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Memories of a Birmingham Musician (Drummer)!

Eddie,
A lovely story and one of the many about Phil Seamen that I have heard through the auspices of Ronnie Scott's book or books about Ronnie Scott, all of which I have, and which I read regularly. He was undoubtedly Britain's top jazz drummer and I don't think that anyone would dispute that. Sadly he was also one of the few names that never made it as a guest to the Parkstone Jazz Club as it wasn't set up until just over a year after he died. On the good side there is much evidence on record of his greatness - just type Phil Seamen into YouTube.com and it will keep you going for hours, both audio and video. Thanks for the reminder, Eddie.
Maurice
 
Watching the political show last evening, This Week, BBC 1 11.45pm.

Very surprised to see Ann Nightingale, DJ, on the show.
In the early 1960's we worked together on a music show, in London, for a week.

In those days she was a vivacious, very funny young lady.

Both of us looking much older, but both still here!

Eddie
 
Annie Nightingale introduced the band in which I was the drummer, on The Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC2) in 1981. Yet we didn't meet her; our slot was recorded at the 101 Club in Clapham, and Annie did the links in the studio. The band was a short-lived power-pop outfit called Nautyculture. Two singles for Charisma Records, and two tracks on compilation albums.
 
Just heard the announcement of the passing of Peggy Spencer, aged 95.

A most gracious lady. Peggy, and her husband Frank, led the Frank & Peggy Spencer Dance Formation Team. They were the greatest, winning every dance championship, and often appeared on the BBC "Come Dancing" programme. I think it would be fair to say that, without Peggy Spencer, Come Dancing would not have had the success that it enjoyed in the 50,s & 60's. They were always announced as "From Penge, the Frank & Peggy Spencer Dance Formation Team".

I played for Peggy on several occasions, including World Championships, and unlike many on the professional dance circuit, she would always thank the band after a show, even if she lost.

R.I.P. Peggy Spencer
 
norfolk brummie said:
The sad passing of 'Prince' today, and Victoria Wood yesterday.
Last week the BBC did a 'same period' comparison for 2013, with 5 'name' deaths, 2015 there were 12 'name' deaths, and this year, at the end of last week, there had been 26 'A list/big name' deaths. A really sad start to the year for those that have entertained us, in one way or another.

Had the pleasure of meeting Victoria Wood, in her early days, on Leicester London Road station, when we were both waiting for a train. Naturally the main topic of conversation was music.

Eddie
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'Met' her too, she was a doing a shop window in Cov before she was well known, with Chris Tarrant. I say met, they came down to the lounge and I said hello, that's all. Terribly sad and a great loss to the world when we lose anybody with such talents as these people. Who make people happy.

I was hoping you could help me out Eddie? It may be of interest to other readers too. I was given my great uncle's harmonica yesterday. A Hohner. He brought it back from Germany in WW2. It is still in the original box with blue flock lining and had not been played for over 50 years, so I teased Maree's Wedding and Daisy Belle out of it. Then my partner said, " you have got purple lips!" so I hope I wasn't poisoned. Blue flock I suppose. There are a couple of notes that won't play do you know how it can be cleaned? It has the button on the end that makes it vibrate. Best Wishes, Nico.
 
Hello Nico,
Nice to read the story of your great uncles Hohner Harmonica. The button at the end means that it is a chromatic harmonica. In other words, it plays the sharp and flat notes as well as the ordinary notes, like the black and white keys on a piano. It really needs a specialist to clean it properly, and the reason that a couple of notes do not play is probably because the metal reeds have become stuck. It happens with old harmonicas. You could carefully remove the plating, and check the reeds on the notes that are not working, but be very careful...do not mess with them any more than you have to.

What I find interesting in your comments, is that your great uncle brought it home after WW2, so I assume that it was made either before the war, or during the war. If so, it would now be a very rare model. Check it out. With best wishes.
 
