Though John Thomson, the Fast Show's jazz host, put in an appearance on this six-act circus, everybody else used variations on "great" a lot more than he. Peter King, the elegant and technically masterful British saxophonist who played on the opening night of Ronnie Scott's Club as a teenager in 1959 and thus fittingly opened Saturday's anniversary show, was "the greatest alto saxophonist in the world today". Dee Dee Bridgewater, the energetic and vivacious Ella Fitzgerald-influenced singer, was "one of the greatest vocalists in jazz music". And so it went on. You could see where John Thomson got it from.
But the audience had assembled to give thanks for what was an indisputably great achievement - the late Ronnie Scott's and the other Pete King's success in presenting some of the most creative musicians of the century, in ideal circumstances, to audiences hitherto largely deprived of the opportunity to hear them. Elvin Jones was the musical colossus of the first half, even though he played only unaccompanied drums. Jones came on after a sharp but short set from Peter King's band, which culminated in a buoyant account by King and an enduringly canny and agile Georgie Fame of the Charlie Parker early-biography theme from Charlie Watts's Bird-tribute disc. Jones then delivered 20 minutes or so of reverberant, dynamically dazzling confirmation of his stature as a master jazz percussionist (72 years on the planet or no).
Dee Dee Bridgewater took the forthright materials of standard songs and made them complex. But though her intonation and stagecraft sometimes make her a rather mannered performer, Bridgewater is saved from pyrotechnics by a sophisticated harmonic sense and a superb Paris-based group with which she almost telepathically interacts. Sensing the anniversary-show audience wanted an opportunity to yelp a little, Bridgewater hurtled into a glittering display of Fitzgerald-like scat and torchy ballads.
The Count Basie Orchestra opened after the interval, elegantly recapturing the seductively gliding swing and appetite for the blues of the original ensemble. The latter form is delivered with majestic heat by the band's vocalist Carmen Bradford, who reappeared in the finale to help draw some of the best moments from George Benson, the one-time jazz guitar virtuoso and then 70s soul-star who has been latterly seeking to reinvent himself in a Nat King Cole crooning style. His Las Vegas smoothness was wrong for the gig until he cut loose on guitar on the driving Basie's Bag, and some big-finish punchy blues. The second epic of the 40th anniversary Barbican shows, featuring the unquestionably great Sonny Rollins, is on Friday.
***** Unmissable
**** Recommended
*** Enjoyable
** Mediocre
* Terrible
