Favourite songs from the Roxy man's past, played by jazz vets and cut in crackly mono... We don’t know what F. Scott Fitzgerald would have made of Roxy Music, but we do know he was a jazz connoisseur. The early standards “Three O’Clock In The Morning” and “The Sheik Of Araby” are mentioned in The Great Gatsby, and saxophones wail “Beale Street Blues” at the southern dances attended by Daisy. “And will I like being called a jazz-baby?” Beauty asks The Voice in The Beautiful And Damned. “You will love it,” he replies. Flappers, bohemians and future Geordie crooners as yet unborn would all gravitate towards jazz. Bryan Ferry’s new album doesn’t just borrow its title from Fitzgerald’s stylish epithet for the 1920s. It selects 13 songs from Ferry’s past – as far back as “Virginia Plain” and as recent as “Reason Or Rhyme” from Olympia – and reproduces them in the style of Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra entertaining revellers at the ballroom of the Club Alabam in New York in 1922. Recorded in crackly mono, The Jazz Age might easily be a shellac 78 manufactured for a wind-up gramophone. When “Do The Strand” strikes up, sounding like the getaway music for an inept gang of bank robbers in a Woody Allen film, the temptation is to fall about laughing. Rock music rarely engages with the 1920s, except for the occasional McCartney pastiche (“Honey Pie”) or a Steely Dan simulation of Duke Ellington (“East St. Louis Toodle-oo”). Unlike the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, for whom the decade was a knockabout Dadaist fantasy, Ferry approaches the roots of jazz with neither burlesque nor whimsy, though he uses near-identical instruments to the Bonzos. His ensemble features clarinet, trombone, baritone and bass saxes, plunger-muted trumpets going “wap-waah”, a banjo in “Love is The Drug” and what sound suspiciously like coconuts for percussion in “Don’t Stop The Dance”. As it dawns on us that Ferry is serious, we warm to the idea of hearing these familiar songs in unfamiliar idioms. Aside from fleeting worries that “Do The Strand” and “The Bogus Man” may sound comical the next time we revisit For Your Pleasure, it seems like a homage with real heart to it. Ferry himself is absent from the tracks, which are performed by British jazz veterans including past and present members of the Pasadena Roof Orchestra. At times they swing like crazy. “I Thought” (from Frantic) is a vehicle for trumpeter Enrico Tomasso, who solos several times, fighting off attempts by Robert Fowler (clarinet) and Malcolm Earle-Smith (trombone) to hog the limelight. Other tunes, however, like “Reason Or Rhyme” and “This Island Earth” (from The Bride Stripped Bare) are in the sombre tradition of Ellington’s “Black And Tan Fantasy” or “Reminiscing In Tempo”, their heads bowed in bereavement as if a funeral procession was slowly marching by. The famous “Avalon” is another impressive revamp with an arrangement that emphasises its samba rhythm while sounding both melancholy and playful – not an easy trick to pull off. The less successful pieces tend not to have strong melodies to start with. “This Is Tomorrow” (a 1977 single) is a decent romp but lacks the pleasure of recognition – that moment when you pick up the vocal line in your head – and you’d assume it was an old Kenny Ball number if you heard it by accident. And the surreal notion of Roxy’s “Virginia Plain” being given a Creole jazz makeover loses something in the execution, sadly, because there aren’t enough chords in it to make it worth rearranging. “Slave To Love”, on the other hand, is superb. Walking a tightrope between wit and period authenticity, it almost dares us not to summon up images of blackface minstrels dancing with canes. We wouldn’t want Ferry’s concept to become contagious – the thought of Rod Stewart recording old-time jazz versions of “Maggie May” and “Stay With Me” is too dreadful to contemplate. But as a reminder that music is fundamentally there for our pleasure, The Jazz Age is splendid. David Cavanagh

Sound and vision live bonanza; improved audio is the icing on the Hyde Park memorial cake... Last spring, following his Twitter comments early in the year concerning Blur’s “amazing” work in the studio on new material, producer William Orbit announced that Damon Albarn had unexpectedly pulled the plug on recording sessions. The hearts of the eternally hopeful sagged, despite the fact that there had never been any confirmation from the band that they were embarking on an album. The release in early July of “Under The Westway” and “The Puritan” – two of only three new tracks recorded since 2003 – was very likely no more or less than what Blur had planned; that is, a teaser for their headlining set in Hyde Park on August 12 to mark the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. However clear a full stop at the end of the latest chapter in the Britpop survivors’ history it appears to be, the issue of this hefty (five-disc) deluxe live set – including DVD and 60-page hardback book of exclusive photographs – is unlikely to stem constant, see-sawing speculation about their future. It’s necessarily a time capsule, in which are sealed reminders of the twin triumphs of team Blur and Team GB, bathed in the glow of nostalgic pop