Trio Excursion by The Modern Swing Express

The Modern Swing Express were a hard swinging band that gathered in the Sunlight Centre in Gillingham in Medway. They began as a workshop band, under the guidance of Kenny Ball's great pianist Hugh Ledigo and local tenor star Barry Cole.

They cut their teeth over several years in gigs arranged by Kent impresario Harry Stubberfield, a man who had dedicated much of his adult life to bringing jazz to the region. Despite ill-health, he organised rehearsal space, booked gigs, booked headline acts for the band to play with, walked the streets posting flyers and generally worked his arse off to make the band a success.

Over those years, they played with some of the big names in British jazz: Derek Nash (several times), Steve Waterman, Tommy Whittle, Dave Robinson, Alan Skidmore and, for many the highlight of their playing careers, the late, great Pete King.

With its roots as a workshop band, the personal could be fairly fluid at times. Hugh, who also acted as the band's arranger and leader for rehearsals, would sometimes dep on piano, while local drummer Emitt Kyle held the drum chair for a few gigs. Sometimes they would have singers belting out standards like Tangerine and A Foggy Day and at other times it would be a totally instrumental affair.

The collective personnel for the band - not including the big names that they played alongside, included:
Mike Greenwood - trumpet; Jim Grady - alto sax; Scott Cooke - alto and soprano sax; John Ferrari - tenor sax; a multi-reed player - tenor, soprano and baritone sax; Chris Breen - piano; Hugh Ledigo - piano, arrangements, conductor and svengali; Peter (?) - guitar; Alfie Cooke - double bass; Mike - drums and vocals; Lee Burt - drums; Emitt Kyle - drums and Amanda - vocals.

While the band rehearsed regularly in a fully-equipped studio, they made very few recordings. A few of the gigs were recorded, courtesy of pianist Chris, and there was an official studio session at one point, but very few of these seem to have survived. One day, we hope to locate some of those recordings and then share them with the world

These tapes are something of an oddity. They appear to have been recorded at a rehearsal for the group Khamsa (a trio led by Scott Cooke) when MSE drummer Lee Burt was depping for usual drummer Emmit Kyle. Khamsa's repertoire consisted of some fairly unfamiliar middle-eastern themes, so in order to get a workable set together at short notice, the three opted to run through some trio versions from the MSE songbook, tunes that they were all used to playing in more complete arrangements. While group were porbably billed as Khamsa, the choice of material effectively made the gigs a scaled-down version of the bigger swing group, hence the choice of title.

- Wilton Mobley

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