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Birmingham Jazz Alive & Well

We seem to be losing jazz musicians thick & fast over the last year or so. Today it's my sad duty to report the death of pianist John Taylor. Certainly one of the foremost English pianists of the last 40 years, who died following heart attack onstage in France two days ago. I met him a couple of times in my playing days way back in the mid-1970s and he was, as many people have described him, a true gentleman as well as a terrific pianist. There's a reasonable obituary here:-

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/19/john-taylor




 
Just catching up on my readings of the jazz thread. I know that shawcross will not be attached to this thread at present, as he will be too busy watching the final day of the Open Golf Championship! Although I have a sneaking feeling he will also be watching a bit of jazz, in between times. Maybe another excellent review expected?

Further sad news from Maurice announcing the sad passing of pianist, John Taylor. As long as I am still writing on this thread, I am denying Maurice announcing my passing!.

The moral? KEEP POSTING!!!

Eddie.
 
Ha ha Eddie,

Well I'm not opening a book on who will go first, me or you - that would be really tempting fate. As you say, keep posting - at least it keeps the fingers active!

Maurice
 
Bill Smith (1).JPGBill Smith (2).JPGChris Marney (1).JPG
Pictures (l to r) Bill Smith, John Meehan, Chris Marney
JAZZ FOR ALL TASTES AT WALMLEY
As an example of what a modern-day jazz band should be, catering for
traditional New Orleans tastes while recognising wider horizons, there can
be few better equipped to deliver a suitable programme than Savannah.
More than a hundred of us gave the stylish Walmley Club an appreciative
ambiance at Sutton Coldfield Trad Jazz Club's regular Wednesday night gig
as Savannah emphasised that good music, like an old soldier, never dies.
Led by drummer John Meehan and fronted wittily and enthusiastically by
highly-talented trumpeter Bill Smith, Savannah gave us a night of musical
excellence ranging from sauntering, sometimes romantic, blues to upbeat
riffs to raise the roof.
We had Am I Blue and I Wanna Little Girl, we had Tie Me to Your Apron
Strings, Go to New Orleans and Joe King Oliver classic Sweet Like This,
all nice and smoochy for the dancers but we also had High Society and many
other upbeat numbers with appropriate solos.
Stand-out offerings for this particular onlooker included Bill Smith's
muted trumpet on Sweet Like This, Matt Palmer's alto on Go to New Orleans
and his clarinet magic on High Society along with Brian 'Sam' Ellis's
trombone throughout. Matt was standing in for regular reeds man Roger Myerscough who was indisposed.
What struck me more than ever before was just how 'together' Savannah are
with their collective ensemble work. They've been there, done it for so
many years at all manner of gigs and festivals in the UK and abroad that
to this (musically iliterate) jazz fan they seem to have mastered their
team work to perfection, or near.
In the engine room John's drumming, Chris Marney's banjo and Tony
Pollitt's bass keep the rhythm going so nicely that you can take it for
granted. Now, after all that praise, I've left one of the best bits until
last.
Not content with his trumpetry and his vocals and his announcing, Bill can
casually produce a harmonica (mouth organ I used to call it in the back
street of Brum)hold it against the microphone in cupped fingers and
produce sounds to tingle the spine.
Nothing Blues and My Babe were given the treatment last night, the latter made famous by one of the few harmonica maestros over the years, Little Walter (a colourful character who, apparently died an early and violent death having turned the humble 'mouth organ' into an instrument of musical magic).
Now Savannah are heading off for a Saga jazz cruise on the River Rhine. Wish I were going with them.
Band.JPGJohn Mehan (2).JPG
Pictures (l to r) Savannah Jazz Band, Brian'Sam'Ellis
 
Nothing to do with Birmingham, but I'm off to the first ever Plaka Jazz Festival tomorrow night opposite the island of Spinalonga. Although named a festival, it is actually three Greek groups playing in a single concert. The leader of the main band has studied at the Royal College of Music in London and has a degree in Chemistry as well, so at least he has a brain. I'll let you know how it goes.

