Ken Colyer
As one of England's leading trad jazz exponents, Ken Colyer's influence would have been confined to his own country were it not for a spin-off that would inadvertently lead to great changes in the music world at large. Self-taught on trumpet and guitar, Colyer was a founding member of the Crane River Jazz Band (1949 to 1953), a New Orleans-styled band that he left in late 1951 in order to join the Merchant Marines with the intention of shipping out to New Orleans itself and jamming with local legends. Upon his return to England in March 1953, Colyer joined a group founded by Monty Sunshine and Chris Barber that soon became Ken Colyer's Jazzmen. As in the Crane River group, Colyer's shows included a "band within a band" segment that purported to educate audiences about the roots of jazz, playing a guitar-based, highly rhythmic mutation of American folk music that became known as skiffle. When Colyer left the Jazzmen in 1954, the group coalesced around Barber and its banjo player, Lonnie Donegan, who went on to have a hit skiffle record "Rock Island Line" that caught the imagination of a Liverpool youngster named John Lennon. Beginning in 1954, Colyer split his time between leading trad jazz groups as a trumpeter and skiffle groups as a guitarist, recording frequently for English Decca. Colyer's melodic Bunk Johnson-influenced lead trumpet gave his jazz bands a distinctive flavor of their own, while his skiffle groups had a "Blacker" sound than those of most English skifflers, grounded in the Leadbelly 78s that Colyer brought back from New York when he was 19. Colyer's jazz band of the mid-'50s rivaled Barber's group as the leading British trad band of the day, featuring such sidemen as Acker Bilk, Ian Wheeler, and Mac Duncan. Colyer would lead bands in the '60s and '70s with time-out for bouts with illness, running his own KC record label, appearing at his own club Studio 11, and returning in the early '80s at the helm of the All-Star Jazzmen.
© Richard S. Ginell /TiVo
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Ken Colyer's Skiffle Sessions
Jazz - Erschienen bei CoolNote am 01.01.2000
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Storming Session
Jazz - Erschienen bei Upbeat Jazz am 10.08.2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Club Session With Colyer
Jazz - Erschienen bei CoolNote am 01.01.2000
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Vintage Ken Colyer
Modern Jazz - Erschienen bei Lake Records am 19.01.2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Milestones of Legends - Trad Jazz, Vol. 1
Jazz - Erschienen bei Documents 2 am 10.02.2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Milestones of Legends - Trad Jazz, Vol. 2
Jazz - Erschienen bei Documents 2 am 10.02.2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Ken Colyer's Jazzmen and Skiffle Group
Modern Jazz - Erschienen bei Lake Records am 09.04.2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Back to the Delta
Ken Colyer, Ken Colyer's Skiffle Group
Jazz - Erschienen bei Music Manager am 07.02.2022
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Memories... A Jazz Club Session with Ken Colyer's Jazzmen: the Allan Gilmour Tapes
Modern Jazz - Erschienen bei Lake Records am 19.11.2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Painting The Clouds With Sunshine (Ken Colyer)
Jazz - Erschienen bei 1201 MUSIC am 31.12.1986
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hot Time in The Old Town
Jazz - Erschienen bei Documents am 01.04.2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Watch That Dirty Tone of Yours...There Are Ladies Present !
Jazz - Erschienen bei President Records am 14.09.2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Colyer's Pleasure
Modern Jazz - Erschienen bei Fellside Recordings Ltd am 29.12.2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Ragtime Revisited
Jazz - Erschienen bei President Records am 14.09.2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Club Session With Colyer! (Remastered)
Jazz - Erschienen bei RevOla am 26.06.2020
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Just About As Good As It Gets! - The Original Jazz Recordings 1950-1956
Dixieland - Erschienen bei Smith & Co. am 20.02.2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Ken Colyer Trust New Orleans Jazz Band at Cafe Brasil, New Orleans, La (Live)
Jazz - Erschienen bei 504 am 19.03.2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Traditional Jazz at The Royal Festival Hall, London (Live)
Ken Colyer, Alex Welsh & His Dixielanders, George Melly, Chris Barber's Jazz Band, Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group
Dixieland - Erschienen bei Music Manager am 07.02.2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Very Best Of
Jazz - Erschienen bei Master Classics Records am 01.10.2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo