The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings described these recordings as ‘the Dead Sea Scrolls of British traditional jazz’, representing as they do the first stumbling efforts by local amateur musicians to replicate the New Orleans style jazz of King Oliver and company, and thus kicking off what became the New Orleans Revival.

That this flew in the face of convention is made clear in compiler Mike Pointon’s excellent note, the players, most of whom worked in a war-time Vickers Armstrong factory, having become entranced by early jazz in reaction to the then popular swing and dance band music.

Possibly influenced by access to the recordings made by Lu Watters on the West Coast, they chose to follow Oliver’s two-trumpet format, with Rigden reproducing the King’s famous choruses and Fawkes homing in on clarinettist Johnny Dodds’ style, the tuba-bound rhythm sections sounding more earnest than swinging. Even in these recordings, crude as they are, and some now issued for the first time, it’s clear that Fawkes had a proper grip on the whole Dodds idea, improving year on year, this typified by his solo passage on the band’s 1947 recording of ‘Lewisada Blues’.

Lyttelton, who joined late in 1948, is on just two of the 23 tracks, trumpeters Bryce and Rigden having moved on and trombonist Harvey away on military service, his partnership with Fawkes working well as it continued to do when Humph became the bandleader. What emerges here is a blast of sincerity and a degree of endeavour that still seems admirable. No wonder the fans flocked down to the band HQ in Barnehurst to hear this lively if somewhat hit-and-miss music and dance the night away.