• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team

Dan Pawson and his Artesian Hall Stompers TO BE MOVED

Posting 72:
October 28th, 2008, 05.53 #72


Lord Richard

Neophyte Brummie​


Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Birmingham​


Re: Dan Pawson and his Artesian Hall Stompers


Quote:​

Originally Posted by Lord Richard

Dear Lindsay


It was so nice to have met you at Claude's (Clive Deacon's) funeral.

Thank you for posting this 'fast photo'. Claude was a regular at Dan's Thursday evening sessions at the Warwick Castle and I got to know him very soon after attending my first session (at Dan's invitation) on 20th February 1964, having first met Dan and Pat Pawson on 18th February 1964.

I am being precise about dates because in my efforts to write about Dan, and all our efforts on Dan's behalf it would be very helpful to build s sort of 'time fine' of his important friendships (and more casual 'followings') on the jazz scene.

Claude was also at the last public session I attended at which Dan played in August 1983 at the Waterworks Club, Birmingham. Indeed, Claude followed his usual practice of talking to me regardless of the cassette machine in my hand, so Dan's band is accompanied by Claude's voice to a degree!

Very much later when Dan could not get regular work, Claude arranged for special sessions in Strd. atford, as I understand it. Before Claude died he sent me a gem of a photo whyich features Dan playing in a t-shirt emblazoned with 'I am a living legend'.

In all my following of the Artesian Hall Stompers Claude was probably the most loyal and regular and longest standing 'fan' of Dan and the band -certainly, that I ever knew, who attended sessions for the longest btime.

He was ever present when I followed the band, and I intend to dedicate my third planned Dan tribute CD to Claude. Because there will be no musicians on this 3rd CD it will probably be issued on Mike Dine's Dine-a -Mite label, as opposed to his 504 label. It goeswithout saying that all the musicians on the sessions have been marvellous in collaborating with these plans. Indeed, I intend to feature the photo of the Tulane Brass Band that Spud has already posted on this thread.

Lord Richaro:cool:

Oh dear! I mean, of course, that as there are no musicians from New Orleans on the intended 3rd Dan CD, it will be issued on Mike Dine's Dine-a-Mite label. For issue on 504 there has to be at least one musician from New Orleans on the recording!

Lord Richard:cool:
 
Posting 73:

October 28th, 2008, 06:08 #73
Lord Richard

Neophyte Brummie


Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Birmingham​



Re: Dan Pawson and his Artesian Hali Stompers


Quote:​

Originally Posted by Robert Greenwood
Richard


Thanks for telling us about the event at the 02 arena. I can't easily make the Friday but may well be able to make it on the Saturday. Yes, it would be great to meet up. Robert Greenwood

It was great to meet up with Robert at the 02 event. I am not sure of the etiquette of detailing names on the Forum : without their prior permission but I am sure it is okay to say that Pat Pawson was there. I also met a great trumpeter devotee of Dan's who has been lurking on the Forum and will hopefully be prompted to write following this posting. I wanted to re-meet him and his family following a trip to the loo but we lost contact!

Although Spud could not be there, his recent photo postings are fabulous. Thank you so much! They must have involved a ; lot of time and trouble, but they are most appreciated.:cool::cool:

Finally, a great surprise for me. I met, for the first time, Kelly Reid-Edmiston the daughter of the co-founder of : Preservation Hall. As a baby in arms she was member no 3 of the Society for the Preservation of New Orleans music. I : was bowled over when she gave me a bunch of the original 1960s membership cards and a fabulous early 1960s poster dating from the time Sandra and Allan Jaffe ran Preservation Hall.

David Nathan, Archivist at the National Jazz Archive, Loughton was also there. A great fellow!

Lord Richard
 
Posting 74:

October 28th, 2008, 08:06 #74

Lindsay

Neophyte Brummie


Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: South Wales



Re: Dan Pawson and his Artesian Hail Stompers​

Thanks for your post Lord Richard. I didn't come on the "scene" until the end of the 80s when I first met Claude so missed out lots of years of seeing the AHS...but certainly tried to make up for lost time once I had discovered New Orleans Jazz.

