“Walter, well, he could play just about anything: Harlem stride, barrelhouse, swing, bop. Not that he could play any of it well, mind you. No, sir, I wouldn't describe him as a good player”. This lukewarm praise was elicited from the octogenarian boogie specialist Bedford ‘Lefty’ Cunningham. In the early 1990s Butler was teamed with the veteran swing tenorist Snoots Pearson and for a while they became the Odd Couple of the festival scene: bickering onstage and needling each other like a couple of amateur acupuncturists. In the summer of 1994 they washed ashore on the Isle of Harris – renowned for its tweed manufacture – and the duo are as itchy as a pair of homespun jockey shorts. Pearson had played in some of the little league territory bands, making a name as a rambunctious ‘honker’ in the mould of Illinois Jacquet. On Live, Butler opens with a nonchalant reading of ‘Saint Louis Blues’, before Pearson arrives, heralded by scattered applause. There is a brief verbal exchange: Butler: So you decided to show up. Pearson: Look, I've got a perfectly good bottle of whisky waiting back in my room, are you going to play? Butler: What d'you think I'm doing up here – peeling potatoes? Pearson: Don't start… Well, what are you waiting for? Hit it! The tenorist then rips into the tune at double-time before breathing difficulties cut him short; Butler shouts “Sheik!” and the two men start mauling ‘The Sheik of Araby’, exchanging fours in an increasingly bad-tempered fashion. The pace barely eases off, with Butler's fingerwork becoming decidedly erratic and Pearson's embouchure slackening alarmingly. Standards pass by in a blur of slurring and wayward intonation. Finally, the duo manages to get it together for a sneeringly sarcastic version of ‘Don't Be That Way’. Here is a team of jazz plough-horses harnessed together for a furrow too far – they should have been put out to grass.