FOR LOUIS AND SIDNEY BECHET (June 2010)

Thanks to “jazze 1947,” here is a video clip from the June 2010 Askersunds Jazz Festival — featuring Bent Persson’s Hot Five focusing on the repertoire of Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet in the early Twenties — from the Clarence Williams Blue Five to the Hot Fives and Sevens. 

Bent is, as always, luminous on trumpet and cornet; here he is partnered by Thomas Winteler on clarinet and soprano saxophone (sounding more like Bechet than anyone ever did except Sidney himself), the noble Jacob Ullberger on banjo and guitar, Henrik Löf on trombone and tuba; Ulf Lindberg,  piano; Ludvig Carlsson, drums, washboard, vocal, and guitar.  Here they perform the “slow drag” TEXAS MOANER BLUES and then — after Bent explains it all in Swedish — go into a wonderfully idiomatic MUSKRAT RAMBLE, with the front line reflecting the famous recorded solos but not copying them: