REVIEW: Jake Leg Jug Band brings infectious Jazz Age music to life at Pickering's Kirk Theatre

From roots in ragtime, early jazz, gospel and Delta blues emerged the exciting, rough-edged sounds of 1920s’ and early-1930s’ America.

This was music that swept across the Atlantic, added a new beat to the English dance bands and became the Skiffle that helped shape the Beatles, the Stones and the rock music that followed.

At the heart of this much-in-demand band, which plays more than 200 shows a year and has released 12 acclaimed albums, is founder Duncan Wilcox, a double-bass player with an extraordinarily wide vocal range.

Sharing the vocals is Warren James, whose bravura banjo and guitar playing displays a clear affinity for Lonnie Donegan.

Together they produce beautiful close harmonies.

James instinctively employs what trumpeter Ken Colyer called “incremental acceleration”, frenetically speeding up each repeated chorus until the music gathers momentum of its own.

Donegan, who was later married to a lass from Scarborough, was the biggest star of the Skiffle boom that swept Britain in the 1950s.

That connection was evident in several numbers Donegan made his own this side of the pond.

Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, was represented by Jesse James and Midnight Special, while Railroad Bill brought another strand of the American folk tradition into the programme.

Woody Guthrie’s Buffalo Gals became a communal affair, with the audience singing along with gusto.

The Memphis Jug Band’s On the Road Again, one of the best-known numbers of the genre from which Jake Leg take their name, and later covered by Canned Heat, brought the house down.

Four of the evening’s numbers feature on their latest CD, Live at Green Note.

The up-tempo blues of Sales Tax and Charlie Poole’s Goodbye Booze drove hard, while Louis Armstrong’s Someday You’ll Be Sorry brought the sophistication of classic jazz.

Gospel provided a different emotional register. Just a Closer Walk with Thee was deeply affecting, while Let the Light from the Lighthouse and Over in the Gloryland had their customary rousing effect.

For this performance Wilcox and James were joined by trumpeter Andy Henderson, from Leeds, and Nottingham-based band-leader Matt Palmer on clarinet and saxophones.

Both brought fire and sophistication, with Henderson’s trumpet and Palmer’s reeds evoking the joyous atmosphere of a New Orleans’ marching band.

On one occasion they duly marched on and off.

There was humour in abundance and a sense of the music’s social origins in rent parties, medicine shows, dances and informal gatherings, where entertainment existed to lift the spirits. Jake Leg overflow with this sense of joyous informality.

After all the exuberance, the evening ended with Lead Belly’s Irene, Goodnight, a song of remarkable simplicity and melancholy.

It was a tender reminder that beneath all the pulsing rhythm, hokum and breathless virtuosity, this music had its origins in the authentic folk-blues voice of the people.