British jazz always the Cinderella of the arts

[RogerF]

Why is British jazz always the Cinderella when it comes to tales of ‘Swinging London’? asks Duncan Heining in today's Independent: http://tinyurl.com/affgy3n (I don't have an answer!)

[crisp]

I'm only just getting into vintage British jazz, largely through Vocalion reissues.

My personal experience FWIW is that, first, I wanted to discover North American jazz, and it's so vast it's taken me 25 years to get it more or less covered to my satisfaction (I'll never cover it all in a lifetime, nor do I plan to).

Second, to my shame, I assumed as a young man that British jazz would be a pale shadow of US jazz. Of course, it has a feeling that's all it's own, just as the Beatles style of rock and roll was very different to that of the US bands they admired and copied.

For a start, Brit jazz has all those colonial influences that the US doesn't. And our whimsical sense of humour is as present in our jazz as it is in our rock and roll. There's a lot to explore.