The band actually started in 1952, when Monty Sunshine and I got together. We were both students at the time: Monty was studying art at the Camberwell, I was studying music at the Guildhall, and we didn’t do any work at all on our studies. We met every afternoon, talked about jazz in a restaurant in Soho, and drank innumerable cups of tea. We were both, at the time, leading amateur bands, but we felt that we had to get a band that played all the time, played every day, and maybe we could get up to a decent standard of performance. And that meant a professional band.
At the time it was pretty unlikely to be able to make a living playing jazz, but we thought we were going to have a try anyway. We knew of one or two other musicians of a like mind – not many, because, really, most of the amateur musicians wanted to stay that way and carry on and have a professional job and just play every now and then for fun. In my amateur band I had this young banjo player called Anthony James Donegan: Lonnie had his own amateur band as well, so he played twice every week. He was dead lucky. In his amateur band he had bass player Jim Bray playing, and he wanted to play all the time. Monty Sunshine was leading the last knockings of the Crane River Jazz Band with Ron Bowden on the drums; Ron was already living on the two quid he earned a week.
So that was a band with trombone and clarinet, and banjo, bass and drums only, not a regular formation. But we thought, well, surely there’s no legal penalty for playing without a trumpet or piano if you haven’t got one, and we rather fancied having a go, so we practised every Saturday afternoon, and it got better each week. We began to get very good.
And then we met Pat Halcox, who played with a band in west London, an amateur band, and he said he’d love to join us because he fancied the idea of being a full-time musician. So he came along, and it was great, immediately, fantastic, extraordinarily good. We were very pleased about this and we began planning what we were going to do. We had a permanent invite from friends in Denmark. There was a good jazz scene over there, so they said, “If you care to come over any time, we can put you up in different friends’ houses instead of hotels, and you can play in different jazz clubs every night and get your act together, so to speak.” We were going to do that in March 1953: it was going to be the turning point. At the end of December 1952, it was the first time we actually played in public with the band with Pat on trumpet, in a jazz club in Soho, and – I wouldn’t say it myself, but I have some independent witnesses, who heard it and say it was extraordinarily good – so we were very pleased with that. Anyway, came the 1st of January, 1953, Pat came to us and said, “I’m terribly sorry, my parents have convinced me that I really should finish my studies and get qualified before I take this risky step and become a professional musician. Do you mind if I don’t turn pro with you?” So we thought, “Oh God, no trumpeter.”
[Chris then goes on to talk about Ken Colyer’s return from New Orleans, his joining the band, and the volatile relationship that developed between Ken and the five other members of the band, culminating in Ken’s firing of the rest of the band, or the rest of the band inviting Ken to leave – whichever story you believe.]
… So off [Ken] went.
Luckily for us, the next day we found out that Pat Halcox had finally decided that chemistry was not for him at all, and he was going to be a musician after all. It was great. So the jazz world’s gain was Glaxo’s loss! Seriously, that was it, Pat joined from then on, so you know the whole story; I find it interesting – I can remember it all, like it was yesterday, or the day before.