Did you enjoy the Brian Heritage CD by the way...? (With
Mac Mac Donald on Banjo - his mother and my grandmother
were sisters and I only discovered him five years ago....... )

Lindsay
 
Posting 75:

1 October 28th, 2008, 09:52 '75
Lord Richard
Neophyte Brummie​
Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Birmingham​


Re: Dan Pawson and his Artesian Hall Stompers
​
Quote:​

Originally Posted by Lindsay Thanks for your post Lord Richard. I didn't come on the "scene" until the end of the 80s when I first met Claude so missed out lots of years of seeing the AHS...but certainly tried to make up for lost time once I had discovered New Orleans Jazz.

Did you enjoy the Brian Heritage CD by the way,,.? (With Mac Mac Donald on Banjo - his mother and my grandmother were sisters and I only discovered him five years ago. )
Lindsay


Lindsay

Can you teil us something about where and when you heard Dan drom the end of the 80s. Certainly, as the 90s progressed he was finding it increasingly difficult to get regular work. In his view a lot of this was tied up with social changes that meant that the types of places he played at were ceasing to exist.
His joining the Chris Blount Band at the end of the 1990s was no doubt in part - probably a large part - due to all this.
Yes, many thanks for the Brian Carrick CD - much appreciated.
Lord Richard:cool:
 
Posting 76:

October 28th, 2008, 10:14 #76
Lindsay

Neophyte Brummie


Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: South Wales



Re: Dan Pawson and his Artesian Half Stompers
​

The only pub I remember with absolute certainty was the Stewponey, where we went more than once. I'm pretty sure I'm right in remembering that there were two pubs on opposite sides of the canal and the Stewponey was one of them. I have a picture of Claude there...

We also made several trips to Stratford on Avon to see them, it was probably at The Lamplighter. I've mentioned in a ; previous post about "Blind Larry" and his little dog.

Later after I moved to Wales (1993) we saw The AHS twice at the Marlborough Jazz Festival (but I forget the name of the pub, Spud and Stan may remember as it was a regular ; venue) and then we saw Dan and Stan, and Spud I think, at a Street Parade in Cardiff with that wonderful black parade marshal!. It was a very memorable day as I'd never attended anything like that before!


Lindsay

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Richard​

Lindsay
Can you tell us something about where and when you heard Dan drom the end of the 80s. Certainly, as the 90s progressed he was finding it increasingly difficult to get regular work. In his view a lot of this was tied up with social changes that meant that the types of places he played at were ceasing to exist.
His joining the Chris Blount Band at the end of the 1990s was no doubt in part - probably a large part -due to all this.
Yes, many thanks for the Brian Carrick CD - much appreciated.

Lord Richaro:cool:
 
Posting 77:

October 28th, 2008, 17.44 #77

Robert Greenwood

Neophyte Brummie


join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Kent​



Re: Dan Pawson and his Artesian Hall Stompers


Quote:​

Originally Posted by Lord Richard
Lindsay

Can you tell us something about where and when you heard Dan drom the end of the 80s. Certainly, as the 90s progressed he was finding it increasingly difficult to get regular work. In his view a lot of this was tied up with social changes that meant that the types of places he played at were ceasing to exist.

His joining the Chris Blount Band at the end of the 1990s was no doubt in part - probably a large part -due to all this.

Yes, many thanks for the Brian Carrick CD - much appreciated.

I would like to quote below part of an e-mail I sent to Richard. It probably opens up a whole other topic, but I would be interested to know what people think. I don't want to sound too : pessimistic, but I would say that social & political changes : resulted in the sort of places where Dan played becoming more and more scarce.
Robert.

I think the Dan Pawson Phenomenon could only have happened in a place like Birmingham at the time it did. I doubt whether Dan would nowadays ever find an atmosphere or a scene comparable. In these risk-averse times, a special licence is required before more than two musicians can legally perform in a pub where no-one is allowed to smoke and where every patron has been bombarded with government propaganda warning them of the dire consequences of "irresponsible" drinking. All this hardly supplies an atmosphere conducive to a roaring night with The Artesian Hall Stompers. It's unlikely that the diminishing number of pub-goers these days will look back on their drinking dens with the same affection that people on the Birmingham History Forum display for places like, say, The Salutation.


