Music: Harry Strutters Hot Rhythm Orchestra
It didn’t take very long to realise that here we had a first-class show, full of variety, not just a band with a few dancers. The eight-piece Harry Strutters gave us a smart arrangement of Duke Ellington’s Double Check Stomp, followed by the dancers of The Lindy Hop Dance Company doing the Charleston and compere Megs Etherington with a reminder of what a wonderful song 100 Years from Today is. Marlene Hill then attacked ‘Tain’t No Sin before a canny tribute to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.
Thus, in the first five numbers, we had the essence of the show. Etherington was pleasingly informative about the Cotton Club – making no bones about their policy of black entertainment for a white audience – and had sensible things to say about Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Florence Mills and the rest. Some of his humorous band introductions were a touch laboured, but generally he was a most amiable and helpful host – and splendidly rigged out, too! His version of Minnie the Moocher was fun, complete with nonsensical and almost unsingable variants on Hi-de-Ho.
Marlene Hill undertook a whole range of material, from the wordless vocal on Creole Love Call to the gospel sounds of On Revival Day, but was undoubtedly at her best in the sort of vaudeville blues that was never afraid of being a little raunchy.
The Lindy Hop Dance Company – four women, two men – was a total revelation. The athleticism of their leaps and lifts was as unchanging as their infectious smiles which only changed when they were acting out some simple scenario in their dance. Their routine to the evocative Black Beauty (nice clarinet) was beautifully clever and meticulously performed and All God’s Children Got Rhythm proved spectacular.
As for the band, they kept coming back to Duke Ellington, with a rousing Stevedore Stomp to start the second half and the inevitable It Don’t Mean a Thing to finish the whole thing off, with the Lindy Hop Dancers taking partners from the audience for a splendid finale. Clever arrangements precisely played, with a rhythm section driving the whole thing along with sousaphone-power, meant the entertainment value seldom dropped. Among plenty of good soloists clarinetist/alto saxist Tony Carter stood out and trumpeter Andy Woon made the most of his feature on Stardust.
Reviewed on 16th February 2023.
