Jazz found its way into my life at the age of 11. I was born and raised in the UK and I had an older sister who was starting to buy pop records but these were all a bit unsatisfactory. I remember “When” by the Kalin Twins and “Are You Sure” by the Allisons and lots of Adam Faith (you see my point). My mother had a passion for Frankie Vaughan (Google him) while my father dabbled with opera – the first music I remember was from Mario Lanza and Harry Secombe. I needed to establish my musical identity. It was a household where classical vocal music was the only kind really tolerated – everything else was a noise or a waste of time.
Then came the “Trad Boom”, British jazz bands mimicking the dixieland and New Orleans sounds of the USA, a kind of revival that became very popular and very commercial. Some of the bands were very serious (Ken Colyer and George Webb, for example) attempting authentication, particularly in the early days, while others sought to popularise the music, showboating and entertaining, while simultaneously concerning the purists.
This is where I came in. One day in 1960, I heard something that was so totally different to the music that was around me. It is difficult to see it as revolutionary now but it was to me at that time. So I went to my record store and purchased “The White Cliffs Of Dover” by Mr. Acker Bilk and His Paramount Jazz Band,. Acker and his band were riding high in those days and Acker and his clarinet were to ride even higher a few years later with the plaintive “Stranger on the Shore”. Hardly cutting edge jazz but a starting point. More “trad” jazz records followed and I got to know these bands well, thought of them as the epitome of the music.
Then one day a young man came in an old Ford truck to clear the piece of vacant land opposite to our house. We got talking. He was going to build a house for his family. We became friends. My mother offered him cups of tea and plates of biscuits. Eventually he cleared the land and started to build. I helped him wherever and whenever I could. I especially enjoyed manning the concrete mixer. We soon got to talking about music. I professed my love of jazz and he did too. I proudly announced my growing collection of trad jazz singles. His face fell. He had a look of disbelief and seemed to want to comfort my tragedy. The scales fell from my eyes as he showed me the clarinet he played and introduced me to his battered record collection, covered in brickie’s dust and who knows what else.
Alone with those records I was released into to the world according to George Lewis, Sidney Bechet, Red Allen, Eddie Condon, Jelly Roll Morton and so many more. And thus began my musical journey, a journey that took me from New Orleans to Chicago and then on to New York, the West Coast and so many other cradles of jazz in the USA. From there I learned about jazz in the UK and Europe and other parts of the world including Australia where I now reside. This blog is about that passionate journey, one that still continues here in Fremantle in Western Australia. Join the fun.