Apologies for no posts since the Clayton tour and Harrow. It’s been Festival season, with 3 Radio Oxford shows and a Jazz Library from Oxford, and then 12 concerts to cover and 2 Jazz Libraries at Cheltenham. Now those Cheltenham shows are going out on Radio 3. Check out the first of them on the i-player this week with Django Bates. It’s been fun to do a programme on someone whose playing career exactly coincides with my journalistic one, so I’ve covered almost every stage of his work at the time in the newspaper. Great to hear all that spread of music again…

I had a very interesting evening at Harrow School last Thursday, adjudicating their annual big band competition, sponsored by Nick Samuel and his family, who donated the winner’s cup. Some really promising players to be heard as well as some budding composers. A good spread of repertoire too from Basie and Herman material to Miles Davis, Van Morrison and Steely Dan charts. The star player was bassist Felix Lashman. Looking forward to hearing him play again at the Royal Academy next year.

After all the excitement of the tour, and very successful gigs in Oxford, London, Birmingham and Gateshead, there’s a chance to hear part of our set from the final concert on Jazz line Up this Sunday evening. And I’ll be chatting to Kevin Le Gandre about the band and about Buck’s actual legacy of music which Matthias Seuffert arranged for us to play. Thanks to John Watson/jazzcamera.co.uk for the pic.

Just talking on the Radio 3 message board about Jabbo Smith. Here he is at the Pizza Express in 1978. The pianist is Stan Greig.

Lovely review of Hi De Ho in last Friday’s Washington Times. It was great to be in the United States last week, doing podcasts and interviews for Oxford University Press about the book, and getting some of the buzz that’s going on there. More about Hi De Ho here.

Very pleased to see the first Canadian review of the Cab Calloway book in the Winnipeg Free Press. Wade past the stuff on Kevin Whitehead’s short history to get to mine! And the US reviews have kept coming as well, with a fine piece in Commentary by Terry Teachout (whose own biography of Louis Armstrong is a mighty fine book).

Just heard that my little interview about Cab for the Oxford blog with Michelle Rafferty has gone live. You can click on it here.

If you are stuck for a Christmas present, just remember that Cab Calloway was born on Christmas Day 1907, so a very good way of celebrating his 103rd birthday is to think about ordering a copy of Hi De Ho. You can find all my books available for Christmas order here.

Just received news today of a rather good review of my Calloway book in French, by J-F Pitet, the webmaster of the excellent Hi-De-Ho blog. He’s probably the world’s most knowledgeable Calloway enthusiast, so praise from him is praise indeed!

My friend the German broadcaster Michael Rüsenberg was in the audience for my chat with Harvey Cohen, author of Duke Ellington’s America, when we discussed Cab Calloway on Monday, and he kindly sent me this photo. I’ve now participated in four or five public debates with Harvey about Duke, Billy Strayhorn, Irving Mills and other matters Ellingtonian, so it was a case of the boot being on the other foot as Harvey asked me about Cab, Blanche Calloway, Irving Mills, the Cotton Club (before and after Duke) and the world of 50s musical theatre, when Cab was a star of Porgy and Bess. More about my Cab book here – and you can click through the links to find out more about Harvey’s too.