Simon Spillett

Driving between gigs last week I revisited an album which I was very kindly sent by my good friend, the Canadian jazz enthusiast Tom Davis.

Over the past five years Tom and I have been collaborating on the forthcoming Tubby Hayes discography, which once upon a time was intended as a appendix to my biography of Tubby, but which will now be published as a separate volume.

Hayes fans will already know of the slim but valuable discography compiled by Barbara Schwartz, published in 1990, which was the basis of Tom's initial research.  Our combined efforts (and Schwartz was gracious in sending me all her files on Tubby) have led to a manuscript of fairly hefty proportions, as we soon discovered that Tubby appeared on a veritable heap of recordings that fall outside the original remit of documenting solely his work in the jazz field. Nevertheless we've ploughed on and, once in a while, this trawl for information has led to some surprising discoveries (Tubbs is on Charlie Drake's My Boomerang Won't Come Back! Not many people know that) . One lead we followed fruitlessly for a few years was that Tubby had recorded a rock 'n ' roll album with Tony Crombie, the former Club XI drummer who, with his band The Rockets, was among the pioneers of rock music in  the UK.

Eventually it was discovered that Tubbs did indeed play on a few of the Rockets singles, sometimes together with Ronnie Scott - sort of a Jazz Couriers Go Pop scenario - but there was then the question of a mysterious album recorded for Jeff Kruger's Ember label around 1959/60 by The Little John Anthony Band, Teenage Dance Party. (Ember EMB 3302).

Crombie was closely associated with Kruger (it was the Flamingo boss who suggested a sudden cash-in on Rock 'n Roll in 1956) and as Anthony John  was the drummers real name, the connection seemed plausible. Tubby was rumoured to have been on the recording, something that Kruger himself remembered, but finding the album was nigh on impossible. Finally in the spring of this year, a copy turned up on eBay, and we were able ascertain exactly who the tenor saxophonist was. As suspected, it was indeed Tubby Hayes.

Recorded during a purple patch for Tubbs (the nearest recording date under his own name being the marvellous Tubby's Groove) the Teenage Dance Party album isn't nearly so bad as it may initially seem. Titles like Teen Beat Special,  Let's Jive Honey and Boppin' and Hoppin'  might fill a prospective listener with dread, but the best way to describe the music, indeed Hayes playing on the album, is sort of modern jazz meets rhythm and blues.

Tubby does the odd bit of growling and squealing but there's nothing vulgar about his playing, indeed there are plenty of vintage Hayesian licks to make him instantly recognisable as a spectacular jazz saxophonist. The arrangements (for a quintet with guitar, piano, bass and drums) are actually neat little jump band charts, all expertly played, even though Crombie and Hayes apart the personnel is unknown (Kruger's records were always a discographers nightmare).

So, if you're eBaying at any time and you're looking for a bit of rare Tubby, you could do worse than try and find this record. It's by no means a world beater, but it still contains enough great playing from Tubby to make it worth your while.