Fairweather rates his playing on these duet tracks as among the very best he has put on record. Originally issued on the hard- to-find US Jazzology label, they had been first aired on BBC Radio Merseyside, the concerts in question having taken place at the nearby Southport Arts Centre. Now they’re back in circulation once again and it’s good to have them. Digby’s notions about playing jazz trumpet (or cornet) were formed early on and he knew whose approach to the instrument he preferred. While always acknowledging his debt to Louis Armstrong as the founding father of the style, it’s names like Bobby Hackett, Billy Butterfield and more locally, Alex Welsh, that come to mind when you hear him take off on a familiar set of standards as here. Then again, there’s his apparently insatiable appetite for performance, marked by his love of the ornate phrase, the filigree, almost Baroque embellishment, the smeared note and the high thrust, with turn-on- a-sixpence sudden darts, all this in pursuit of true jazz creativity. Barker works well as Digby’s good companion, quite busy at times, with a tendency to fall back on Garnerisms, harmonically conventional but a good man for keeping the momentum going. Digby is in clarion form throughout, the recorded sound bright and full, and happily he shows no signs of letting up at all.