We first encountered Beadle a couple of years ago during the Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival, where he fulfilled his regular role in guitarist Duke Robillard's group and gigged on the side at Beale Street's Black Diamond with organist Ron Levy.  He's been covering a lot of terrain since then.

    Beadle called us from Italy, where he's been fronting a home-grown combo for dates across the country.  He says he has also played in Paris recently with bluesman Sherman Robertson and appeared on Bullseye's European tour with labelmates Preston Shannon and Michelle Willson.

    The peripatetic sax blower also gets all\over the map stylistically on "Have Horn Will Travel."  Beadle is a man of eclectic tastes.

    "One of the first cool records I got was a compilation on Savoy with Ben Webster, Illinois Jaquet, Don Byas, and Coleman Hawkins," he recalls.  He proceeded to get behind tough tenorman Gene Ammons, and, he continues "as a horn player, I got into the wild stuff" - Big Jay McNeely, Joe Houston, Arnett Cobb - " and I'm still trying to catch up to that stuff."

    The Bullseye album - produced by Robillard and featuring most of his band - includes a delightful selection of rockin' originals and covers ranging from Jackie Gleason's old TV theme "Melancholy Serenade" to numbers originated by Ammons, Cobb, Bill Doggett, Ike Quebec, and Edmond Hall.  A rollicking highlight is the comic "But Officer", a Sonny Knight novelty about a hapless cat's continuing run-ins with the boys in blue.

    Though there is a good deal of old-fashioned swing in Beadle's raw-toned sound, he hasn't leapt on the commercially hot swing-music bandwagon and even finds himself resisting it...But Beadle still doesn't have any trouble ripping up his audiences.  He chuckles about one recent gig in Italy that attracted the attention of the local carabinieri.

    "We actually got kind of shut down," he laughs.  "You know that tune 'But Officer'?  I find myself with problems with the police so often.  That song isn't bullshit...Maybe (it's because) we play just a hair louder than the other groups."

    Beadle will return to the U.S. (his home base is in Boston) for shows in the Northeast, Northwest, and New Orleans this spring.