euphoria and swollen national pride, albeit tempered by Albarn’s expressed distaste for the Olympics’ overweening commercialism. He declared that the band’s performance that summer evening was “for the human beings” – all 60,000 of them, packed in nose-to-neck. This wasn’t Blur’s first gig in the royal park – they played two shows there on their initial reunion run in July of 2009 – but the double-CD that is the centerpiece of Parklive underscores the monumentality of the event. It’s rare among live recordings in that it offers a high-definition and overall vastly superior listening experience to the real-time performance, where the volume was frustratingly inadequate and echo a problem, prompting Albarn to enquire anxiously, “Can you hear us at the back? Back, back, back… well, I hope so.” It’s an ecstatically hits-stuffed set that features only two songs from ‘The Great Escape’ (“Country House” and “The Universal”), just one (“Sing”) from ‘Leisure’ and seldom-aired, Hoople-like B-side, “Young And Lovely”, which Albarn prefaces with a group dedication to “our beautiful children.” Blur have released three compilation albums, but none of them point up the band’s engagingly contrary creativity and elastic pop nous quite like these two discs. Songs switch from rowdy and attitudinal (“Tracy Jacks”, a grungey and squalling “Trimm Trabb”, “Colin Zeal”) to sombre and reflective (“Beetlebum”, “Caramel”, the always touching “No Distance Left To Run”); from galumphing (“Country House”, “For Tomorrow”) and geezerish (“Sunday Sunday”, conceptual albatross “Parklife”, which features a comically rough-voiced Phil Daniels) to almost graceful (a compelling, desert-blues variation on “Out Of Time”, featuring Iranian oud player Khyam Allami, and horns-assisted closer “The Universal”). There’s no shortage of sing-along opportunities, but an epic and unravelled “Tender” takes the communal biscuit. Given the fullness of this set, the “live extras” disc – comprised chiefly of a Wolverhampton Civic Hall warm-up in June, plus “Under The Westway” and “The Puritan” as performed live on Twitter from a London rooftop – demands a second sitting. As does the recording of Blur’s show at the tiny 100 Club on August 2, where Albarn tests out his introduction to “Young And Lovely” and the sweaty ambience is almost audible. Any live audio recording, however impressive its quality, stumbles at the verisimilitude hurdle; those who were there are reminded of something they already remember, those who weren’t can only imagine it. The Parklive DVD bridges that gap. There’s Graham Coxon rolling on his back, legs flailing during a gnarly guitar workout; here he is mid-“Tender”, receiving an affectionate kiss on the cheek from Albarn; now, in a raucous “Song 2” the singer’s losing his shit and – during one particularly athletic leap – almost his trousers, too. Even the appearance during “Parklife” of Harry Enfield dressed as a tea lady, complete with trolley and urn looks less like a hideously dated gaucherie and more a crowd-pleasing concession made by a band in their mid-40s who’ve made peace not only with one other, but also their pop past. Parklive, of course, comes with a cockles-warming narrative; four grown men with wildly divergent interests – lo-fi garage punk, local politics, artisan cheese and Chinese opera – who’ve somehow beaten the survival odds. But it takes more than sentimentality to sustain a live record, however “historic” the event. Blur’s set will stand. Until their next move… Sharon O'Connell

From Laurel Canyon to jazz-rock's far outposts - the suffragette of sensuality's stunning first decade... Joni Mitchell may be the most influential female artist in music history. While there have undoubtedly been more impressive singers, from Billie Holiday to Aretha Franklin to Dusty Springfield, prior to Mitchell's emergence female performers were largely restricted to interpretive roles. Even the formidably talented Carole King had to wait until the '70s for significant success as a singer-songwriter with Tapestry. But Mitchell's wider influence is undeniable, with artists far removed from her initial folk-music scene acknowledging her impact - Prince, famously, is a huge fan, and Madonna has admitted that "of all the women I've heard, she had the most profound effect on me from a lyrical point of view". Not to mention, one imagines, Mitchell's presentation of herself as a sexually self-determining woman at a time when submissive acquiescence was the dominant mode afforded newly "liberated" women; nor her capacity to negotiate some of the most complex and unvarnished emotional analyses ever set to music. Joni Mitchell was a true emancipator, a suffragette of sensuality blessed with a heightened poetic sensibility. There is no better evocation of the dawn of a new, more questing consciousness than Joni's early albums: the very album title Ladies Of The Canyon is redolent of flaxen-haired damsels in Angeleno hippie paradise. Mitchell had been discovered by David Crosby, who became the first of her Laurel Canyon lovers. As producer of her debut album Songs To A Seagull, Crosby's main aim was to capture her talent as clearly as possible, unencumbered by overweening arrangements. "I didn't do a very good job producing it," Crosby once