Ted Heath & His Music - Big Band Percussion, Big Band Bash, Satin Saxes & Bouncing Brass (3 albums on 2 CDs, 1961-63)

To go into the new year with, it's party time with Ted Heath.  Not the classical music-loving UK Prime Minister of the early 70s, but the big band leader who lived from 1920 to 1969 and received a late-career boost from his association with Decca's Phase 4 Stereo imprint.  Ted Heath & His Music were officially formed in 1944, with Heath taking inspiration from wartime big bands such as Glenn Miller's.

By the early 60s, Ted Heath & His Music were hugely successful UK household names, and Decca-London Records had launched their new imprint to maximise on the emerging stereo technology, recording through a then cutting-edge ten (later twenty) channel console onto four-track tape.

Big Band Percussion was the first Ted Heath & His Music album to be released on Phase 4, taking full advantage of the stereo mix (check out the percussion solos on Drum Crazy) and featuring a neat selection of jazz standards and other well known and other big band and more exotic selections.  On this 1988 CD reissue, tracks 13-18 are taken from Side 2 of a later LP, Satin Saxes & Bouncing Brass.  But before that LP came out in 1963, there was Big Band Bash....

Big Band Percussion
pw: sgtg

Big Band Bash is probably my favourite Ted Heath album, with tight, punchy performances throughout, a great tracklisting, and superb arrangements.  Check out the mellow I Don't Know Why and a cool Harlem Nocture for starters, enjoy a pleasingly bonkers take on Khatchaturian's Sabre Dance and much more.  I used to have a vinyl rip of Big Band Bash from an old easy listening blog - wish I could find those files now, it blew this CD master out the water.  But the CD does have Side 1 of Satin Saxes & Bouncing Brass as the bonus tracks (12-17).

Big Band Bash
pw: sgtg

Anyway, that's enough of that terrible late-80s cover art from the CD reissues: below are the original LP covers of the three albums, in all their Phase 4 Stereo glory.  Any Nurse With Wound fans (specifically, fans of NWW vinyl EPs circa 2008) recognise the picture on Big Band Bash?