‘If it don’t turn you on, you haven’t got a switch’
Pete Long, above, hitting the Hippodrome on Monday

It should have been called Jazz Concert at the Philharmonic Auditorium but a printer changed the original to Jazz at the Philharmonic to fit on to flyers. But that 2 July 1944 concert in LA would go down in jazz history no matter what the plan was. JATP was born, and it wasn’t just a concert. Later tours and records that would all be known for their exuberant swing-based jamming, star solos, and a certain zest for life few other styles in jazz could match would follow and roll on down through the years into the Beatles era. Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and dozens more all took part in the series masterminded by the founder of Verve records, and future Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald manager, the late Norman Granz. On Monday at the Hippodrome casino in London, a stone’s throw from Leicester Square, Jazz@ThePhil: Reloaded recalls the spirit of JATP nearly 70 years on from that first concert. Saxophonists Pete Long and Sammy Mayne, trumpeters George Hogg and Tommy Walsh, trombonist Callum Au, pianist Mike Gorman, Boisdale club musical director Richard Pite and guitarist Nigel Price are in the stellar band, and it’s a gig that Long and Pite see as looking to re-create the excitement of the JATP sound to draw in a new and younger audience to the music. Who says the music is just a little too paunchy and middle aged? As Pete Long comments: “If it don’t turn you on, you haven’t got a switch.”
For tickets go to www.hippodromecasino.com