 
Last edited by a moderator:
Posting 78:

October 28th, 2008, 20:26 #78
amber.8311

Neophyte Brummie


Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: USA​


Re: Dan Pawson and his Artesian Hall Stompers
Hi Lord Richard, I have never been to Birmingham but I am so drawn to it. It seems mystical and I would love to visit or maybe live one day. |I am here also to listen to the stories and facts about Birmingham. Hopefully, I will be able to contribute as well, to the forum. The pubs there, I guess are like bars here in California.

Welcome to the forum.
 
Posting 79

October 28th, 2008, 21:46 #79
paul spedding
Neophyte Brummie​
Join Date: Jun 2008 Location:​
bewdley,worcestershire​
​
Re: Dan Pawson and his Artesian Hall Stompers​
Hello Lindsay,
"The Stewpony" you mentioned was at Stourton,between Stourbridge & Kinver which is some way from the usual haunts of the Birmingham Bars & clubs we played at. On that particular night we had a great friend of Dans........ Rudi Ballou on Clarinet from Beigium.This was 12th June 1990. Regarding Stratford-on-Avon,there weren't many pubs & clubs where we DIDN'T play ! All the gigs we got were through Larry Siattery,including a gig at the RSC where Eric Porter ( Forsyth Saga ) was dressed as a female and danced with Val our black bass piayer from Handsworth who would not belive us he had been dancing with a "bioke" !! Spud.


 
Posting 80:

October 28th, 2008, 23:44 #80
Lindsay

Neophyte Brummie


Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: South Wales​




Re: Dan Pawson and his Artesian Hall Stompers​

LOL that is funny, my late uncle once told me that he had been Eric Porter's schoolteacher in Croydon where I originally came from....

Oh by the way we would have been at most of the band's gigs on the Sunday iunchtime (or dinner time as you might say up there in Brum!) I'm really sorry I can't be more helpful in identifying places where they played...there was almost always something happening on a Sunday and Claude would ring us up and ask if we were coming, and we always did if we couid....and we ended up afterwards at Claude's room in The Grange for a huge feast of cheese on toast Message (Claude's staple diet, or "ballast" as he used to call it).... Lindsay

Quote:

Originally Posted by paul spedding
Hello Lindsay,
"The Stewpony" you mentioned was at Stourton,between Stourbridge & Kinver which is some way from the usual haunts of the Birmingham Bars & clubs we played at.On that particular night we had a great friend of Dans Rudi Ballou on Clarinet from Belgium. This was 12th June 1990. Regarding Stratford-on-Avon,there weren't many pubs & clubs where we DIDN'T play I All the gigs we got were through Larry Slattery/including a gig at the RSC where Eric Porter ( Forsyth Saga ) was dressed as a female and danced with Vaf our black bass player from Handsworth who would not believe us had been dancing with a "bloke" !!
Spud.
 
Posting 81:

October 31st, 2008, 16.21 #81

Lord Richard
Neophyte Brummie
Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Birmingham


Re: Dan Pawson and his Artesian Hall Stompers

Dear Ail
I'm very excited by how this thread on Dan Pawson and the Artesian Hall Stompers is developing.
I have just had an email from Stan Stevens saying he is not receiving 'alerts' and asked me to post something. Here it is! I very rarely get 'alerts'. Can anyone say why I get them occasionally, but not usually? I would like 'alerts' always.
Welcome to the contributor from California! Now Birmingham as 'mystical' was not something I ever thought about.
Lord Richard:cool:
 
Posting 82

1 October 31st, 2008, 16:28 #82
Lord Richard

Neophyte Brummie


Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Birmingham​



Re: Dan Pawson and his Artesian Hail Stompers

Quote:
Originally Posted by paul spedding
Hello Lindsay,
"The Stewpony" you mentioned was at Stourton,between Stourbridge & Kinver which is some way from the usual haunts of the Birmingham Bars & clubs we played at. On that particular night we had a great friend of Dans Rudi Ballou on Clarinet from Belgium.This was 12th June 1990. Regarding Stratford-on-Avonfthere weren't many pubs & clubs where we DIDN'T play I All the gigs we got were through Larry Siattery/including a gig at the RSC where Eric Porter ( Forsyth Saga ) was dressed as a female and danced with Val our black bass player from Handsworth who would not belive us he had been dancing with a "bloke" !! Spud.


