“Nat was the king and Armstrong was the emperor … he was the first musician in Britain to recognise the worth of Armstrong.” Humphrey Lyttelton On the British jazz scene Nat Gonella was Number One Trumpeter. In addition to being a born showman, he was a paramount technician who wielded significant influence on successive generations of jazz trumpeters. Nat was a trumpet ace, bandleader and vocalist and in 1934 the Georgians (named after the hit recording Georgia on my Mind) sprang into being as a-band-within-a-band, a splinter group of the famous Lew Stone Orchestra.