Thanks Eddie.
He brought it home from Germany but I don't know how he got it. I think he was a character. His middle name was Kitchener and I know he played guitar too. I will take a photo and put it on here of it. I have another one my step daughter gave me which plays the sharps and flats (I think,) without the button, as in blow and suck but not all of them. I could be mistaken of course, I can compare it to the piano and see. I never had lessons I just tried, last year. The more I played it the easier it became although it still stuck and it tasted vile. I got a You Tube video how to clean with surgical spirit and a soft toothbrush it does say take care but you have to take it apart. I suppose I could could just clean the outside with spirit to protect my lips and see if I can blow out whatever is in. Probably dust.
One tale is that great uncle took it from a German soldier I don't know how true that is, he did have a German soldier's belt.
I feel honoured to have been given it though.
Best wishes
 
This may not be the right place for this post, but I'll try it anyway. Over the last few weeks I have seen reports of where someone is taking some else to court for copying their music. Now, I am not a musician but are'nt there only 12 notes in a scale, and if so, then surely there must be a limit to what can be done with them. After all the millions of songs that have been recorded and published surely we must be close to the limit, and by the law of averages there must be songs out there that sound very similar, unintentionally may I add. Like I said I am not a musician and I don't understand music, but it is something that has always puzzled me, but I have never asked before.
Terry
 
Terry,

This sounds as good a place as any and I'm sure that Eddie will come along and comment too, as well as others.

Correct that there are only 12 different notes in the chromatic scale, but the number of possible sequences of those notes is a huge number. But, of course, that number is lessened somewhat when you realise that many of the possible sequences sound rather unmusical. You certainly wouldn't have a shower whilst trying to hum some of the atonal sequences written by the likes of Arnold Schoenberg and others!

So whilst the number is reduced, it is still very large. And the majority of tunes comprise 32 bars (or thereabouts) and each bar comprises quite a few notes, that still leaves a very large number of sequences/tunes. The odds are that if one sounds near enough the same as another that one was copied from the other. Personally I think that that is a fairly reasonable assumption, though like DNA, there is always a very minute chance (one in umpteen millions) that the defendant did not commit the crime. But there is generally a bit of other evidence to back up the accusation, e.g. the two composers worked in the same band or something like that.

The odds are a bit better if the tune is a 12 bar blues - less bars, commoner phrases, etc. - but I haven't heard of a copyright case being brought over a 12 bar blues. Jazzmen frequently use the chord sequences of other tunes as a basis for another theme on which to improvise. Then the "new" them is known as a contrafact. For instance, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker wrote the theme Ornithology (named after his nickname "Bird") which uses the chords of the song "How high the moon". There are many many other contrafacts, but now we're getting into a slightly different subject, so I'll leave it at that.

Maurice
 
I also listened with intent at this case and will it set a president for others? My step daughter and her partner are musicians. They told me that if a part of a song is similar or even ripped off, as long as you changed the rest of it, note wise, or the copied part slightly you can get away with it. They also explained that (news to me) you can buy/download backing tracks and record your music on top of them so I thought at the time, your music is bound to sound the same as another's if you use the same backing track.
We always listen to the radio and my partner says that just sounds like something else so I usually sing the something else along side whatever is playing.
My partner is French and sometimes I hear an outburst from her saying, another copy! As many of our UK pop hits were copied note for note and or translated, or had different words/meanings put to them and recorded by a French artist to become big hits in France. e.g. How do you do what you do to me, recorded there by Claud François. I don't know how this works copyright wise. Maybe someone can enlighten us? Eddie?
 
Nico,

Try making you own video of anything, add as a soundtrack a piece of copyrighted music, and then upload it to YouTube. Within a matter of minutes they will be down on you like a ton of bricks for infringement of copyright. A UK friend of mine frequently uploads videos - generally tutorials about the techniques of videomaking - and on numerous occasions he has had to reload them with a soundtrack written by himself - he is also a musician. YouTube uses automatic music recognition software to spot infringements.

I can't speak for French tunes that have had British lyrics added, I suspect in most cases this was done legally and that the original composer gets a share of the royalties. I also know of composers of electronic music who have quoted fragments of copyrighted tunes who have been served with injunctions to remove them.

