Mike Britton & Jon Green - Standards, Vol. 2

OK, I know this isn't a picture of a record album or cassette. The guy you're looking at is British jazz guitarist Mike Britton.

And what I have for you to listen and download is a track from a cassette, Standards, Vol. 2, he and fellow guitarist Jon Green recorded when they were street musicians in Bath, England.

The following snippet is from the files of the Chicago Tribune, dated October 1988:

HEY YANK, I TAKE VISA. . . .
In England, two street musicians in Bath, the ancient Roman spa resort, now accept plastic, too. Jon Green and Mike Britton obtained traders` licenses and plastered their open guitar cases with American Express, MasterCard and VISA signs. Explained Green: ``We got the idea because American tourists were waving their credit cards at us as we played.``

I'm assuming the cassette is from the same period. It wasn't purchased in the U.K. but turned up in a thrift store in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada. Who knows how it got there. In any case, here's Body and Soul from Standards, Vol. 2 by Mike Britton and Jon Green.

Body and Soul

Britton is no mere street musician. He has a long history in British jazz and pop and in the 1960s worked with major U.K. performers like Matt Monro, Vince Hill and Frankie Vaughan. After sojourns in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, Britton returned to the U.K. to teach at Dartington College in Devon, in southwest England. In more recent years he performed on some of the last cruises of the QE2 and has been active with the Torfaen Jazz Club in South Wales.

You can read Britton's biography at The Jazz Place portal. There's also a link to buy a recent CD.

From YouTube, here's a 2010 performance by the Mike Britton Trio. There's some wonderful playing marred by an almost deafening level of crowd noise. Recorded at the Queen's Head community pub in Monmouth, Wales.