December Band Algiers Strut

Algiers Strut December Band The 1965

My long time jazz friend Jack Vincken is still playing banjo in Toronto's Climax Jazz Band. This was the band I left in 1996 after being their cornettist for 25 years.
Both Jack and I always had a love for the pure jazz played in New Orleans. He just send me a DVD with about a dozen tunes from the December Band. I only heard their audio recordings and never realized that the band was video recorded as well.
I assume it must have been in the same period that this band was together, probably just for a concert trip to a jazzsociety in Connecticut in December 1965.
In the band are Kid Thomas Valentine on trumpet, Jim Robinson on trombone, Sammy Rimmington on clarinet, Capt.John Handy alto sax, Bill Sinclair piano, Dick Griffith banjo, Dick McCarthy bass and Sammy Penn the drummer.
This is pure revival New Orleans played by a band combined from original first generation jazz musicians together with a next generation of adoring young musicians led by Sammy Rimminton who played so close to the style of George Lewis.
I had never seen Captain John Handy on film before. What an exciting player. Sammy Penn's drumming is one of the best samples of how this early New Orleans jazz is played. No hi hat, one cymbal, one tom, the bass drum and of course the main ingredient, the snare. The drum accents between half and end of chorusses typify this style.
Also interesting to see that Jim Robinson uses the clapper.
Another sacred tradition is that the frontline stands up in the outchorusses. A very effective method of coming to the climax of a tune.