Everyone knows that the 1960s, the decade in which London swung as never before, were the Golden Era of Ronnie Scott’s club, the tiny 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 as a ‘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.