Maurice
 
Thank you Maurice...I've been to Spinalonga...and read The Island, based on its history. I envy you your musical visit and look forward to your comments.
 
Shawcross,

If you get the chance, try to read "Spinalonga: The True Story" by a friend of mine, Anna Giakoumaki. Her grandmother was incarcerated there, even though she didn't have leprosy, just to make up the numbers. She wasn't the only one to be wrongly held, but as usual, it was all about money! Anna received several death threats whilst writing the book, but it was eventually published in Athens by Obsidian Books, a publishing house owned by her parents. It was published in Greek, English & Russian and you might be able to obtain it through one of the Greek bookshops in the UK, Amazon have just one collectable copy. Anna had several meetings with people intent on turning it into a film, but so far, nothing seems to have materialised.

Maurice
 
Spinalonga.jpg

Well, the first ever Plaka Jazz Festival was 90% full and sufficient for the organisers to commit to doing it again next year. My apologies to the mods as this has absolutely nothing to do with Brum, but it is well to do with jazz, so please bear with me just this once!

Due to logistical problems it was 50 minutes late in starting so, didn't finish until well after midnight, by which time I am generally just coming alive! The musicians couldn't get any closer to the sea without falling in [Pic 2], and just to our left was Spinalonga [Pic 1]. The concert was split into three parts beginning with the Sassa Papalamprou Trio - a very competent and attractive young vocalist backed by a bass guitar player with an assortment of effects pedals, and a tom tom player with many miscellaneous instruments, including a didgeridoo. All excellent musicians performing a wide variety of quality songs and original material.

The second performer was American-born Nana Simopoulos and her group. She performed well on guitar, bouzouki, and sitar, though most of her program was orignal numbers which fitted more into the world music category rather than any branch of jazz.

Finally our Artistic Director, Dimitri Vassilakis and his Jazz Quartet took to the stage playing mostly bluesy modern jazz, himself an admirable performer on both tenor and soprano sax. Excellent pianist, trumpeter & drummer, and a competent double bass player, who was not really a soloist, but held it all together nevertheless. After about half a dozen numbers, Dimitri began to bring various guest vocalists on stage, some who had already performed as part of earlier groups, but one brilliant, but unnamed, young lady blues singer {Bluesy.jpg] really made it for me. I'm looking forward to next year already!

Setting_uo.jpg

More pictures to follow...........

Maurice
 
Nana_Simopoulos.jpg

And here's Nana Simopoulos and it looks as though I am hitting some sort of photographic limit here.

Maurice
 
Dimitri_and_Quartet.jpg

And finally, one of Dimitri and his Jazz Quartet. My apologies for the picture quality, but I didn't have a nice big flash gun available and these were all done with stage lighting.

Maurice
 
sospiri said:
Shawcross,

If you get the chance, try to read "Spinalonga: The True Story" by a friend of mine, Anna Giakoumaki. Her grandmother was incarcerated there, even though she didn't have leprosy, just to make up the numbers. She wasn't the only one to be wrongly held, but as usual, it was all about money! Anna received several death threats whilst writing the book, but it was eventually published in Athens by Obsidian Books, a publishing house owned by her parents. It was published in Greek, English & Russian and you might be able to obtain it through one of the Greek bookshops in the UK, Amazon have just one collectable copy. Anna had several meetings with people intent on turning it into a film, but so far, nothing seems to have materialised.

Maurice
Click to expand...

That sounds very interesting. I remember the island Spinalonga from watching the TV series The Lotus Eaters in the 60's!
 
