Sonny Grey
Sonny Grey and his Orchestra in Concert, 1967
(Fresh Sound FSR CD900)

THE little-known trumpeter Orell Delroy Grey (know as Sonny Grey) was born in Jamaica and learnt how to play cornet in his school band.

By 1943 he had become a professional musician, and part of a generation of future Caribbean virtuosi, from Jamaican saxophonists Joe Harriott and Wilton “Bogey” Gaynair, to fellow trumpeters Jamaican Alphonso Son “Dizzy” Reece, Vincentian Ellsworth McGranahan “Shake” Keane and Barbadian Harry Beckett.

Grey travelled the Caribbean playing in several bands, nourishing his admiration for US trumpet aces Clifford Brown and Dizzy Gillespie.
Then in 1951 he visited London with Harriott as a member of the Jamaican All Stars, before taking a more decisive plunge in 1953 and like many of his contemporaries emigrating to Europe.

For Sonny it was Paris, where for the next 10 years he found work as a hornman in a succession of French bands and orchestras.
By 1963 he had decided to form his own 17-piece big band, not easy for a foreign black musician in a virtually white musical world and where most of his sidemen almost certainly would be white.

But he achieved it with great courage and distinction, as this powerful reissued album proved, featuring Grey’s orchestra performing live in Spain and France in concerts in 1967 in Barcelona and a year later in Aix-en-Provence.

This is marvellously accomplished swinging music, full of solos from powerful bandsmen almost lost in time whose choruses leap from the surging ensemble with a fiery and often tender zest. This album is a real sonic find.

As for the remarkable Grey, he leads from the front with successions of exuberant and potent solos.

Listen to him on the opener, Nat Adderley’s Work Song, soaring over the ensemble with confidence, verve and eloquence before Bill Tamper’s trombone adds his message and pianist Michel Sardaby adds to the narrative.

Drummer Hans-Peter Giger and bassist Jack Sewing work up the band for Herb Geller’s Scotch Squatch with its echoes of Scotland the Brave, before altoist Jean Aldegon swings out with a quirky solo. Sonny’s gentle side is beautifully manifest through Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most and in Blue Jones he follows the trombone with a crackling blues chorus.

The great Paris-based bop pianist Bud Powell wrote Budo, Sonny shares his romping spirit in his solo and in his version of Roy Eldridge’s classic, Little Jazz, his Jamaican chops are as vibrant as those of the Pittsburgh ace.

Sardaby plays a soulful solo after Sonny’s poised thematic narrative to tenorist Benny Golson’s Cry a Blue Tear and the orchestra’s version of Charles Mingus’s Nostalgia in Times Square fired up by Ginger’s rampant drums shows how fine European musicians can reinvent a very American piece of music.

Aldegon’s alto solo is buoyantly beautiful in Come Rain or Come Shine and Sonny is at his most  balladic. The last tune, No Sleep, shows the orchestra’s power of ensemble — an achievement forged by its leader, who also takes a swift-paced solo.

The Aix-en-Provence tracks continue the orchestra’s abiding unity, hugh enthusiasm and musicianship. Sonny’s tune Antony gives him a sustained, inventive solo and the 11 minutes of Sonny Rollins’s Tenor Madness gives full vent to Sonny’s boppish urges and those of his two altoists Dominique Chanson and Philippe Mate.

Scorpion offers more ensemble impetus before Sonny’s solo and Sewing’s pumping bass chorus accompanied by the members’ shouts of joy, and the final piece, Head Under Legs, is a humorous jogging tune with the orchestra’s brass section in sure fettle and Luis Fuentes’s trombone taking a confident solo.

This is the only recording of Sonny Grey’s big band, and more’s the pity because it truly resonates. Its leader never found the limelight and the years that followed were hard for large-scale jazz orchestras.

So we’re lucky to have this spirited and dynamic album and the memories it gives us of such a fine Caribbean hornman.