He was very friendly as were all the staff at the studio – I hope you enjoy our chat about my early life in Nottingham, family, music etc…

ps. This is the youtube clip he talks about too…

Watch film of the highlights now!

I’m dashing off to Nottingham for one of my old school friend’s wedding this coming Saturday and the following morning, no matter what my condition, I have been asked to drag my carcass to the BBC studios to be interviewed for a whole hour by John Holmes on BBC Radio Nottingham – I’m to chose 5 “tracks of my years” and he will also play a song from “The Magical Mirror”…  It’s a pleasure to be invited and should I be wearing dark glasses, it will not be my ego gone mad but my hangover I am concealing!

Jazzy love xj

* Ten weeks of homepage coverage
* Two weeks free advertising on we7
* Feature in the we7 newsletter & blog
* Social Network Promotion
* Banners to promote your we7 profile on your social networks

The total value of this package is in excess of £10,000!

So thanks to Katie Napper for putting me forward to the office – she emailed me to say “I let our guys listen to your music and they like your stuff so much we are going to give you a slot!”  That is one hefty gift huh.  With so many doors being closed on ‘unsigned artists’ these days I am really chuffed to be given this opportunity.

Also I have been interviewed in All About Jazz which might be a chuckle to read on a tea break x

The weather was frankly not as nice as it could have been, in fact there was a savage storm towards the end of the event that threatened to blow up the sound desk and give Mari a new beehive just by holding the mic but the crowd were incredible and stuck around dancing and grooving like crazy.  So a really warm reception for all of us and lots of money raised for good causes by the 20th annual fun run earlier that day.  Great stuff; makes one proud to be an honourary North Londoner.

This follows the success of last Sunday’s pre-launch at our residency Downstairs at the King’s Head, as well as radio play the same evening…

I am now looking forward to this Sunday’s Crouch End Festival; where I will be guesting with Mari Wilson and her band and performing alongside some great local jazzers incl. Ian Shaw and Jean Toussaint to name but a few.

Jazzy wizzy lets get busy!

xj

1. I Won’t Ask
2. Can I Think of Love?
3. Cruel Competition
4. The Magical Mirror
5. Without You Tonight
6. Don’t Assume that I’m Blue
7. I Try Too Hard
8. Scared of the Keys
9. Kinder
10. Looonatic
11. Missing You/My One and Only Love

1. I Won’t Ask
2. Can I Think of Love?
3. Cruel Competition
4. Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps
5. From Russia with Love
6. Tico Tico

Her set was very witty and poignant as you might expect.  Turning 80 this coming July; Annie’s voice has thinned and her range is set mostly in the deeper register but there are still moments of power, and her tour de force performance is not diminished.  Singing a selection of jazz ballads alongside some upbeats and her own songs, I found the most moving number to be “Music Is Forever”.  It is a tribute that she wrote about the astounding jazz musicians – her friends and peers who are sadly no longer with us, but whose music remains.  She says, while we listen to them, they still live.  I love this sentiment; it is very comforting.  I feel it is true that recordings; audio, film and photographs have a strange magic to them – I have great respect for them.  They are a piece of that person – they live.  Memories and feelings are captured and frozen in time, just as memories are stored in our own minds.

If anyone had doubted Annie’s ability to pull out of the bag hits from the LH&R show, she proved in ‘Come on Home‘ that as a soloist she can still channel Jon and Dave – singing and swinging a selection of all the parts of that famous recording by herself and never missing a beat.  She also hit ‘Twisted’ with a tempo not shy of what I sing it at today and between the lyrics managed to credit the soloists in the band; Tardo Hammer on piano, Dave Green on bass, Steve Brown on drums and her beloved Warren Vache on cornet (their chemistry was really touching and I don’t doubt that it continues outside the performance…)

Anyway, I happen to be friends with Annie’s stepdaughter Victoria Jeffrey, who works as an actress and sadly, couldn’t come last night due to tour commitments.  She had given me a letter to pass on to Annie.  I explained this to Warren and he invited Rose and I to go backstage and see Annie ourselves, which we were delighted to do.  She was so warm and friendly, genuinely delighted by all the attention – as you can imagine, there were rather a lot of old friends and acquaintances, as well as fans clamouring to see her but I thankfully managed to pass on Vicky’s note and spend a few minutes talking with her.  I explained that I sing and also that I had written some vocalese, which, were it not for her inspiration I doubt I would ever have done.

It seems appropriate now that ‘The Magical Mirror’, the song I wrote about my late father should be a vocalese.  It shares the essence of Annie and her belief in music as eternal life.  Perhaps she has gifted me the antidote to the brutal truth – as her lyrics insist; “When they say nothing is forever, well I just smile ’cause I know it’s not true; music is forever, and you still live when we listen to you.”

Thank you Annie.

http://jazzandcocktails.co.uk/bollywood-ball-blog/

xj

I’ll be back soon with a cheeky video of us in Hong Kong too xj