told me modestly, "but she did make an astounding record." The opening track "I Came To The City" deals with her early marriage, as if opening the album with a line drawn under her previous life. As such, it presages the strain of confessional honesty that runs throughout her work. Couched in imagery of pirates and seabirds, gems, flowers and fabrics, the rest of the album expresses her driving need for freedom, especially from the anchoring restraints of would-be suitors keen to pin her down. Heard retrospectively, the cold detail of the songs, and the austere purity of her voice, speak volumes about her clear-eyed ambition. Studded with the early classics "Chelsea Morning" and "Both Sides Now", Clouds is suffused with romantic uncertainty, hope and betrayal, like a ledger of the emotional accounting of the free-love era, profit and loss measured not just in love, but in the restraints and expectations love places upon us: the older woman "left to winter here" in "The Gallery" and the hesitant steps into new territory taken in "Tin Angel" and "I Don't Know Where I Stand". Ladies Of The Canyon added "Big Yellow Taxi", "Woodstock" and "The Circle Game" to her burgeoning canon of classics, while "Willy" - lover Graham Nash's nickname - became one of the earliest examples of the new mode of autobiographical revelation that turned Laurel Canyon scenesters' songs into diaristic soap operas. But Blue was the landmark album, the apotheosis of Joni's early style in which her lyrical strategies, melodies and vocal approaches were handled with a compelling confidence, and sequenced with an intelligent regard for what might be called the album's emotional topography. Even today, there is no better evocation of the light-hearted joy of romance than "Carey", with its see-sawing melody, and a delivery that slips so easily between affectionate yearning and bubbly excitement. The same themes sustained through For The Roses in the fretful self-absorption of "Woman Of Heart And Mind" and "Lesson In Survival", while both "You Turn Me On I'm A Radio" and "Blonde In The Bleachers" dealt head-on with the difficulties of sustaining relationships between musicians. But it was Tom Scott's reeds that offered the clearest indicator of how Mitchell's music would develop through the '70s. The fuller arrangements of Court And Spark, with their jazz-inflected horns, have the effect of freeing up the songs: the material is just as romantically themed as before, just as anxious about appearances and social graces, but the general mood is lighter and less insular: the backing vocals, flute and Larry Carlton's guitar give a mousse-light soul mood to a song like "Help Me", while the jazz-pop texture of "Car On A Hill" offers an early blueprint of the sophisticated sound for which Steely Dan were searching at the time. With Carlton, vibraphonist Victor Feldman and the Dan's Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter involved, that sound came even closer on The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, perhaps Mitchell's greatest accomplishment. The arrangements this time incorporated bass flute, flugelhorn, and miasmic electric piano, with "The Jungle Line" offered the most dynamic expression of the album's overall theme tracking the thin veneer, between the primitive and the sophisticated. The album's protagonists live in gated communities like prisons ("He gave her a room full of Chippendale that nobody sits in"), disguise themselves in the "stolen clothes" of long-gone movie icons, and engage in the courtly rounds of "The Boho Dance", pointedly contrasted with the reminiscence of a furtive but free youthhood of romance and rock'n'roll in "In France They Kiss On Main Street". Besides Larry Carlton, bassist Jaco Pastorius had the biggest impact on Mitchell's late-'70s sound, his floating fretless tones and deft harmonics at their most sensuous on the lovely "Coyote" from Hejira, an album about her constant search for love and music, depicted as a flight from both boredom and the anchorages of partnership and marriage. Accordingly, the songs are missives from a variety of locales (New York, LA, Memphis, Savannah), a succession of hotel rooms, and a string of lovers - literally, in the closing track's title, "The Refuge Of The Roads". Unfortunately, Joni's Jazz Odyssey leads her into less agreeable territory on the double-album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Mingus, the tribute album of songs co-written with the late Charles Mingus. On the former, Pastorius's bass becomes deeply irritating, evoking the supercilious self-satisfaction of '70s jazz-rock, while the side-long semi-improvised jazz symphony "Paprika Plains" is one of the least appealing items in Mitchell's catalogue. One can't help thinking that Tim Buckley blended folk and jazz so much more guilelessly, and infinitely more enjoyably, ten years before. Sadly, Mingus finds her more deeply embroiled with such as Pastorius, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, pursuing the etiolated, lifelessly academic jazz style of the era. Her description of the pieces as "audio paintings" exactly fingers the problem: I don't want audio paintings from a great songwriter, I want songs. Is there something wrong with that? Andy Gill