British jazz musician Ken Colyer

This video is called Ken Colyer & The First Traditional Jazz Band.

From British daily The Morning Star:

A unique era in British jazz

(Tuesday 24 July 2007)

ALBUM: Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen – Live at the York Arts Centre 1972
CHRIS SEARLE on jazz
(Upbeat Recordings)

WHY is it that the sound of Ken Colyer‘s Jazzmen’s records still holds true, waxed as they were such a long time ago?

Take this latest live discovery of a taped night in York in 1972. Colyer‘s admirers were legion during the 1950s and ’60s, ardent trad jazz aficionados who frequently took their precious tape recorders to his concerts and club appearances all over Britain – and almost every new year brings a newly found recording jewel.

Colyer, a Great Yarmouth native, was also the first British jazz musician to live in New Orleans.

He jumped ship there in the early ’50s after a period as a merchant seaman and stayed and played there among the city’s black and creole jazz pioneers, paying his tribute to them and developing his own Crescent City trumpet style which, when he returned to London, held a certain Delta aura and a peculiarly hybrid Norfolk-Louisiana sound.

He was also a working musician who identified with working-class people and their causes.

Those who marched towards Aldermaston would remember Colyer’s marching band adding their vibrant sound to the anti-nuclear protests.

For me, errant enough as a teenager to prefer the sounds of New Orleans jazz to those of Elvis, the Everly Brothers or Adam Faith, Colyer was my first musical hero.

Jazz musician Joe Zawinul: here.

The art of Oscar Peterson: legacy of a jazz piano virtuoso: here.