On the question of writing part of a tune and claiming that you wrote it all, read the fourth paragraph of this page, where one of the composers of part of the song "Whiter Shade of Pale" successfully sued for not getting credit and his share of the royalties. It is very dodgy ground that you are standing on if you try thieving someone else's music!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Whiter_Shade_of_Pale

Maurice
 
Thanks Maurice for trying to enlighten a thicko like me, but I guess I will always be confused. So I assume it must be getting harder and harder for a songwriter to come up with original tunes. Talking about YouTube, I uploaded a video of my grandaughter who was about 8-9 at the time dancing, she was in a dance class and they put on a little show for the parents. One song they danced to was Elvis's Hound Dog, only about 12 seconds long, and I had an email asking (no, ordering me to either take the video down or silence the song somehow) so I took it down. Shame really.
Terry
 
Terry,

I think there's still plenty of room for talented songwriters to come up with new songs, though it may be getting harder for those that have to churn out stuff to a forumula like X-Factor and Eurovision, many of which same very similar to me!

Yes, it's quite easy to get caught by the YouTube piracy software as the company has to keep within it's licence. It can't just put anything and everything online as some people seem to mistakenly think.

Maurice
 
I don't download on to Youtube. However I did play 3 tracks from 3 separate CD's and a cassette at one of my parents' funeral services. I asked the vicar and the Funeral Directors in advance and they said it was acceptable as it was a non profit making performance, for me. It was not counted as a public event either.
I know of a band who used a lottery money grant to record. They used the soundtrack of a film on their CD. This was about 30 odd years ago. Had they become famous I think it would have been another story.
My partner has a nice collection of 45 rpm's of Helen Shapiro's hits recorded in French. I heard "For Ever and Ever" by Guy Mitchell (as I thought) at a French music festival sung by a childrens' choir. You have it too I said. No, that's an old folk song, "The Star of the Snow". I wonder who had it first. Like Elvis's Wooden Heart and It's Now or Never.
As I am learning the guitar I noticed that Over The Rainbow chords are the same as Danny Boy or they are the way I play them. My mate noticed that Jo Stafford's You Belong to Me chords are the same as Skeeter Davis'sThe End of The World. The melodies are similar too.
I also wondered about Oasis's Don't Look Back In Anger, title being so similar to the film Title. Petula Clarke's The Other Man's Grass etc quotes from the bible as we had it at the school assembly. And the Beatles' Cracker Suite. From the Nutcracker.
Maybe you can't do it from living artists as the dead ones can't sue?
 
I see that our musical performers are in trouble again. Henry McCullough, guitarist with Wings, has passed away, and Nick Parfitt of Status Quo and Meat Loaf have both had heart attacks.

Maurice
 
sospiri said:
I see that our musical performers are in trouble again. Henry McCullough, guitarist with Wings, has passed away, and Nick Parfitt of Status Quo and Meat Loaf have both had heart attacks.

Maurice
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Visited our musical family & brought up the copyright topic. I was told that after a previous major case of past infringement, a musician challenged it by playing many many songs in the same four key changes thus a president was set that if a melody or lyric is the same as another's for more than 5 consecutive notes or words, the infringement of copyright comes in to use, should the original songwriter want to execute it.
 
sospiri said:
Nico,

Chord changes/sequences don't really come into it, just sequences of notes. We're only into Day 3 of this case yet and they're only arguing about a riff of a few notes. There could be a lot of money involved though!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2...pening-chords-may-have-been-stolen-judge-says

Maurice
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Yes so I believe. I was told yesterday by the musicians in the family that the amount of money these top artists in this particular case make is like water off a duck's back. I wouldn't know myself. Stairway to Heaven came up too when he was explaining it to me as he let me have a go on his 12 string, it was a heavenly harp like sound.
 