Spud, I had thought that Claude arranged and partly financed/guaranteed a number of Dan and AHS gigs in Stratford. Do you know anything about these? When they were? How many? Or are you saying Larry Siattery organised these 'alleged' Claude gigs? Or were the Claude gigs different?
It matters to me because I am intending to dedicate the 3rd Dan and AHS and Tulane Brass Band CD to Claude in recognition of his love, loyalty, dedication, and so on, to the band - I guess from the moment he first heard them to the day he died.
To refer to Robert Greenwood's posting, yes he makes a very interesting point - though I'm not quite sure why you wouldn't get the same thing in other industrial cities such as Manchester, for instance.
Spud, thank you for the 'trans' story!

Lord Richard:cool:
 
Hi Lord Richard and all, good to see this thread resurrected, this is a "test" post with thumbnail, just to see if it works

This is the last known picture of Clive aka "Claude" in late May or early June 2008 which I had posted previously. I'll have to dig out my others.....
 
Well that last picture worked so here is another!

Not sure how I came by this but it's proof, if needed, that Claude was one of the most loyal supporters of the Artesians...here is evidence of his famous felt pens...!
 
Here's another from my collection. This was probably taken about 1990, at the Crown and Tuns, Deddington, Claude at the bar (of course!) in the background my husband Alistair and my children Alison (Clive's nickname for her was "Snowflake") and Bobby (Clive's nickname for him was "The Bobster")

I saw the Artesians play at the Crown and Tuns in about 1993 after we had moved to Wales - I seem to recall that it was an event to celebrate an anniversary of the pub appearing in every edition of CAMRA's Good Beer Guide. In the evening Dan was asked to pick winning tickets for the raffle during a break from performing - when really all he wanted to do was "shake the snake and make a lake" - and he famously said, "well it doesn't matter now, I've pissed myself......!!!"
 
This is the Parade Marshall I met at the street parade in Cardiff in 1993, just coming out of one of the pubs...
 
What follows is Bob Barton's second posting, which was lost after 30th October 2008. Remember if your post was put up after 30th October 2008, and it was not the first reply to one of my posts, I will not have had a hard copy to re-post.

Bob kindly just sent me a copy to re-post - and here it is. I will be happy to do likewise with any of your postings that you may have kept a copy of.


It's nice to know that Dan Pawson and his times and the people around him are remembered with affection. So, even in the context of the certain eventual extinction of our sun – meaning that if humanity is to survive all the idiocies it has wrought on itself and the planet, sooner or later it must move somewhere else, although given the probable heat-death of the universe, this too might not end up very gloriously.
Merry Christmas by the way.

Thanks Robert Greenwood for comments on my first post, and thanks too Big Gee – if your name's Graham, I'm sure I do remember you from Salutation/Birmingham Arms days (my memory is astoundingly good considering the trillions of brain cells that must have been destroyed by what the Germans would delightfully call 'Unmengen' (un-amounts) of beer). Talking about which – when the Artesians did the two weeks at the Allotria club in Munich (see Spud's earlier post and picture) we took a day to visit the famous monks' brewery at Andechs, where they brew a particularly tasty and strong dark beer. I drank two litres of it, followed by a chaser of a very, very strong beer called 'Kulminator'. This of course, in true AHS tradition, had been preceded by other beer drinking activity on the road. Dan said he didn't believe anyone could drink so much and not be pissed. I wasn't particularly, but the gloss of Dan's tribute was somewhat tarnished by the fact that when we got back to Munich I had to suddenly insist that our driver Barry stop the van so I could tumble out and monstrously evacuate the entire imbibings of the day all over the pavement, accompanied by hearty laughter from Dan and the others.

