Swinging The Bard - The Ken Jones Orchestra

 

St. Valentine's Blues

Nine For Bacon

Swinging The Bard

The Ken Jones Orchestra

The Elizabethan Consort Of Viols - Directed by Dennis Nesbitt

Elaine Delmar

Musical Direction: Ken Jones

Recording Engineer: Adrian Kerridge 

Cover: Loring Eutemey

A record supervision (London) production under the personal supervision of Denis Preston

Geoffrey Emmott's Recorder Consort

Atco Records 33-171

1964

From the back cover: Music seems to have been more than a passing fancy for Shakespeare. Reference after reference to the art keep cropping up in the plays. "And certain stars shot madly from their spheres to hear the sea-maid's music," run two of the less exalted lines in "A Midsummers-Night Dream," and while there are no sea-maids on this LP (Miss Elaine Delmar is strictly a land-lubber) one hopes that Bard would still have bent an appreciative ear to these musical offerings. The performances are, for a start, chock-full of surprises. The use of viols, for instance, rather than the more conventional – and more sentimental – violins, results in a purity of texture that spurs Shake Keane into producing some of his happiest solos. Similarly, Elaine Delmar sings in the manner of the 1960s, but her voice is blended with the sounds of recorders and harpsichord. This is, in fact, a light-hearted yet essentially serious attempt to honoring William Shakespeare.

The Overture is the work of David Lindup and Leonard Salzedo, two composers whose previous collaboration – Rendezvous – called upon the combined resources of the London Philharmonic and the Johnny Dankworth orchestras. This time the work is very different, although once again two ensembles are involved. "We took a 16th century lute tune called – improbable though it seems – Mititis Dump," says Salzedo, "and we used the ground-bass scheme as the basis of the three sections. "The opening section deploys the Consort of Viols in such a way as to suggest a concerto gross; later on Shake Keane and Roy Willox (on flute) both take solos. Salzedo scored the passages for viols, incidentally, and Lindup handled the big band parts. David Mack's Shake On A Barre was suggested by the antics of Shake Keane – six-feet-four, brass-player and poet, who came to London from the Caribbean in the early 1950s – during a rehearsal in the nearby dance-studios of the Ballet Rambert. Two other pieces are the work of a couple of London's busiest jazz musicians: Johnny Hawksworth, bassist for many years with Ted Heath's orchestra, and Stan Tracey, pianist at the Ronnie Scott Club, who has worked with a vast number of visiting American jazz musicians, from Stan Getz to Roland Kirk. Hawksworth's In A Stratford Garden (orchestrated by Ken Jones) features the trumpet playing of Eddie Blair, while Tracey's decidedly Ellingtonish composition, Puck, has Kenny Baker using a plunger mute to conjure bizarreries from his instrument.

No Shakespearean venture would be complete without some mention of the various pretenders to the authorship of the plays. This LP restricts itself to three of the likeliest – Bacon, Marlowe and the Earl of Oxford. The last-named is the subject of Oxford Blue, the work of Ken Jones, a piece which moves, paradoxically enough, in waltz-time, although the Earl himself would have been much more at home with a pavan or galliard. The favorite contender provides a title for one of the most intriguing compositions on the record, John Mayer's Nine For Bacon. ("It's built on a passacaglia theme." says Mayer, "Five note which reappear in various forms"). Scored for nine instruments, it is also an example of the Nonet, a species about which Dr. Percy Scholes declares, rather curtly: "Such compositions are comparatively rare." Lastly there is Ray Premru's setting of Christopher Marlowe's Live With Me And Be My Love (more properly known as The Passionate Sheepheard To His Love), which demonstrates the great poets can write pop-song lyrics just as snappily as the denizens of Tin Pan Alley.

The remaining songs – all strictly by Shakespeare – range from Leonard Salzedo's torch St. Valentine's Blues (sung by the deranged Ophelia in Act IV, Scene V of "Hamlet") to David Lindup's Fye On Sinful Fantasy (from "The Merry Wives Of Windsor") and Leon Young's Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind (From "As You Like It"). The trickiest job of all, thought, was undertaken by Sandy Brown, one of Britain's saltiest jazz clarinetists, who set about Sonnet No. 18 – iambic pentameter, octave, sestet and all. ("The problem was to spread the fourteen lines over 32 bars," explains Sandy. "Luckily the part with the greatest density of language and meaning the slowest bit – if I can put it that way, fitted neatly into the middle-eight"). All of the songs, incidentally, were orchestrated by Leonard Salzedo.

The rest - to lean back upon a familiar quotation – is silence. But meantime our company of players – trumpets Shake Keane, Eddie Blair and Kenny Baker, the delectable Miss Delmar, musical director Ken Jones and the several composers, arrangers, copyists, musicians, recording engineers and other rude mechanicals – have paid their tribute to Albion's mightiest poet. No gadzookery, no hey-sonny-nonnying, just honest, imaginative music. The Bard, one suspects, would have felt flattered. Even Mr. W.H. and the Dark Lady might have tapped a toe – Charles Fox

From Billboard - February 20, 1965: Jazz fans will enjoy the Ken Jones big band interpretations of Bardsville. The entire album is highly imaginative. In addition, Elaine Delmar's cool vocals with the Elizabethan Consort of Violas and Geoffrey Emmott's Recorder Consort are all contributive to the light-hearted yet highly creative attempt at honoring Shakespeare.

Overture: Strike Up The Band

St. Valentine's Blues

Shake On A Barre

Live With Me And Be My Love

In A Stratford Garden

Blow, Blow Thou Winter End

Nine For Bacon

Fye On Sinful Fantasy

Oxford Blue

Shall I Compare Thee?

Puck