JAZZ

See Also: JAZZ PERFORMERS; NIGHTCLUBS, DISAPPEARED; SOFT POWER SOUNDS REBOUND

Audiences

It is a practice among some jazz musicians that when there is a thin audience, they look out into it and say I wish I had , t got out of bed now there were more people there.

The Doll Did It

Brian Rust was a jazz writer and broadcaster. He was renowned for his discographies of the music's pre-1942 recordings. He possessed a phenomenal ability to recall auditory details. In 1965 his home was burgled. Subsequently, the thief was apprehended and charged with the break-in. At the trial, the defending counsel asked Mr Rust how he could be sure that a particular copy of King Oliver's Sweet Baby Doll was his property and not the accused's. He replied that there was a blemish on its surface that caused a click in the seventeenth bar of the third chorus. The record was played, the click was heard, and the criminal was convicted.

Facilitators

Jim Godbolt

Jim Godbolt (1922-2013) was a fixture of the jazz scene. His roles within included acting as a manager, a book agent, and writer.

Festivals

The Beaulieu Festival

The Beaulieu Festival riots of the early 1960s occurred between trad jazz fans followers of Acker Bilk (1929-2014) and the modern jazz followers of John Dankworth.

The London Jazz Festival

Location: 51 Kingsway Place, Sans Walk, EC1R 0LU

Website: www.londonjazzfestival.org.uk www.efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk

Income

The health of the British jazz scene in 2002 was testified to by the decision of the American trumpeter Abram Wilson (1973-2012) to relocate to London.

Germany

In the late 1950s some jazz bands earned much of their livelihood by working in Germany. The long shifts enabled some of them to develop their musicianship.

New York

Working on Cunard liners enabled British jazz musicians to spend time in New York's 52^nd Street jazz clubs.

Members of Geraldo's Navy included the trumpeter Les Condon (1930-2008), John Dankworth, and Ronnie Scott.

Ken Colyer jumped ship from the Navy in America. He was imprisoned. He sent back letters to Britain. These were posted on the door of Dobell's.

Labels

Pye

Pye recorded a number of Trad groups including those that were led by the trumpeter Kenny Ball (1930-2013), Chris Barber, and Acker Bilk. The 3Bs were featured in Richard Lester s movie It's Trad Dad (1962), along with the likes of Terry Lightfoot.

Music College

The Royal College of Music

The composer Graham Collier (1937-2011) was the first director of jazz at The Royal College of Music. In the mid-1980s he organised a workshop to give young musicians experience of performing as a big-band. Loose Tubes grew out of this. The group did much to revitalise the London jazz scene.

The National Jazz Archive

Location: Loughton Library, Traps Hill, Loughton, IG10 1HD

Website: https://nationaljazzarchive.org.uk

Shops

Collet's

Collet s was a left-wing bookshop on Charing Cross Road. It had a sister shop that sold records. This was located on Shaftesbury Avenue. The ground floor sold folks and blues, the basement jazz. In 1956 Ray Smith joined the business. He was of the opinion that the folk section largely consisted of mainly Russian 78s .

Collett s announced that it was going to relocate the record business into the main store. Smith bought out the jazz portion of the business, which remained on the New Oxford Street site.

Ray s succeed Dobell's as being the principal jazz record shop in London.

One of the business's slogans was that its stock ranged from George Lewis to George Lewis. The former was a trad New Orleans clarinettist, while the latter was an avant-garde New York trombonist.

In 1975 Smith relocated the business to Shaftesbury Avenue. The shop also had an entrance on Monmouth Street.

In 1983 Smith bought the business and the lease on the shop.

Georgie Fame wrote the song Vinyl in celebration of the shop.

Valuable items of stock were kept behind the counter in a box that was called Hen s teeth .

A large rent increase and the impact of the Internet prompted Smith to retire in 2002. He sold the business to Foyles, which closed the shop and relocated the stock to its own Charing Cross Road store, where a section of the shop became known as Ray's Jazz at Foyles .

In 2004 a rent rise meant that Ray's Jazz Shop could no longer afford to occupy its Shaftesbury Avenue premises. The business relocated to premises within the Foyle's bookshop on Charing Cross Road.

Location: Foyles, 113-119 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0EB (blue, brown)

70 New Oxford Street, WC1A 1EU (purple, grey)

180 Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2H 8JB (purple, brown)

Website: www.foyles.co.uk/rays-jazz-classical-music

Dobells

Doug Dobell's shop had a staff culture of studied rudeness to the clientele.

Ken Colyer jumped ship from the Navy in America. He was imprisoned. He sent back letters to Britain where they were posted on the door of Dobell's. The following year Colyer was deported back to Britain; he was greeted as though he were Moses descending the mountain with the tablets.

Location: 77 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 7PS (blue, red)

Trad

During the war jazz revivalism took a firm hold in Britain. This centred on the work that New Orleans musician had done in Chicago during the 1920s.

In the late 1940s the most prominent Revivalists included Humphrey Lyttleton, Cy Laurie, and Graeme Bell.

The style of jazz that the Australian-pianist Graeme Bell (1914-2012) favoured open to incorporating show tunes and folk material in a way that British jazz had not been. In early 1948 he and the member of the Graeme Bell Australian Jazz Band moved into Lyttleton s home. Lyttleton remarked that he had Australians the way other people had mice. In February the group started a residency at the Leicester Square Jazz Club. They caused a sensation. Their style of playing led to people again dancing to jazz. The band played a role in enabling musicians to be able to earn a living in Britain by only playing jazz. Thereby, they helped to prepare the way for the Trad boom. After almost a year in London the Antipodeans returned to their homeland. Through their influence, Lyttleton became more open to working in their mainstream rather than just trying to please Trad purists.

Some jazz musicians, such as the clarinettist Terry Lightfoot (1935-2013) appreciated that the Trad boom was going to prove to be transient. They appreciated that the future lay with amplified music and their instruments were acoustic.

The Trad boom was ended by the arrival of The Beatles. A number of bands were able to continue working in the light entertainment sector.

David Backhouse 2024