A thunderous kitchen-sink-and-all drum workout was once seen as a means of getting audiences to their feet cheering and whooping in their unbridled approval. This was not the path chosen by Zoot Money. Instead, clambering on top of his Hammond organ, he would punch the air and ceremoniously drop his trousers to the delight of onlookers. But such behaviour shouldn't in any way distract from the realisation that Zoot Money's Big Roll Band was, along with Georgie Fame's Blue Flames and The Graham Bond Organisation, a prime example of homegrown soulful jazz-informed Hammond and horns R&B. Presented here are four CDs' worth of funkiness. The first finds Zoot in residence (as with the Blue Flames) at Soho's Flamingo Club, while the second has him at his other regular haunt of West Hampstead's Klook's Kleek. Disc three scoops up his work for the BBC, while a fourth features Zoot live in the studio. In much the same way as Ella and Sinatra, Brubeck and Peterson once trawled the depths of the Great American Songbook in search of suitable repertoire, in the UK the likes of Zoot Money cherry-picked the ever expanding Great American Soul and R&B Songbook to personalise. The fact that a good part of this collection was recorded live adds to the sweat-soaked authenticity and demonstrates what a tight and exciting six-piece unit this was. The Blue Note catalogue not only supplied some of the band's inspiration but also resulted in reworkings of The Jazz Messengers' ‘Blues March’ and Big John Patton's ‘Along Came John’. Throughout, sax men Nick Newell and Clive Burrows impress with a rich well-rounded sound, guitarist Andy Summers (later to join Sting and Stewart Copeland in The Police), adds numerous suitable licks, leaving Paul Williams (also helping out on vocals) and Colin Allen to supply first rate back-up. That leaves the Big Time Operator himself. A larger-than-life personality, Zoot Money like his contemporaries Georgie Fame and Chris Farlowe, had an instantly recognisable vocal approach, husky and direct. Later on, he supplemented his interpretations of US-derived material with custom-composed compositions penned by the team of Tony Colton and Ray Smith, the biggest of which was ‘Big Time Operator’. Limited to 2,000 copies, this release vividly defines a truly exciting moment in time when R&B and jazz rubbed shoulders to great effect.