[Dixielandjazz] Humph and Roy and Oskar and Lips

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Longtime listeners to Humphrey Lyttelton's jazz record programme on BBC radio may remember one of his favourite autobiographical anecdotes, about the solo he played on one of his earlier recordings --  and how he had lifted it from a Roy Eldridge 78 he had cherished since his schooldays. In 1949 some Brits thought Roy decadent. 
Humph got away with it. 
 
I had the good fortune to be in Germany a couple of years ago and in Halle when Oskar Klein was on his anniversary tour. To mark his having turned 75 . .  and it went on for eighteen months until being stopped or moved to a higher venue by an intervention from Gabriel. The Halle venue was a most impressive mediaeval church. 
He played a remarkable amount of Ellington, in fact he was just a big swing trumpeter definitely more Harry Sweets Edison than what might have been assumed from the paying jobs he had, DSCB and the nice things on YouTube. 
 
Of course one of the more remarkable things on the various Storyville CDs of live Dixieland gigs from the 1950s is a performance of "South" with Lips Page and Eddie Barefield!
A bit like the original German or French cast of a play performing it in English translation.