[Dixielandjazz] Humphrey Lyttelton anniversary

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

This may well be news even to Bill Haesler, but VE-Day marks the 75th anniversary of the first recording and broadcast of the playing of Humphrey Lyttelton, with a vast chorus hardly matched anywhere else in jazz discographies. 
It was in every sense a live and living date, the Humph section's subsequent broadcasts also beyond chronicling, except perhaps the sample I seem to remember from a highly amusing quiz and explosion of anecdotes in which BBC radio engaged veterans now long ago. The highlight of all was Slim Gaillard's answer to "what is a tiple?", referring to an instrument played in recordings by the Spirits of Rhythm and notably Leo Watson, described by the greatest Lyttelton as "one of my favourite madmen". Slim's rhapsody lasted several minutes and was surely one of his greatest recorded performance (and happily after barbarians of Broadcasting House lost the habit of obliterating the irreplaceable). 

To return from that further madman to his trumpet-playing cherisher, the story of Humph's debut on (extremely) non-private recorded performance is a simple one. In London somewhere around the time he was discharged from the army Humph took his trumpet to the festivities in front of what Londoners call Buck House (Buckingham Palace) and reputedly hanging on to railings with a free hand marked the day by playing a tune also heard frequently in German beer gardens, where rather than the English name  "Roll out the Barrel" it is known as "Rosamunde". Also known as "The Beer Barrel Polka" this has nothing to do with slanders of German womanhood, notable for svelte representatives and many of them dear to me.  The music was composed by the Czech musician Jaromír Vejvoda in 1927.
Which is fitting, given the complications of Europe in the decade before 1945. And the street musicians of 1990s Prague whose jazz had been so close to the heart of this page,
shalom!Robert R. Calder

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