[Dixielandjazz] George Shearing

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

I know from TV documentaries that George Shearing was initially hailed as 
Britain's King of Boogie Woogie. He was a terrific virtuoso around 1940, and 
made some excellent records solo and in a band with Stephane Grappelly, then in 
exile from France. There is also Squeezing the Blues, on which he was not keen 
to remember he played accordion, with excellent blues piano accompaniment by 
Leonard Feather, later known as a critic and in fact the acme of male chauvinist 
pig lyricists, to judge from some things Feather wrote for Lips Page.  


The Shearing Dixieland set is not what it might have been, I recall that one 
participant spoke of original plans having been abandoned and Shearing having 
written charts and rather tamed the proceedings. My own copy of the CD is in a 
box with a lot of old review copies I've not got round to selling. Some people 
liked it more than I did.  Offers considered. 

He could turn it on when something nerved or unnerved him, but he did seem to 
like providing a certain level of appeal. Which is pretty well what Albert 
McCarthy said of some unnamed Mainstream players he had to try to induce to play 
jazz not "Easy Listening" in the 1950s. Shearing's hour as holiday substitute in 
Humphrey Lyttelton's radio chair was startlingly short on jazz even of the more 
swing than dixieland sort -- Peggy Lee with strings and the other side of her 
from jazz. 


When the very different Eddie Thompson was in New York playing along the street 
from Shearing he had someone put up a sign ENGLAND'S OTHER BLIND PIANIST. 
Thompson -- who managed to get a slot on a British tv talent show AFTER he'd 
come back from New York (Ken Mathieson turns a Hue eh Green) --was a surpassing 
virtuoso, witness the wow! live recording with Spike Robinson, who recorded in 
England as a postwar GI and returned after a life of office-work to be a 
post-Lester tenorist of singular sound/ There was a nice Thompson set with Roy 
Williams, but the live set with Robinson is an experience. 

The best Shearing line was in reply to "have you been blind all your life?"
NOT YET he said. Well, he could never say anything different.