Reginald Foresythe

Reginald Foresythe was, like Gerry Moore, a Londoner by birth, but his musical career was of a different order. The son of a West African lawyer and an English mother, he appears to have had a relatively privileged upbringing with private piano lessons and a boarding school education. In 1927, at the age of 20, he was in Paris as accompanist to Zaidee Jackson; he then toured Australia with another American star, Walter Richardson, before ending 1929 in California, where he recorded with Paul Howard’s Quality Serenaders. Foresythe’s reputation as a musician, however, rests firmly on his work as a composer and arranger, though Jim Godbolt (op.cit.) dismisses him with “he added Reginald Foresythe, 1934 nothing to British jazz.” That may be true in terms of his orchestral output, which largely featured his own, musically advanced works with fanciful titles like Revolt of the Yes-Men, but he nonetheless had great success both in the UK and the USA with compositions like Serenade For A Wealthy Widow. His solo piano work is less well-known, and the two recordings featured here show that, whilst he was always tempted to stray towards the flamboyant – the penultimate chorus of St Louis Blues is pure self-indulgence - he was capable of playing with true jazz feeling and some fine Hines-like touches. Because It’s You is dedicated ‘for Elisabeth Welch’, a great friend of Foresythe’s. His duet with Arthur Young, played on two keyboards, is surely one of the most unusual and original performances of that most popular of jazz standards, Tiger Rag, which not only abandons the usual hackneyed treatment but frequently departs from the basic chord sequence as well!