Django Bates - Saluting Sgt Pepper

The Guardian 80

(Edition)

Somebody was bound to give the Beatles’ magnum opus a jazz makeover on its 50th birthday, and I can’t think of anyone better than Django Bates to do it. He has just the right mixture of musicality, mischief and sheer cheek to bring it off. Cannily, the tunes and the words are the same. It’s the fizzy, dizzying harmonies and rhythmic tricks that give the whole thing a kind of hall-of-mirrors effect: familiar, but disturbingly wonky. It’s beautifully done, though, by the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, with Bates on keyboards, Stuart Hall on every possible kind of guitar, and the splendidly named vocal group Eggs Laid by Tigers.