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133 pages

English

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The tale of British Jazz music over the 20 years from the end of the Second World War. Told by the 9 musicians interviewed over the last 12 years, who were lucky enough to be there at the time. The likes of Chris Barber (band leader and trombonist), John Critchinson (Ronnie Scott's pianist), Paul Jones (the singer in Manfred Mann), Don Rendell (John Dankworth's tenor saxophonist), Wally Houser (Ronnie's Club solicitor), Harold Pendleton (The Marquee Club owner/Reading & Leeds Festival founder). The UK at its hardest up about to live it up as best it can! Bringing to life the boom of the traditional jazz revival, the first British popular music. Telling the story of the birth of British modern jazz. Providing an entire chapter on the London jazz clubs that are no more. Illustrating the early negotiations in New York that led to the touring in the US of British jazz groups, and the return of Americans to the UK during the MU/AFM trade dispute. The jazz that in turn led to GB's rhythm and blues and the break-out from that into our popular music of today.

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Music

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Publié par	Distributed by eBookpartnership
Date de parution	14 décembre 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839523960
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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First published 2021 Copyright © Matt Haskins 2021 The right of Matt Haskins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership Ltd, 10b Greenway Farm, Bath Rd, Wick, nr. Bath BS30 5RL
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk

ISBN printed book: 978-1-83952-395-3 ISBN e-book: 978-1-83952-396-0
Cover design by Kevin Rylands Internal design by Andrew Easton
Printed and bound in the UK
This book is printed on FSC certified paper

For my partner Hilary and son Max, without whom this book couldn’t have been written
My eternal gratitude to my father Chris, and interviewees; Chris Barber, Don Rendell, Eddie Harvey, Tony Kinsey, Wally Houser, John Critchinson, Harold Pendleton, Paul Jones and Tony Pitt. Their willingness to be involved left me amazed. I very much extend this to their wives as well.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6 The Clubs
Chapter 7
Chapter 8 Skiffle and the British blues
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Spotify Listening List

WHAT TIME ARE WE ON?
INTRODUCTION
So this is the tale of a time long forgotten. Of an era that maybe shouldn’t have gathered dust, and been left to rust. But I’m not interested in giving you large histrionics, why would I want to give you what you’ve heard before? Oh how dull! So let us not dwell.
Since The Beatles and The Rolling Stones the time I’m talking of has been left behind, when so many love the music since, why do so few have a clue about what happened before? Stories of someone called Chris Barber as the grandfather of British blues, a gent by the name of Ronnie Scott as the father of jazz over here. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder? Well wonder not much longer, I intend to put the record straight without scratching it.
After the Second World War music in the UK had its own major rebellion.
Long before Rock ’n’ Roll, Beatlemania, the Swinging Sixties, Cool and Psychedelia. The people behind It? Your parents, Gran and Grandad. The full story not properly told, so this is my greatest effort to convey the saga. If you want the finer detail then I’m sure it’s out there.
Well I’ve got out my cloth and polish and tried to buff up what I can find. I can’t say it’s been easy given that many of the fine people involved are no longer with us. Though some of them are, and over the last 11 years a number of them have been happy to talk, to recount their tales, express hard upbringings, share the jokes, tell of fashion mistakes and of very humble dwellings. Seedy Soho, London Clubs, villains, characters, filthy streets and drugs.
So what did the young music lover have to get so worked up about in the mid-1940s? Why would they want to get so agitated when the war had just finished, we were finally victorious, celebrations were over and let’s face it, I’m only talking about music? It’s hardly the end of the civilised world. It has a lot to do with the big band and the Lyons Corner House, amongst other things. Firstly, I’m sure there’s many of you out there thinking, ‘how on earth can you get worked up about big bands?’ But also, ‘what on earth is a Lyons Corner House?’ I hope in the following pages you’ll allow me to enlighten you.
To complete this book I’ve also used the words of those that aren’t here. Visited the sites and places talked about and frequented by the following, to help take you back to a time very different from now. What I’ve also brought to the table is I hope another perspective. I’m a jazz musician (having started out as an alternative/indie guitarist) and my dad was a professional for well over 50 years, and as a result I grew up with all of this in the mix and lurking in the background. So I see the music from both sides, fan being the other, which is pretty rare even now it seems. The people involved here don’t always frequent the same circles, bars or clubs. Depending on which side of ‘divides’ they fall.
In these pages you’ll find the words of the people that mattered, whether you’ve heard of them or not. They include Chris Barber, Ronnie Scott, Eddie Harvey, Don Rendell, Tony Kinsey, John Critchinson. Harold Pendleton, Wally Houser, Paul Jones, Humphrey Lyttelton, Jack Bruce and others. It’s taken several years to complete and has been a real labour of love, in which time many of them have since passed on.
The broader point of my tale is not just to give you an account of jazz in London and the UK, but also of the rhythm ’n’ blues scene here too. Of how it grew up and out of jazz then became so big that it brushed it aside. For better or for worse, forever and after, that’s that. Then I’ll leave you in the 60s where I guess you might know what comes next. What I also want to achieve is to bring all of you who read this, whether you’re a highly trained jazz musician, a dedicated record collector, Traditional Stomper, bebop aficionado, skiffle lover or know virtually nothing about this music at all, an insight into a highly significant time before it’s lost forever. So if you’re ready then hold on to your trilby or service hat, let me lead you back to a time when life was a little more tricky, and definitely more dirty.

