(B)old Festival : West London Rhythm Kings, Royal Festival Hall, London (GB) - May 18, 2018

This traditional jazz/Dixieland band played well-known jazz numbers from the 1920s and 1930s: Creole Love Call, I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling, Willie the Weeper, It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie, Old Rockin’ Chair, Tin Roof Blues, Everybody Loves My Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home Bill Bailey. Fats Waller songs featured. The musicians were: John Keen trumpet/vocal, prob Mike Pointon trombone/vocal, John Laws clarinet, Ray Smith piano, Tim Wake banjo, prob Peter Brooks double bass. A competent outfit, quite pleasurable to listen to, definitely British trad – I’d far rather hear this stuff played on record by Clarence Williams’s small groups for instance. Don’t really know how this strange British style came about – the repertoire here is fine but they knew how to play it properly in 1930 and didn’t have fetishes about banjos instead of guitars and were happy to embrace the saxophone.