If you missed Louis Armstrong's grandson Herb performing all his grandfather's hits in Brisbane earlier in the year, it's time to clear your diary for New Year's Eve.
Herb will return to Brisbane venue The Royal in Nundah to play a special New Year's Eve show with the Art Deco Swing Band, led by trumpeter Joe Howman.
Herb, who now lives in Brisbane, makes his NYE return to The Royal after performing 'The Louis Armstrong Legacy' tribute show with Joe's other ensemble, the Art Deco Dance Orchestra in August.
“Herbie's coming back because we had a sold-out Louis Armstrong tribute show during the year and unfortunately we had about 50 people waiting at the door and we didn't like doing that, so we're getting him back here for New Year's Eve,” Joe says.
“We'll be including a little bit of soul as well as including the normal stuff Herb does with his grandfather's numbers from the Louis Armstrong repertoire. He also does some fantastic stuff by Barry White and some of the other Motown people.”
Joe and the Art Deco Swing Band perform regularly at The Royal throughout the year, revisiting the golden, swinging sounds of big brass bands from eras gone by.
For the NYE show, Joe says they'll be taking on something slightly different to their usual fare paying tribute to the legends of Las Vegas. “The New Year's Eve [show] is a bit more of a broader variety than what we do throughout the year, which is more '20s, '30s and '40s music,” he says.
“The idea is to transport people, so we often get people come through and a couple of comments were things like 'I feel like I was in a jazz club in New York'. When we do the walk-around – no matter what we do there, the house band always does a walk-around through the restaurant – there was a lady there screaming out 'oh my gosh, I felt like I was in New Orleans again'. We're always getting fabulous comments with the performances.”
It's their authenticity that make the Art Deco Swing Band, and their themed musical evenings, such a treasure in a world of synthetic sounds and bedroom producers – to hear real music played by real people on real instruments, live and in person.
For Joe, as band leader and musical director of the group, the real success of the evenings he plans comes from the huge range of age groups he sees pass through the door, particularly the teens and 20-somethings who wouldn't know a jitterbug from a ladybug but know good music when they hear it. “I'm always blown away when we do a night of Peggy Lee or Benny Goodman and we get all these young people who are just really digging it, I think that's fantastic,” Joe says.
“It's my belief that whether you're Benny Goodman or whether you're playing something like 'Brown Eyed Girl', it's the beat that gets people. If there's good rhythm then they'll want to move their bodies and dance; that goes across all the ages and goes right across all the years.”
