Jazzers and Blueshounds brought the sounds of Chicago, New Orleans and Mississippi to Mumbles in May thanks to the Admiral Mumbles Mostly Blues & Jazz Festival. Dai Blatchford was there for Swansea Life magazine.
On a May weekend in Mumbles there is often little to do but sit and watch the tide do its job: go out and come back in again. It’s a sleepy time. The winter is over and summer is slowly warming things up.
But on the recent Bank Holiday May weekend in Mumbles visitors engaged in the time-honoured pursuit of tide watching would also have been aware of something different in the air. Carried on the breeze were the sounds of brooms being dusted, lemons being squeezed, guitars being slid and mojos starting to work. The annual Mumbles Blues and Jazz Festival was back strutting its stuff.
The Bank Holiday brought a blizzard of blues and jazz to Mumbles with the sixth annual Admiral Mumbles Mostly Blues and Jazz Festival. Mumbles’ microclimate did its bit in providing some very decent weather as an inviting backdrop to some seriously good music across the holiday weekend.
Organisers Terry Scales and David Townsend Jones, with more than able assistance from Dave Cottle, Karen Miller and a host of willing conscripts, combined to blow Mumbles’ metaphorical little cotton socks off. Music festivals are justly famed for their ramshackle organisation; this one ran like clockwork. The organisation was as tight as the bands that graced the marquee and satellite venues Mumbles Rugby Club and the Conservative Club. This was music red in tooth and claw and the audiences loved it.
The Sean Webster Band opened the festival on a Friday night in Mumbles and if those last words sound like the opening to a blues song it’s hardly surprising; the blues was everywhere. This storming three-piece opened with Bit by Bit and bit by bit they got better and better. In any set there is a defining song and in this case it came early with a stunning version of I Would Rather Go Blind – a song many will associate with the magnificent Chicken Shack; this was better.
Sean Webster showed his blues credentials by sidestepping the microphone and singing directly at the audience. It was soulful, powerful, wonderful stuff and the band played on. They were so confident in performance that Webster even spoofed the customary encore protocol. You know the one: the band put down their instruments and walk off before returning to play some more songs. He wasn’t prepared to play that charade, he told the audience; they loved him for it. So the band played on.
A band whose members have played on for longer than most can remember followed. Featuring Maggie Bell, Dave Kelly and a stunning line up of Zoot Money, Miller Anderson, Colin Hodgkinson and Colin Allen, this brought back some memories. Grizzled veterans of the business they may be but they still know their way around a tune.
From Miller Anderson’s opening on the railroad blues Tamp ’ em Up Solid through Maggie’s entrance to the strains of Wishing Well then on through songs by the legendary Son House and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee – it was versatility and talent in a bucket.
Close your eyes and you might have magically returned to those days that if you can remember them then you weren’t there. Maggie was having none of that with a tongue in cheek appeal to the audience to, “Buy our CDs cos we're pensioners now.” It prompted a group smile and a memory that while life is short, talent is long.
That was the one and only problem at this small nugget of a festival; there was so much musical talent flooding the village that everyday life had to be shunted to one side for the weekend. After all there were around 15 events, many featuring two acts.
And then there was jazz. There is a thin line between the genres and often there are crossover songs and performers, but clichéd though it is, there was something at this festival for everyone. Audiences tended to differ, with on balance a much more marked addiction to hats on the side of the blueshounds. But jazz there was with the Pete Allen Jazz Band playing WC Handy's Beale Street Blues and tunes from Fats Waller and the Duke. Soaring clarinet from Pete Allen and the tight support of the band covered the waterfront with a performance that embraced Dixieland, mainstream and traditional jazz. There were even nods to the sublime Satchmo of beloved memory.
Since this was officially The Year of Women in Blues and Jazz there were some outstandingly talented women performers on view. Claire Martin, supported by the sublime Gareth Williams Trio, paraded all the vocal skills that have led her to becoming an almost perpetual winner at the British Jazz Awards; a seven-time winner, she took the title of best vocalist yet again in the 2009 event.
Acclaimed in the UK and on the continent, this outstanding jazz vocalist showed why she has climbed the mountain gaining critical acceptance in the home of jazz across the pond. Serbian-born Ana Popovic was another talented singer/electric guitarist to grace the festival stage. Fronting her own band, she performed what Susan Frances of Jazz Times USA described as “gritty blues-weathered jazz.” And boy, could she make that guitar squeal.
It was perhaps the support band for Ana Popovic that fully encapsulated the real appeal of the festival, because if Mumbles had ever carelessly mislaid its mojo, it was Earl Thomas who not only found it for the village but handed it back on a soul platter. Taking the stage with the exceptionally talented Kings of Rhythm, Thomas stood stock still, shiny suited and apparently in a silent world all his own. After what seemed like an age he focused his thousand-yard stare full beam down on the audience and tore up the stage with Hoyt Axton's I've Never been to Spain.
Charisma is difficult to define, but it was all over the stage and running through the audience as this magical frontman put on a megawatt performance that had them begging for more. For good measure the Kings of Rhythm just happened to have played on the final album by Ike Turner. You can't sit still when the band plays Nutbush City Limits or Proud Mary or River Deep Mountain High – so people didn't. Even non-dancers tapped a toe or two. Ending with the powerful Stay with Me, Thomas even changed the lyrics to ‘Buy a CD and You Can Stay with Me’. It was that sort of performance.
And there was more; much, much more. Great performances from The Amigos, The Brian Breeze Band with Raymond Taff Williams and a brace of Cottles, with a closer from the Hamsters all served to underline the abundance of talent that made the annual pilgrimage to Mumbles.
And therein lies a tale. There was plenty of support from locals and visitors alike, but the costs and logistics of mounting a festival of this quality are fairly breathtaking. The organisers have created something special here and are aware of the festival imperative to provide bigger and better bands as the years go on. That can happen but it will need the support of the ticket-buying public and the appearance of more sponsors who want to help ensure that this gem of a festival continues to occupy its rightful place on the UK live music calendar.
Dai Blatchford
© Swansea Life, June 2010
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