The Very Best Of The Temperance Seven

With just hours to go before the 20s begin again, I'm trying once more to engender a trad-jazz revival with more of the great Temperance Seven. Here is a compilation of what they were up to in the late 50s and early 60s with the great George Martin, before he got distracted by Scousers.

I think this CD was a turning point for me, as I had always felt that recording quality in the 50s and 60s was pretty bad. However the sound quality present here is fantastic, and further reading showed that pop music in particular was mixed so that it sounded relatively good on transistor radios. Well fancy that!

So grab your monocle, dress up in your best soup and fish and get ready for greats such as The Charleston, The Shake and The Black Bottom. Vo Do Dee O!

The Very Best Of The Temperance Seven

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Ronnie Hazelhurst & Orchestra - Laurel & Hardys Music Box

Now a real treat as we celebrate the birthday of Jesus! He had some pretty bad luck being born on Christmas day. One lot of presents per year, and if those first gifts were anything to go by, they were pretty boring ones. At least Joseph could have swapped the gold for a Scalextric or something I suppose. Maybe he did. If my wife had been impregnated by a deity, I'd certainly want some table-top electric car action.

Anyway, this has a somewhat tenuous link to the 20s as it was more a 30s thing but I'm not waiting another ten years.

Faithfully recreated with modern recording equipment, this is all the Laurel and Hardy music you could need. Maybe pop it on your phone and go with your earphones to re-enact some famous scenes, such as going down the docks and tricking merchant seamen into getting a mouthful of broken egg. Or maybe getting hold of a policeman's wallet, inviting him to a restaurant and pulling it out in order to pay for his dinner.

Laurel & Hardys Music Box

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Bob Kerr and His Whoopee Band - Molotov Cocktails for Two

As we prepare to venture into a new decade, I'm sticking with music inspired by the 20s, as very soon we'll have to add a '19' to that so nobody gets confused. These are the last few days during which we can just say 'the 20s' and I'm very sad (yes, in more ways than one).

Anyway, I just wonder if we might see a resurgence in clarinet playing, bespecatcled people hanging off of very tall buildings in films and tuberculosis. Probably not, but I can dream.

This latest offering is courtesy of Bob Kerr and his accompanying Whoopee Band which is indeed very silly, but all the more likeable for that. Find the humble banjo lauded in the track Pleasant Pluckers, or their rendition of The Old Bazaar in Cairo in which the phrase 'fanny hair' is cheekily placed, or perhaps the not so subtle My Baby's Wild About my Old Trombone.

Amid all this fun however is a rather jarring version of the great Winchester Cathedral when the band must have got lost somewhere and a MIDI sound module was drafted in. Shocking!

Molotov Cocktails for Two

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The Temperance Seven ‎- The Writing On The Wall

Being another of those 60s bands which would draw from the 20s, the UK's Temperance Seven shunned the sex, drugs and rock and roll of their own time, preferring instead to go back to the spirit of the era of prohibition. When people got proper hammered.

Here's their 1992 offering with them posed next to a section of the Berlin Wall. No I don't get the connection either, but I remember the wall getting hammered at the end, so there's that anyway.

The Temperance Seven ‎- The Writing On The Wall

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