Thanks Maurice, Eddie and A Sparks for your input. Let's not worry about whether it is Birmingham jazz or not. I'm not and I started the Thread!
Maurice, your Spinalonga story and pix are great. Heck, how I would have l loved to be there. We had some wonderful holidays in various Greek islands, including Crete. Now...just a thought but if they keep up the annual festival perhaps the little island could be re-named Jazzalonga...a more pleasant heritage than the one it has currently. Maybe the organisers might consider giving the event that title? I could have fun with PR for that...Come Alonga to Jazzalonga...
Re-the TV series that A Sparks recalls (The Lotus Eaters) there was also another one entitled Who Pays the Ferryman...I bought and read the book when I was on hols there a fair few years ago.
Tonight it's name written into the post-war history of Birmingham jazz...George Huxley. A clarinettist once expansively called a Brummie Sidney Bechet. He's still going strong well into his eighties...see picture below
George-Huxley.jpg

STOP PRESS: My wife has just added to my geriatric silliness by suggesting that next year's slogan could be: "Why not com-alonga, to jazz-alonga at Spinalonga...and maybe singa songa...(I'm afraid joint dementia does seem to be setting in...)
 
Great stuff, Maurice.

What a wonderful setting for a music festival. O.K. maybe not out and out jazz, but it must still have been an enjoyable musical event.

In my travels around the world, I went to a few of these various types of musical concerts, and thoroughly enjoyed them, taking in the local musical talent. As you say, being a musician one does note both the hugely talented, and the not so talented, but that is very much part of the enjoyment.

Lovely photos, and delighted to read that it will start all over again next year.

Twenty years ago, and in that setting, I would have loved to have performed in some sort of jazz ensemble. I think that I would have been inspired to play. It certainly appears to be a stage that befits a small jazz combo. Bit too late for me now!!

Eddie
 
Shawcross / Eddie,

Thanks for your comments - I'm not a critic or a writer and no doubt someone more talented in that field, like Shawcross, would have done a better job. But it was very enjoyable - I would have just liked to see more tourists and foreign residents, and there were hardly any. But it all comes down to what we were discussing a week or so ago - publicity. The only newspaper it appeared in was Anatoli - a subscription newspaper that goes mainly to businesses. There were very few posters about considering the main sponsors were the local Council (Dimos).

I think you would have liked Dimitri's drummer, Eddie, as much as I liked his pianist - both good technicians with plenty of ideas. Sassa did several Roberta Flack tunes and the last song of the night was a swing version of "House of the Rising Sun". I hadn't heard it in that style before. competent vocals by Dimitri himself, but I would have loved to hear my little bluesy girl do it - she had such a powerful voice and well in tune. And just to finish off, here's a pic of the trumpeter & drummer.....
Trumpet_and_Drums.jpg

Maurice
 
Of course I love English TV shows that we get in the USA. Usually we get then a year or two after the UK. Grantchester is not bad. As least they do play SOME Jazz. John Crump
 
...don't knock your capability as a critic, Maurice. I'm just a word spinner with no technical music knowledge and only a long-term love of jazz/swing/ragtime/boogie/60s John Coltrane etc and anything tuneful and melodic. I dislike the term 'trad' because it excludes the pioneering sax soloists and the way that jazz in Chicago/New York etcetera went into a newer big band/dance band sound (led by the genius of Louis Armstrong, who, let's be honest, became a pop singer.) To me it's all music, mostly jazz music.
How I wish I had a musical knowledge like Eddie, yourself and other contributors to the Thread. Anyway, it keeps us elderly gentlemen (old gits?) interested dunnit...?
Off to Sutton Coldfield Trad Jazz Club at Walmley tonight...it's GEORGE HUXLEY...he's been on the Birmingham jazz scene, and across the UK since the 1940s but he can still do a tidy impression of Sidney Bechet.
 
Shawcross,

Thanks for your comments. I remember the name George Huxley from when I lived in Brum (up to 1961) but I don't recollect having met him or even heard him play, but I'm sure you will have a good night as always at SC Jazz Club. We tended to go in cliques and only just a few, such as Johnny Beck and Colin Willetts, seemed to move between cliques. Although the 16-piece rehearsal band that I co-led with Dave Grounds and Rex Dorman, used many of the players from Norman Dovey's similar band, there were a lot in the band that I didn't really know, including Norman himself, with whom I only really had a passing acquaintance.