Spock was on bass for that tour – he'd taken it up to be able to come at all, as Pickwick was on reeds (having got the gig in the first place as I recall) and had borrowed a bass from Martin (second name escapes me), was devastated when it fell over, breaking the neck off the body, on the first job somewhere in Holland or Belgium, but, ace woodworker as he was, mended it perfectly by getting hold of some tools and drilling a hole to insert and glue a thick, handmade dowel that fixed it in place, then staining and polishing the repair point so it looked like nothing more than a cosmetic beauty spot.
It was on that tour too that Dan really encouraged me to do a few different numbers either solo or with drums and bass, such as some relatively obscure things that Fats Waller recorded like “Breakin' The Ice” or “I'm 100% For You”. Dan's repertoire was enormous and he loved to do melodic numbers like “Stay As Sweet As You Are” or “Twilight Time”. This is the same Dan who once raved in the night through the corridors of a Catholic seminary where we'd played a charity job for John Minnion, shouting “make love to the pope” (well yes, the formulation was slightly different but for fear of moderator censorship... ) and the same Dan who once splendidly played “Deutschland Über Alles” at Solihull British Legion Club (can vouch for the authenticity of this – I was there). Sometimes Dan would give me the chords for new tunes, sometimes he expected me to pick them up as we went along. Stan seemed to know everything anyway and with musicians of that class in the front line it was easy to hear what was going on melodically and harmonically so as to be able to choose the right chords.
Big Gee (or Graham if you are indeed he) – I remember Feet well (and singing along with everyone at the Warwick Castle? “All We Are Saying... is Give FEET a Chance”. Another hit there was my own spur-of-the-moment blues entitled “Exterminate The Fuzz” with the terse lyric “exterminate the fuzz” repeated ad lib for as many bars/choruses as deemed necessary (Claude and Monk liked this one a lot).
Dave 'Castro' (a Claude name I would think) lived in Knowle at one period, as I did, and once he wanted to give me a lift back home after some party or jazz session. Rumbling down dark country lanes through an atrociously rainy night, we came to a ford that seemed to be in fairly full spate. “No problem” said Castro and drove gaily into the middle of the flood, where the car stopped dead in about two feet of fast-flowing water, which we then had to wade out of, wander miles in search of phone box to call a taxi... why did something that now sounds like the epitome of misery seem such great fun then?
Together with Mick Rock and others who I can't remember (Chris Hart maybe?), we pushed my old Rudolmeyer upright piano (which I learned on but had to replace) down the Warwick Road from Knowle to The Lodge (about 2 miles) stopping here and there at bus stops to give people a quick tune, in time for one of those Lodge parties, which this time included the burial of the piano (yes actual burial in the ground, ask June if you see her) accompanied by drinking, cheers, groans, whistles, shouts and probably many other forms of human activity whose literal description would no doubt induce an attack of moderator censorship.

Heat-death of the universe or not – love to all.
Bob
 
Bob, Re: Munich Gig.
Spock borrowed the Double Bass from Joe Good,who I think lived somewhere near Bromsgrove.
Also I'll repost photos here from "The Lost Thread" as requested by Richard.
I can only upload 5 photos at one time,will repost others later.
Spud.
 
It's great to see this thread restored all that wonderful information and photo's. Well done all concerned.:)
 
Thanks Wendy for your comments, It has been a bit of a slog,especially for Lord Richard who started this thread.
Here's that photo again which I now know was taken at the back of the Birmingham Rag Market. March 1972.We paraded from "The Birmingham Arms" to "The Imperial Hotel " in Temple Street.
 
Well done, Richard. A piece of genuine Brum history that needs to be preserved, not to mention a few years of my younger life that still mean a great deal to me.

Big Gee
 
THURSDAY NIGHT GIGS OF DELTA JAZZ CLUB - DAN PAWSON AND HIS ARTESIAN HALL STOMPERS, 1960-1972

Thanks to Dan's son Spencer, I can give you a list of Dan Pawson and his Artesian Hall Stompers 'Thursday' night gigs up to 1972.

I am not sure they started out on a Thursday, but quite soon Thursday became the regular weekly gig which was, in a way, the foundation of everything else.

Dan had written the following:

White Horse Cellars 20.4.1960 to 14.9.1960 (5 months)
Mason's Arms 15.9.1960 to 10.11.1960 (2 months)
Firebird 16.2.1961 to 16.6.1961 (4 months)
Old Stone Cross 22.6.1961 to 25.1.62 (7 months)
Warwick Castle 1.2.1962 to 30.7.1964 (2 years 6 months)
Salutation 6.8.1964 to 17.12.1964 (4 months)
Old Crown 7.1.1965 to 20.5.1965 (4 months)
Cambridge 27.5.1965 to 27.4.1967 (1 year 11 months)
Wellington 4.5.1967 to 1.8.1968 (1 year 3 months)
Birmingham Arms 5.8.1968 to 11.11.1968 (3 months)
Newton Club 21.11.1968 to 27.3.1969 (4 months)
White Horse Cellars 3.4.1969 to 19.11.1970 (1 year 7 months)
Drovers Arms 3.12.1970 to 3.2.1972

It is possible that Dan wrote another list which I have not seen. It is possible that as Dan became involved in full time study as a student, he never found the time or interest to continue with such lists.

