Emerging among the leading traditional jazz figures of the 1960s, British reedman Sammy Rimington first performed with Barry Martyn in 1959. He remained with Ken Colyer for several years spanning 1960 to 1965 before traveling to the United States in the mid-1960s, where he appeared with Big Bill Bissonnette’s Easy Rider Jazz Band. From that point onward Rimington performed across an extensive range of ensembles, maintaining a strict focus on New Orleans revival jazz aside from a short-lived fusion project called Armanda that he directed in 1971. He has recorded and appeared alongside an array of New Orleans jazz notables such as Chris Barber, Kid Thomas Valentine, and Captain John Handy. Strongly shaped by George Lewis’s approach to the clarinet and by Handy’s alto saxophone style, Rimington issued numerous sessions under his own name on independent imprints that include Rhythm Records in 1962, Jazz Crusade in 1963, GHB in 1966, 77 in 1969, California Condor in 1973, Storyville in 1974, Munich in 1975, Dawn Club in 1977, Beerendonk in 1977, Herman, Quines, Lulu White’s, and Onward in 1979, Jazz Time in 1983, Progressive in 1985, plus additional labels. He sustained activity as a leader and sideman through the 1990s and into the following century, issuing notable projects such as Reed My Lips, credited to Sammy Rimington & the Return of the Mouldy Five, on Jazz Crusade in 1999, and Visits New Orleans, cut with an assortment of Crescent City veterans in April 2005—several months before Hurricane Katrina struck the city—and issued by Arhoolie in 2008.