Although the Musician's Union was a strong and closed shop in those days, it didn't really do a lot to bring musicians together in my opinion. A couple of years after we started the Chapel Tavern (Great Charles Street) Saturday lunchtime get together, it jumped in a bit heavy-handed when it realised there was a couple of bob to be made. So we ended up charging on the door just to make the MU a few bob, but it didn't do amything to promote the get together amongst other musicians. But times were different in those days for sure.

Maurice
 
George-Huxley.jpg
SIXTY YEARS...& Still Blowing Strong

Not quite 'standing room only', but near enough a full house, as George
Huxley's All-Stars entertained a gathering of around 130 at Sutton
Coldfield Trad Jazz Club's Wednesday night gig at the stylish Walmley
Social Club.
George now has a residency at Solihull British Legion having moved there
recently from the Old Sills rugby club. And so, no doubt, the extra 'bums
in seats' at Walmley could be partly down to a mini-invasion by his own
camp followers.
OK, so ponder that for a moment: the writer of this review admits to 82
years on this planet and remembers George, as his senior, around the 1950s
playing at Birminghamn venues in those early post-way years (the Adam and
Eve in Bradford Street as one example).
No bad, eh? This octogenarian, perennial music maker, with talents on
clarinet and soprano sax with occasional sorties into alto and tenor,can
still draw a crowd, and help keep 'our jazz' alive, after 60 years on the
circuit here and abroad, including the States.
The second offering of his programme, described as a 'raunchy little
number', A Pallett on the Floor, quickly filled the dance floor and then
digging very deep into New Orleans archives the band indicated clearly
that they had not forgotten the music's roots with Memphis Blues.
Almost inevitably George complied to a request for Jacqueline, that
dreamily tuneful Sidney Bechet number (and later recorded by Monty
Sunshine, I believe), that he still plays on soprano sax with the purest
of tones.
We had a stirring medley of American Civil War marches (through Georgie,
Dixie etcetera), Whistling Rufus and the King Oliver/Louis Armstrong
standard, Chimes Blues, though on this occasion one of the bells did seem
to have a crack in it.
We'll forgive them for that minor slip. The indestructable George Huxley
just goes on, and on.
 
Shawcross,

Nice writeup and I have found that, in general, reed players whose main instrument is clarinet, do seem to have a smoother tone on tenor and alto sax, though also lack the puff to make good baritone players. And who cares where the audience comes from? It's bums on seats that matter. Our entry into the CinemaLive circuit with the live Andr Rieu Concert from Maastricht actually ended up making a net profit of 133 euros, so we are pleased and it bides well for future performances - the next one likely to be Verdi's 'Aida' from Sydney Opera House. So long as we don't lose money we're happy to promote any kind of decent music.

Maurice
 
BASS SAX.JPGBand playing.JPGTRom Trum.JPGTrum.JPG
John Bayne (bass), the band, Bob Dwyer, Max Emmons

Great Jazz for all Ages
To many of us the appearance of Bob Dwyer's Bix and Pieces at Sutton Coldfield TJC's latest Wednesday's night gig, was a first sight... but judging by the audience's enthusiatic appreciation, it will not be the last.
If the band title suggested a Bix Beiderbecke tribute, pure and simple, or even just 'trad' how wrong the impression was. Talk about versatile and varied. As the night's programme note explained the 7-piece band has 'a far wider repertoire. R&B, sprituals/gospel numbers from the golden era of jazz up to 1960. Something for everyone and ideal for the dancers'. They sure were.
What I particularly liked about them was that very range and scope of their music and their use of instruments. To the usual jazz band sounds they added a huge bass saxophone, a harmonica and a guitar, mixing and matching them inventively.
Their rousing, wonderfully jazzy version of the R&B number Freight Train Blues includes a couple of spine-tingling mouth organ solos by trumpeter Max Emmons complemented by a softer alto sax by Bernie Holden. (This signature number is easily available on You Tube by the way.)
The deep throated bass sax, a bit like QE 2's hooter as it reaches port, was ideal for Davenport Blues (where Beiderbecke was born)and then changed the mood by supporting Bob Dwyer's vocal on the dreamy 'If I had a Talking Picture of You.' Very 1930s croony, romantic dance music that one.
In the constantly changing genres, skiffle arrived with one sung in the 50s by Lonnie Donegan, Somebody's Digging My Potatoes, but seemingly it dates back to long before to the original blues and the legendry Leadbelly.
Adding ballads to the mix we had a Billie Holiday number, No Regrets, with a lovely alto sax support and, intriguingly (for me, anyway) a vocal by Bob Dwyer, a Hundred Years from Today. Those words were probably written a hundred years, or thereabouts, from today! I'll wager that the writer didn't expect them to still be sung, a hundred years on from that day.
So here was yet another wonderful reminder, as if we needed it, that 'our' music was written to last...and it's not letting its pioneers down by living on. And on.
 