But can anyone continue it? Can anyone help to build a comprehensive list?

In regards to pictures of some of these pubs, the best lead came from Stan Stephens. Following his lead, I tracked down the following three books:

Ian Turner, Birmingham Pubs, Tempus 1999, reprinted with revisions 2002, 2004, 2008

Joseph McKenna, Central Birmingham Pubs, Tempus, 2006

Joseph McKenna, Central Birmingham Pubs, Volume II, Tempus 2006

There are also internet sites specialising in relevant Birmingham pubs. with images.

If Spud could put up all he has of these - and any other relvant ones - that would be great. Preferable would be images from the relevant period.

Lord Richard:cool:
 
Photos of pubs The Artesian Hall Stompers have played at over a few years ! Some of them I've taken from other web pages so quality is not too good.... More to follow on.
 
Here's the other photos, "The Shireland" in Smethwick was one of the last regular sunday night gigs we played.Here, a guy who would get up to sing only Al Jolson numbers, his nickname was "Frankie Wankie" who had only just been released from Winson Green prison.
Sunday night at the London Palladium.... ? NO CONTEST !
 
MEMORIES FROM JOHN LANCASTER

Artesian ‘Memoire’ 1973 -1979 by John Lancaster


After meeting Bob Barton on a Trevor Richards Band with Tommy Sancton tour in Germany, I was ‘auditioned’ for the Artesians on a weekend gig tour of Black Country pubs, Tipton, Bilston etc ending in Rob the Raver and Cathy’s wedding reception in a Cape Hill boozer where Pawson set fire to my football results final newspaper whilst I was reading it on stage in one of the breaks. Final set with singed beard.


Joining the band in late June 1973 after a trip to New Orleans where I’d met Spud, the weekly Thursday residency was The Pelican, Hockley, an inner city industrial estate redeveloped from the slums. They’d kept the corner pubs to which the people they’d moved out came back every night. The band was Dan, me trombone, Roger Bird (cl), Clinton Sedgeley (banjo/gtr) Spock (George Morgan) drums – Spud was still in New Orleans. Bob Barton had gone to work in Germany, Roger went off to university and Stan had gone to run a pub in the Black Country and played in the Moulin Rouge band with Keith Adams (tpt) and the Thomas brothers – Terry (drms) and Joe (banjo).


Then we moved to The Barrel, Summer Lane, Thursday night and Sunday lunchtime – here the usual line-up was Dan, me, Spock (alto) and Clinton or Smiley Helliwell (banjo/gtr). Spock’s dog Clogger also always slept on the bandstand (Quote Smiley Helliwell: ‘I’ve heard of a ship’s cat, but never a band dog’). Occasional bass players were Jamaicans Sleepy Reid, Val Reid – their brother Eddie (Salty) Reid would sometimes sit in on trumpet. What a Reid section! Paul Keel (tpt) was another sitter-in. The Barrel was opposite the Birmingham Arts Lab Theatre and one Sunday afternoon the whole band got kicked out of a Marx Brothers/Laurel and Hardy double bill screening – for laughing too loudly!


Other shorter pub residencies were the Gunmakers Arms, Lozells; Nechells Tavern; the Manor by the brewery in Aston ( the latter was full of brewery workers with free beer allowances, so-call ticketholders, but Dan gave up the residency on the grounds that it was the only place he’d ever played where the audience was more pissed than the band).


The repertoire in all these was mostly old and current pop songs, Dan’s emphasis always on responding to/ entertaining the locals, together with contemporary New Orleans stuff mainly drawn from the Lewis-Howard-DeDe-Thomas music hoard together with Dr John, Toussaint, Domino and other NO R&B stuff.

