Sunday, 30 May 2010

Paul Gonsalves & Tubby Hayes - Just Friends (Columbia, 1965)

When Duke Ellington's band played the Royal Festival Hall in 1964, star saxophonist Paul Gonsalves was suddenly taken stoned, leaving a massive gap in the Ducal front line. A dep was needed urgently, and Tubby Hayes was the natural choice. He overcame the small obstacle of Gonsalves having no band parts (he'd memorised the lot) by transposing Jimmy Hamilton's clarinet scores, and aced it when Mrs Clinkscales' best known pupil called him forward for Gonsalves' feature on 'Diminuendo in Blue' and 'Crescendo in Blue'. When he'd recovered, Mex, as Gonsalves was known, vowed to make a record with his stand-in, and Just Friends was the result. Back in the days when I had more money than sense, I spent £75 on this bugger, but I don't regret a single penny of it. Apart from the principals, it's got four of my all-time favourites in the personnel: Jimmy Deuchar on trumpet and mellophonium, Keith Christie on trombone, Stan Tracey on piano and Ronnie Stephenson on drums. It also has some fine interpretations of numbers like 'Pedro's Walk' from Tubbs' Tours and the Stan Tracey original 'Baby Blue'.

If anyone has a clean copy of the follow-up Change of Setting and the means to make a good transfer, please get in touch.

Personnel: Jimmy Deuchar (tp,mell), Les Condon (tp), Keith Christie (tb), Tubby Hayes (ts,vib,as), Paul Gonsalves (ts), Jackie Sharpe (bs), Stan Tracey (p), Lennie Bush (b), Ronnie Stephenson (d).

1. Tupa
2. Amber Mood
3. Just Friends
4. Pedro's Walk
5. Baby Blue
6. Souriya
7. Mini Minor

Multi-part RAR download links - FLAC - 211MB
Part 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/k9x7y8
Part 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/xbajuk
Part 3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/74upec
Posted by at
Labels: , ,

12 comments:

  1. The Scenery Within11 September 2010 at 05:16

    Shabba!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Baron30 September 2010 at 04:18

    Thanks ... Baron

    ReplyDelete
  3. insta2 October 2010 at 01:48

    Thank you for this beautiful Jazz. BTW, the amount of work you've put into your post is impressive - sound quality and booklet are both amazing! Now downloading the Clarke-Boland LP, it'll take the whole day because of slow freeloading at Sendspace, but I know it will be worth the wait. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Simon66615 October 2010 at 20:41

    thanks a lot for this.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The Jazz Botherer13 November 2010 at 15:06

    Insta - it helps to start with an absolutely pristine copy of the LP. I'm not always so lucky. Thanks for the kind words, all.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Beastie19 December 2010 at 04:15

    Many thanks - if you have any more Tubby or Paul Gonsalves I'll be most grateful!

    ReplyDelete
  7. alex12 January 2011 at 08:56

    Ive got Change of Setting too - ill try and do a decent conversion for ya'll!
    check out www.paulgonsalves.org

    ReplyDelete
  8. The Jazz Botherer29 January 2011 at 19:09

    Alex - That's very kind and helpful of you. I look forward to it. I will be adding some more material here soon. Life intervenes...

    ReplyDelete
  9. anomia6 February 2011 at 06:14

    Soooo amazing to find this; thanks for sharing the Tubby!

    BTW no idea who Wally Stott was; thanks for the edification!

    ReplyDelete
  10. alex9 May 2011 at 11:38

    Hi Mr Jazz Botherer!

    I have ripped the "Change of Setting" LP. Its totally raw and as-is. Iwas wondering if you wanted it? Email me at alexander.dunford@googlemail.com if interested.

    Cheers
    Alex.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Peter16 June 2011 at 16:42

    Thanks a lot for this!

    But where have you gone?? :-O

    ReplyDelete
  12. q3mi415 January 2019 at 01:52

    thanks a lot for this post!
    I have "Just Friends" as mp3 and thought I might upgrade to FLAC and spread the message a little further, too bad sendspace links don't seem to work...

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)