A largely Birmingham-based quintet, led by the pianist Andrew Woodhead, celebrates the mercurial music that gloriously soundtracked Fleischer Studios’ 1930s depression era toons, among the better known being Popeye and Betty Boop, focussing on the sometime featured music of Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Louis Jordan and Cab Calloway.

Recorded live at hip Brummie jazz hang the Spotted Dog, the band explore early-century jazz through a contemporary free jazz collective lens on tracks that include Cab Calloway’s ‘Minnie the Moocher’, ‘The Old Man of the Mountain’ and Slim Gaillard’s ‘Flat Foot Floogie’. The quartet have an easy rapport opening tunes up to a modernist sensibility while retaining a raucous contrapuntal collective jazz spirit that faintly echoes earlier Mingus and freer collective storms.

There are some animated contributions all-round from the raw-toned tenor saxophonist George Crowley and trumpeter Sam Wooster, whose turn of phrase and sound captures well something of the early-period without being imitative. Meanwhile the leader-pianist betrays his love of Ellington and Monk with some witty, rhythmically energetic soliloquys.

A sense of relevantly playful abandonment is evident in the ensemble’s integration of solos and interplay, and no doubt the audience at the Spotted Dog would have been wagging its collective tail in enthusiastic response.