CHAPTER 1
Britain was a bleak and dangerous place during the early 1940s, London even more so. This is a familiar story I’m sure. Music in the UK, like the rest of the western world at the time, revolved around the Classical variety and then everything else. The latter was dominated by the dance orchestra and the big band, by the swing music of America.
A significant inconvenience for those who wanted to listen to, and play jazz, was the falling out between the Musicians’ Union (MU) and the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). The storm broke in 1937/38, when they banned each other’s members from performing in their respective countries. The agreement they had was called ‘The Exchange System’. It was just that, if a band went over from the UK, then a US group had to come over here in return. The Unions felt that these imported players were ‘stealing’ the work of their hard-pressed resident compatriots. For the UK, the ban meant that the bands that contained the most talented and virtuoso American players, like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Fats Waller and Benny Carter, stayed in the USA, instead of touring here. Also, before the ban many would happily go to a jazz club after their show, sink a few beers, and play for and with the fans and players who wanted to be in the know. This event was called a ‘Jam Session’. Some jazz clubs disappeared with the talent. The ban stayed in place until 1956, and we’ll come to that later.
Out beyond the Smoke in Kent, a young Eddie Harvey was having his own first-hand experience of the war. Eddie is a well-known musician, arranger and educator. As a trombone player he was in the Johnny Dankworth Seven during the 1950s, as well as with other groups of the time. ‘When I left school at 16 I worked on a farm, during the Battle of Britain. I saw all that. I lived in Sidcup so I was on the right track for that, it was all thrilling stuff. I started playing at seven, when I was a kid I was in the choir, my mother was a singer, I learned the piano from seven ’til 12 ’til my family broke up. Anyway, I had a background in music. Having played the piano and stopping at 12 I’d started improvising anyway, although in a very crude kind of way.’ He says this with a broad smile across his face.
I’ll let the gent continue. ‘It really started at school for me, I left when I was 16. I had a mutual friend at school in Wally Fawkes (alias Trog, the well-known satirical cartoonist employed by the Daily Mail amongst others) who was at art school at the time. He’d discovered jazz there and this mutual friend of ours had one of those houses where all the kids meet round there. I met Wally round there and he lent me my first jazz record. It was Muggsy Spanier, Johnny Hodges, one of the Duke Ellington small groups, but I remember I was so excited by it that I never slept for a week. It was like falling in love, I mean literally, if you fall for a girl. It was just like that. It would have been 1941. Anyway, Wally and I got on very well so I really got into this stuff, y’know?’ I do, exactly.
For those of you who may have only ever got your music on a CD or through your iPod we come to a substance called Shellac. ‘What on earth’s that?’ I hear you cry. It is a resin secreted by the female Lac bug to form a cocoon, on trees in the forests of Thailand and India. At this time records were made out of Shellac, until the late 1940s when it was replaced by vinyl. It was also used in electrical applications as it had good insulation properties. Very useful for the military.
For Eddie and many others like him throughout the UK, this was a very BIG problem. ‘In those days, because Shellac was a “strategic material”, as they called it, only a few records were issued, only one jazz record a month called “Billy Elliott’s choice”, who was a critic. This record came out and of course we all bought it, so by the time we’d had it for a week we could actually sing it! We used to talk about phrases of Louis Armstrong’s and all that kind of thing, and I realised some years later of course, when I became a tutor at university, that this was how we learned the music. By having a very small amount of information and learning it. Nowadays there’s a problem because there’s so much information, guys buy an album of John Coltrane and all that and they