MJHQ: So What’s Up? (Rehab REH011)
Birmingham bass player Mike Hatton and I might have grown up half a world apart but there are many connections in our parallel lives.

While he was listening to the Beatles in Birmingham in the 1960s I was doing the same in Durban, South Africa. And when, as he reveals in the liner notes, he was turning on to Quincy Jones and the Crusaders and tuning in to the Meters and Little Feat in the 1970s I was doing exactly that, too.

And perhaps his dad, like mine, was a Charlie Parker fan, so the bebop taste was passed down in his household, too. I don’t know.

What is clear is that this set of hard-grooving pieces from Mike, Sam Rogers on saxophone, Tom Robins on guitar, Tim Amann on piano and Fender Rhodes, and Andy Wheeler on drums makes a lot of sense because I know where he’s coming from, and they very much build on that New Orleans groove-based thing.

The bass line on Sundown is rock solid and locks into the drums to give one of those constant rhythms that you feel could last all afternoon. Over the top of it Amann lays down a mean Rhodes solo and Robins and Rogers link for the tune. The Meters can’t have been far from their minds

Save It For Another Day takes a slightly more fusion path with Robins’ strings singing as he winds up the temperature in a nicely judged solo, while It Doesn’t Worry Me cools things with a jazzy waltz and the leader leading the solos. Rogers storms on the title track and on Embryo.

The recording is adequate but possibly reflects the restricted budgets under which local bands have to operate.

Overall the Mike Hatton Jazz Quintet – yep, that’s what it stands for in a dyslexic kind of way – is a relaxed and relaxing, feelgood bunch to spend an hour with, especially when the steaks are sizzling on the barbie, the beers are cold and the friends are warm.