Andy Hamilton & the Blue Notes - Silvershine

Andy Hamilton left Jamaica to come to Britain as part of the Windrush generation, bringing with him his sweet tenor style: think Lester Young with a Caribbean flavour.

The thing that is universally repeated about Hamilton is that he wrote the tune Silvershine for Errol Flynn. However, I think it's much more interesting that he recalled the tune whilst lying in a diabetic coma in the 1980s. But that's just me.

Hamilton played every Monday night upstairs at The Bear in Bearwood, accompanied by a mix of old-spars and young guns coming up under his mentorship. We used to go occasionally, and I was introduced to him once by our housemate, who studied under him. He was clearly a very important man; extremely charismatic and super cool.

Honestly, if he had moved to the US, or even London, rather than Brum, he would be much better known.

It seems unbelievable to me now, that we didn't jump on the number 11 bus and go to see him every week. What were we thinking?

This album, released in 1991, features some big names from British jazz from that time: Andy Sheppard and Steve Williamson, for instance. Graeme, his trumpet-playing son, features, as does Jean Toussaint, who features on one track, as does a pre-Stars Mick Hucknall ,who, despite my reservations, does a decent job. Yep, I said it.

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