Happy Faces
Dave Robbins Big Band
Reel to Real Records RTRCD015 (thedaverobbinsbigband.bandcamp.com/album/happy-faces)
The big band is often associated with being a kind of period piece of the proverbial Swing Era and we tend to forget that the best of them can come to represent the very epitome of an all-encompassing concert instrument. Truth be told this vaunted position is not only the exclusive domain of the flashiest outfits such as the Duke Ellington and Count Basie, or the Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton orchestras either.
On this disc the redoubtable American/Canadian bandleader Dave Robbins and his illustrious colleagues explore the fire power of controlled chamber music that arises when various brass, reeds and woodwind instruments, and piano, bass and drums, are put in the hands of some quite legendary musicians. Happy Faces, the resultant album is a magisterial edifice of music in numerous lyrical and colourful contexts, each one reflecting the singular ability of each of the contributing musicians to swing with proverbial style and abandon.
Robbins (1923-2005) was a generous purveyor of musical good taste, and it is not only charts such as Have Vine Will Swing and Africa Lights that provide indubitable evidence of this. There are reasons beyond those charts to savour the disc. Fraser MacPherson’s tenor saxophone on March Winds Will Blow, and Don Clark’s trumpet solo on Asiatic Raes is another; as is Don Thompson’s tasteful contrabass on the abovementioned Have Vine Will Swing.
Released on Cellar Live’s Reel to Real label for historic performances, Happy Faces comprises Jazz Workshop broadcasts recorded at Vancouver's Cave Supper Club between 1963 and ’65. It is an elegant reminder of the swinging legacy of Dave Robbins.