I wonder did anything happen complaint wise about Elvis's It's Now Or Never? And I'm Always Chasing Rainbows? Maybe if the composer is no longer with us but then the relatives could sue I would think. There was a girl rapping some years ago with Avé Maria running through it. I even heard someone record the lines Blow The Wind Southerly, sung by Kathleen Ferrier on a CD my step daughter played to me. I had to explain who Kathleen was.
I also wonder about artists who deliberatly in my mind, try to mimic the voice of another successful artist as I don't believe we have the exact voice of another although we can hone it a bit. Like Harry Connick Jnr sounding like Sinatra and an artist whose name escapes me I keep thinking is Cleo Laine. And Madaleine Peru and Billie Holiday. Does anyone have an opinion on that?
 
Nico,

I'm Always Chasing Rainbows is based on the middle section of Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu in C# minor, so long out of copyright. It's Now or Never is based on O Sole Mio written in 1898 so also out of copyright. And Blow the wind southerly is an old Northumbrian folk song, so you'd have a job bringing a court case based on that.

Imitating another singer is a non-starter. How could you prove it was deliberately copied and not just an accident of nature?

Maurice
 
Good points Maurice. If you had a recording of an artist with their own voice and then imitating another's maybe? My late mate, a DJ had lots of old records that didn't make it and were re recorded by big stars. I liked listening to the originals. Some were retitled. Like Mandy, (Oh Mandy) was originally called Brandy. They must have had to pay to re record the song then. And Like sheep. A shepherd told me no 2 adult ewes have the same voice so that their offspring can recognise them. I have listened to them. That is why I am thinking no 2 singing voices are exactly the same, naturally. Just my theory.
Remember Name That Tune? I always got it wrong. But the 7 opening notes could be several songs, to me.
 
I don't understand it all, but I'm finding this thread fascinating. Eddies quiet though, probably on holiday somewhere.
 
It's my sad duty to announce the death of West Coast jazz pianist Claude Williamson at the age of 89 on 16th July 2016. Anyone who followed West Coast jazz in the 1950s & 60s, especially the Lighthouse All Stars. will be familiar with Claude's delicate playing. Here he is, all on his own, playing Rodgers & Hart's My Romance. RIP Claude


CW.jpg

Maurice
 
A very tasteful pianist, Maurice. Delighted to see you chose a track featuring one of my all time favourite songs, My Romance.
Now awaiting a photograph of John (oldbrit), standing outside the Lighthouse, so come on John.

Eddie
 
A very tasteful pianist, Maurice. Delighted to see you chose a track featuring one of my all time favourite songs, My Romance.
Now awaiting a photograph of John (oldbrit), standing outside the Lighthouse, so come on John.

Eddie
 
Sad news again this time - the death of New Orleans clarinetist Pete Fountaine at the age of 86. R.I.P.

Maurice
 
norfolk brummie said:
A very tasteful pianist, Maurice. Delighted to see you chose a track featuring one of my all time favourite songs, My Romance.
Now awaiting a photograph of John (oldbrit), standing outside the Lighthouse, so come on John.

Eddie
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Not anything to do with Brum Eddie but I do remember Claud. Lighthouse had many different pianist
 
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Hi John,

Yes, indeed, including our own Vic Feldman. For some time I've had Ken Koenig's film "Jazz on the West Coast"on my to-get list as that includes lots of gorgeous old clips of the Lighthouse You can download the trailer from here
https://www.roseking.org/
and it's available from Amazon, but very very expensive in the UK and probably cheaper to order from Ken direct!

Maurice
 
Victor Feldman. I remember seeing him with Ronnie Scott, while I was still in the army, in a London jazz club. This would have been in 1953. I later saw him, again with Ronnie Scott, at a Birmingham venue, [possibly the old Warley, or Birmingham Odeon, or maybe the Town Hall]. This was just before he left to work in the States, in the mid fifties.

Vic was an exceptional vibes player, but was also an excellent drummer, and pianist. I seem to remember that he also worked with the Ted Heath band prior to leaving for America.

He died twenty or thirty years ago.

Eddie
 
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