and are culled from the storehouse of American standards. "Georgia On My Mind," "Chloe," "Bye, Bye Blackbird" and "Cheek To Cheek" are just a few.

Love Come Back To Me
Bye Bye Blackbird
Georgia On My Mind
Chloe
Piece Of Cake
You, You, You
London Derriere
Blue Denham
I Cover The Waterfront
Cheek To Cheek
Beyond The Sea