One of the bands that performed on the very first 1990 RnB festival at Colne is back 32 years later.

 

Dazzling musicianship,  riveting stage performances, more than 50 TV appearances and 75 radio broadcasts have established them as the Kings of Swing.

 

The King and the Boys have been around for quite a while, getting on for Four decades in fact. But how can that be? Some of them look far too young. Well, it’s like the penknife with two new blades and three new handles. Individual members may change but the band stays the same. Think of Count Basie’s orchestra. Half a century with one tiny break. Only two members lasted the entire course, one of them Basie himself, but you could never mistake it for any other band. In the case of the Biscuit Boys, the King and Bullmoose have been there from the beginning. Changes have taken place, but not often.

 

The King and the Boys have built themselves the kind of fan base that aspiring pop stars would kill for. The word ‘fan’ is short for ‘fanatic’, and the last count there were 2,500 people around the world sufficiently fanatical to join the band’s fan club. And if you’re talking about loyalty, how about the fifty - odd members who chartered their own plane to follow the boys to the Cork Jazz Festival?

 

Everywhere they go they hook more devotees. They’ve played all over Europe. Even more impressively, they’ve stormed across the US, much to the surprise of the natives. As one New York magazine put it: ‘Those who say that swing is a musical form best left to Americans, prepare to be proven wrong. This British combo is bullet proof!’.

Of course, they are! They’re the genuine article, in full working order, dedicated to shaking you up and swinging you into the middle of next week. They’ve got King Pleasure’s inimitable stogie’s - and - bourbon voice, they’ve got a roaring band sound that comes at you like the Wabash Cannonball, and above all they’ve got that beat. In the words of the immortal Lord Buckley ‘Rhythm is the key to everything - runs the whole swingin’ thing’.