My first band was modelled on the wonderful King Oliver Band. We had a two-trumpet lead and a certain amount of arrangement in the music. That was in 1949 and 1950. At that time we represented one school of jazz thought and the Crane River Jazz Band represented the other. Their music was based on Bunk Johnson and George Lewis and we were bitter rivals. But that is jumping ahead a bit too far.
The story of my first connection with jazz starts around 1942, when I was going to school at Royston. Before that I’d hated jazz and popular music, so much so that I used to throw things at the radio when ‚Run Rabbit Run‘ was being plugged to death at the beginning of the war. I went to a series of schools at that time, as did most other people who were evacuees in some shape or another, but my main school, before I finished up at St. Paul’s, Hammersmith, was the King Alfred School, a co-educational and very progressive school in Golders Green. I think that the school’s greatest asset was that it worked on the basic premise that children should be taught to enjoy learning. That may sound obvious, but it certainly doesn’t appear to be the guiding principle behind most schools.
Anyway, in addition to my general schooling, I was also learning something about music. My father played violin, and it seemed natural that he should arrange for me to have lessons. I actually kept them up until I was fifteen, and I finally completed my education as a violinist against growing competition from a collection of jazz records. The first jazz record I bought (at least, I reckoned it was jazz in those days) was Eric Winstone’s ‚Oasis‘, but I quickly moved on to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and people like Coleman Hawkins. By the mid-Forties I had discovered that jazz records were a scarce commodity and that some records issued here were unavailable in America, and therefore worth a lot of money. I became a record exchanger — buying and selling and building up an enormous collection of my own from the proceeds. Something about the mathematical side of matrix numbers fascinated me, as I’d always liked maths at school. There used to be a joke about the mother who proudly asserted that her son was very musical. „Name any record“, she would say „and he’ll tell you what’s on the other side“. Well, with me it was „I’ll tell you the matrix number“. In my defence I must say that I was completely absorbed in the music as well, and those years of collecting gave me an invaluable base when I started to play.
I bought my first trombone from Harry Brown — Humph’s first trombone player. It cost me 8 pounds, was tied together with string and had no case. But it was a start. I think that the reason I suddenly decided to try and play was my first visit to a Hot Club of London concert by the George Webb Band in 1946. As I walked into King George’s Hall and heard the band open up with „Fidgety Feet“, I realised something that I still believe to this day: third-rate jazz that is live is more important than first-rate recorded jazz. So I started my career as a jazz musician.
My first band was Doug Whitton’s, and he gently eased me out after a few weeks because I wasn’t good enough. Next I went to Cy Laurie, and he sacked me because I wasn’t loud enough. I realised that if I wanted to play in a band I’d have to organise it and retain control of the hirings and firings. Since that day, funnily enough, I’ve always led the bands I’ve been in apart from one short stretch with Ken Colyer in 1953. This may prove something. I don’t know. As a matter of fact, the first band I organised in 1949 included Ken Colyer, whom I’d met with his brother Bill at Cranford. We had two rehearsals at a pub called the Hare’s Foot in Goodge Street and then called it a day.
So Alec Revell and I formed a band with Keith Jary and Ben Cohen on trumpets in the King Oliver idiom, while Ken went off to pioneer the Crane River sound. We opened a club on Sunday afternoons at Studio 51 which is where Ken’s club is now. It was called the Lincoln Gardens, and after a while we got Tuesday evenings going as well. One of the interesting things about that band was that we had a small group consisting of drums, bass, guitar and piano with myself and Alex Korner singing. It wasn’t called a skiffle group in those days, though. That came two years later.
By 1951, I’d realised that my main interests were in music, and I’d left my job as an actuary with an insurance company (a later development of my liking for maths) and joined the Guildhall School of Music for a three-year course on bass playing — Philharmonic, not Pops Foster. This was really the start, and by the following year I was getting dissatisfied with the amount of playing I was doing with my band in its semi-pro capacity. At this stage I came across Monty Sunshine, and we talked about the possibility of becoming professional jazz musicians. It was an exciting prospect, and, after tentative starts with quartets and quintets, we finally got together the band which we invited Ken Colyer to lead when he got back from his famous trip to New Orleans. It was a pretty good band in its way. It played a tour in Denmark, and it launched skiffle, and we all had a lot of fun. In the end, however, personalities clashed to an alarming extent, and after one stormy scene at the London Jazz Centre we gave Ken two week’s notice just before he got the chance to fire the entire rhythm section. Pat Halcox joined us from the Albermarle Band, and it was the start of the Band as it exists today. That was in May 1954.
If you ask me now what I want to do, I’ll answer, go on leading the band, being a musician, and being involved in the entertainment business. Of course, one’s ideas change, and I may swing towards different styles of music within the jazz framework. I like to keep moving, and I’m happy with the fact that the band has never stopped developing and creating. I think that we all started by copying various people — my influences were Dutrey and Higginbotham, and of course Jim Robinson — but now I think we’re developing a distinct sound of our own. Not just a copy, something fresh and alive, as all jazz should be. I enjoy most doing the things like Elite Syncopations. Not at the time, though, because it’s much harder work than the free blowing forms of jazz; but when an album like that is finished there’s enormous satisfaction.
My big relaxation from the strain of concert touring is motor cars. I started years ago, and I’ve owned seven cars so far, including two Lagondas, two Lotus racing cars and an Aston Martin. I’ve tried a certain amount of moderately successful racing with the two Lotus cars, and last year I raced about six times, included a run on the famous Nurburgring in Germany.
Whether I’ll go on being a jazz musician until I blow my last gasp, I can’t say. Probably not — but at present I’m very happy with the way things are.