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Tony
Barnard's All Hat Jazz
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Tracks
SHOTTLE BOP - a hard hop blues
and is of course a spoonerism as in "I'm out of beer, I'll just
pop down to the shottle bop".
GOD BLESS THE CHILD - sung from
the heart by Australia's premier Blues singer, Rod
Jeffery.
BIRTHDAY SONG is a samba, Hooray!
party time.
VESPERS - a slow wistful piece
dedicated to absent friends. Some lovely flugel horn by Alan and
beautiful bowed bass under my solo by Dave. It's my favorite.
BLUES FANFARE - what can I say?
Alan and Robert go berserk! I love it! Listen for Rob's double A
(it was a lot longer live).
TWENTY YEARS ON - a good old
shuffle blues dedicated to Rod's wife Shirley, a kicking track with
great horns.
THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER YOU
- my father Bob and my uncle Len had just finished a gig and popped
into the studio at the end of the session, about midnight, so we
put down a few drinks as well as this track. A good blower this
one. It is also the first lime the four Barnard boys have been recorded
together.
DOCTOR BLUES - screaming blues
by the Man Mountain, Rod Jeffery, with the 5 octave vocal range.
He actually broke the microphone on this track with just the power
of his voice. We all had headphones on at the time, it was loud
in there! If you listen carefully a few seconds after the end of
the song you'll hear a word from Adam, which we all take to mean,
"gosh, Rod ol' son, that was a tad overpowering!"
RHAPSODIC - a thoughtful and
evocative piece to finish the album. I wrote this for my mother
Pat when she was taken very ill and I was far from home (thankfully
she's now fine and busy being brilliant).
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"All Hat Jazz played and toured Australia many times from 1988
to 1995 appearing and headlining at jazz festivals, clubs and pubs.
We also held a five year residency at the Unity Hall Hotel in the Sydney
suburb of Balmain, playing to packed house each week. In fact All Hat
Jazz become somewhat of a Sunday institution for the many followers
and fans who regularly made the pilgrimage.
Obviously we took our name from the fact that we all wore hats,
which started as a bit of a laugh and strangely enough caught on. Many
of the regulars would wear hats as well, some so bizarre that we began
giving away a bottle of bubble for the zaniest. We even had a brass
hat stand on stage, covered of course with odd and embarrassing hats
for guest musicians who had foolishly neglected to bring their own.
We had
lots of fun, like my brother Adam's drum
solos which usually ended up with him leaving the kit and playing the
walls, the windows, the tables and the punters, even on the street outside.
We usually finished the gig with a big drum roll, the crowd would fall
silent as I would take my aim, test the wind and perform the "Throwing
the hat across the stage and onto Dave's head routine" which we never
quite managed to perfect, much to the amusement of the crowd.
Forgive the
nostalgia but this is a special album for me for many reasons. It really
has that tightness and sympathetic feel of a band that worked together
regularly. There was lots of energy, inventiveness, humor and fun and
we made some good music together. "
Tony
Barnard - London January 1999
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