Staying with the mbaqanga roots theme season, here’s a one-two from Big Voice Jack Lerole, another foundation member of mbaqanga’s genesis. Township Mshovo, with the ‘Old City Jazzsters’ leans towards the marabi side with a smattering of ‘tiekie-draai’ and a healthy dose of sax jive – playing music originating from the 1960s, but recorded in 1988.
‘Groovin’ is a “retrospective” offering probably from the 80s (before Lerole joined Mango Groove). On the back cover Lerole suggests it would be his last recording. Some of you might remember the very popular 12 inch that Shifty issued of the Joburg City All-Stars – “Groovin Jive Number One”? Well – Groovin here might sound familiar, if just a little older.
Lerole emerged as a pennywhistle player of note in the 1950s and was one of the first to switch to saxophone in the mid-sixties as mbaqanga really began to take off. Big Voice Jack travelled a long path from being at the genesis of a musical movement in the streets of Alexandra in the 1950s, to playing a crowd of 80 000 people at the Giants Stadium in New York with the Dave Matthews Band in 1998. He died at the age of 63 in 2003.