Was it the No Regrets as sung by Edith Piaf Shawcross? I heard the lady member of the Platters sing that once in Paris, in English went down a storm.Their line up would have changed I think over the years.
 
Shawcross,

It must be nice to see a 7-piece band - these days three seems to be the maximum!

Maurice
 
...no I don't think it is, Nico...certainly didn't sound like it to me, though I did wonder when listening...I'll check it out and hopefully come back with an answer...I ought to know...Billie Holiday is my all-time favourite singer....one critic wrote of her that when other singers sang that their man had gone it sounded as though he was at the corner shop buying a loaf of bread, compared to her version in which he was at the airport in the departure lounge...
 
"My man's gone now, ain't no use a listenin'" I know that one. You can hear her reaching for the pill bottle almost. Does a 7 piece ask for more then? My son in law of sorts is in a band up north and the venues he plays have a set fee so if you are fewer in number you get more each. Some places they play for beer, and he has given it up. The more instruments the merrier I say.
 
sospiri said:
Shawcross,

Thanks for your comments. I remember the name George Huxley from when I lived in Brum (up to 1961) but I don't recollect having met him or even heard him play, but I'm sure you will have a good night as always at SC Jazz Club. We tended to go in cliques and only just a few, such as Johnny Beck and Colin Willetts, seemed to move between cliques. Although the 16-piece rehearsal band that I co-led with Dave Grounds and Rex Dorman, used many of the players from Norman Dovey's similar band, there were a lot in the band that I didn't really know, including Norman himself, with whom I only really had a passing acquaintance.

Although the Musician's Union was a strong and closed shop in those days, it didn't really do a lot to bring musicians together in my opinion. A couple of years after we started the Chapel Tavern (Great Charles Street) Saturday lunchtime get together, it jumped in a bit heavy-handed when it realised there was a couple of bob to be made. So we ended up charging on the door just to make the MU a few bob, but it didn't do amything to promote the get together amongst other musicians. But times were different in those days for sure.

Maurice
Click to expand...
Mum was in the MU and Equity on the panel she got to rub shoulders with more artists because of it, often better ones but not solely. I suppose it was/is like any union, an insurance policy for those in need of it and others who might never need it. There used to be a musical paper and I have forgotten the name, not the Melody Maker but something like that for local artists. I remember a name I think it was Reg, Flowers.
 
I was a member of Equity. I worked hard to become a member, and was so glad to have that surety of payment. It was sad when Equity lost their hold over payments. Once there were so many tv channels, it was difficult for them to keep control.
 
In reply to Nico's query re-payment I guess it follows that the more individuals there are in a band the more you pay so that they each, rightly, get what they're worth for providing some 2/3 hours of talented entertainment. I happily pay my fiver entrance plus a pound on the raffle as the best bargain of every week.
NOTE: If you scroll back a little you'll see that I've removed what may have been an indiscreet comment earlier, raising this debate!!!! And thank you and all those who have visited this site...I'm astonished, and well pleased, that it has now had more than 7,000 hits. I'm just sorry that my offerings cannot cover a wider spread of jazz in Birmingham....I would go to more if I were physically capable!
 
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