Certain records achieve cult and legendary status for a variety of reasons: classic performances, their place in the canon of recordings within the genre, their place in the history of a musician, their rarity, etc. Sandy Brown achieved cult status on the UK Jazz scene for being one of the most distinctive and creative players to appear on the scene. The legend started in Edinburgh in the late 1940s where the emerging Jazz scene was producing several musicians who were to achieve significance on the UK scene as a whole: Al Fairweather, Alex Welsh, Stan Grieg, Archie Semple and Sandy Brown. Sandy started off as an arch-traditionalist then followed the same path as Humphrey Lyttelton into Mainstream Jazz before his untimely death early in 1975 at the age of 46. The tracks on this CD show Sandy Brown at the start of his career heavily influenced by the great New Orleans clarinetist, Johnny Dodds, but already achieving a distinctive style of his own. The recordings were made by the owners of a small electrical shop in Glasgow. Their rarity comes from the fact that the 78s were only pressed in limited editions and the LPs were only produced as acetates and not as pressed discs. Only a handful are known to exist and, in one case, there is only one known copy. This is the first time they have appeared in any format since they were released. The CD is a fascinating look at emerging talent and completes the Sandy Brown recording cycle as illustrated by other CDs of his on the LAKE label.
