The Ronnie Scott Quartet - BBC Jazz Club Sessions 1964-1966 (2020)

Everyone knows that the 1960s, the decade in which London swung as never before, were the Golden Era of Ronnie Scott’s club, thetiny bolthole of a basement that had swiftly gone from a strictly parochial phenomenon to an international marker on the jazz map.What’s less well-known, largely thanks to his own diffidence about recording, is that this was also the time in which Scott the player hit his peak. These previously unreleased sessions from 1964-66 find him helming his own quartet - a band praised by critics of the time asa ‘powerful combo’ creating ‘full-blooded, exciting’ jazz - in three distinct t settings; live in Manchester (supporting jazz superstars the Dave Brubeck Quartet); in the studio; and accompanying a very special guest, the iconic American jazz vocalist Mark Murphy. Rarely has Scott been heard to better advantage, his playing throughout these sets bringing his legend back to vivid, hard-swinging and passionately communicative life.