Search - Bill Coleman :: Smooth One: Live in Manchester May 1967

Bill Coleman

Brownian Motion | State College, PA United States | 08/22/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Trumpeter Coleman, strongly influenced by Louis Armstrong, belongs to that generation of jazz musicians (He was born in 1904) who set the standard for instrumental performance in the 1930s. But for the fact that he spent 80% of his career in Europe he would today be one of the icons of early jazz, comparable in stature to Coleman Hawkins, Red Allen, or Benny Carter. Unlike so many of his contemporaries Coleman was a true long distance runner: this date, recorded in England in 1967, finds him in great form, not at all enfeebled by advancing age. Listen to him on the old warhorse "Indiana", a song he must have played a thousand times before this: he effortlessly spins off four hot choruses, sings a couple more (the second scatted and very boppish), and then, after a piano interlude, takes it out with a pair of choruses that are like an instruction manual on swing and swinging. A welcome release."