The last long residency I remember was Sunday night at the Shireland Arms, Cape Hill, Smethwick, a big pub with a great mixed race atmosphere with lots of singers. The ‘professional’ pub singers would follow us around like Hector (his stage name – his card said Hector Powell: his real name was Horace Bunting!) with his castanets who liked to do a version of South of the Border (‘south of the gasworks, down West Bromwich way, where I met a girl I soon got in the family way…’). And Frankie Wankie who did Al Jolson impersonations. And intermittently there were the regular followers – Bomber, Claude, Grampus, Bert Barton – Bob’s dad, Larry Slatter, Jeremy Brownlow and other crazy, nice people.


I have a journal from the period that shows that in addition to these residencies, we sometimes worked five nights a week – pubs, working men’s clubs, M&B brewery riverboats out of Worcester and Stourport, weddings, parties and parade bands for carnivals, political and protest marches travelling as far as Nottingham, Crich, Derby, Manchester, Bristol. For example, September 1973 shows we did twenty gigs. Pay: £2 each for pub residency; £4.50 for riverboats.
(I remember getting one gig for a charity fundraising event in Handsworth where the deal was £20 or £10 and free booze: we went for the latter and the organisers actually lost money on the event!) Significantly, no jazz clubs – Dan wasn’t keen on jazz clubs, thinking the audiences too narrow-minded, though we did, and he liked, Lichfield Jazz Club each year.( Dan was lucky to be alive after one of the ‘political’ jobs; playing on the back of a lorry for the Ladywood by-election, he got flung off at the roundabout at Hockley flyover, climbed back on and said it wasn’t the first time he’d fallen off the wagon!)


Life in the band was close. When not playing there were great fun pub crawls ostensibly looking for venues to play but also the chance to listen to other local music, particularly black music in Handsworth (the Beat) where Bob Marley ruled the jukebox or blues/rock, the Railway, Curzon St ( Steve Gibbons, Move and Led Zeppelin alumni) (Dan liked to tell how Stevie Winwood of Traffic started out by sitting in with the Artesians at the Midland Jazz Club).And Len Newbery at the Jeweller’s Arms was a regular call. A fine pianist and composer of songs for Winifred Atwell and Joan Littlwood, he would succumb to cries of ‘less of the corn, more of the porn’ and launch into his salacious pastiches such as Walter Wankalot, Big Fat Joyce Bigulty, Cesspools Of My Mind (‘like a peephole in a brothel or a window in a bath or the thrill of reaching manhood when you find you’ve got the clap or the pain of those scuffed kneecaps when you’ve had it on the mat… the bosting things you find in the cesspools of your mind’). Tommy Burton and Reg Curle at the Trumpet in Bilston were also performers of this ilk.

These excursions could sometimes result in trouble: Dan was a big fan of the Degvilles, a Django style band who played out at Brownhills in a pub run by guitarist Tom Degville. Following a ‘georgerafters’ with Tom and Slade band members, we walked home where Spud fell through a hedge into someone’s garden where the commotion resulted in a call to the police. After a night in the cells, at an appearance before the magistrate, Dan (who’d returned to give Spud a lift home) said it was hard not to laugh at the constable dutifully reading from his notebook: ‘I was summoned to Cannock Road where I found one Paul Brian Spedding lying face down in a bed of daffodils’.


And when not getting into scrapes we’d all dep with other bands, me often for John Minnion’s Excelsior Band whose venues included the Crown, Station St; Eagle and Tun; Adam and Eve; Botanical Gardens. Spock also ran a small band at Ettington near Stratfod where Bob Rae (tpt, flugel, tenor sax sometimes guested). Or listening to visiting New Orleans musicians – Andrew Morgan, Emmanuel Sayles, Kid Sheik, Cap John Handy, Kid Thomas, Al Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, Alvin Alcorn, Cousin Joe, Alto Purnell, Duke Burrell, Percy Humphrey etc


Oh, and we all had day jobs – Dan as a planner with the West Midlands Council after doing his planning degree.


I left Brum in 1979. I remember a lot of music, fun and learning hugely from a demanding but great guy with immense talent, skill, knowledge and invention in his playing. And I’ve heard no-one before or since with more feeling/emotion for or in what they play. I’d sum this up with the following quotation from Dan which is from a letter he wrote me:

‘’what goes on inside me comes out of my horn’’.


The Artesians? The following extract comes from an article in Trapeze, Handsworth’s community newspaper of the time and says it all;

‘About twenty five stalwart souls boarded the good ship ‘Brummagem Fly’ at Cambrian Lock by the Longboat and set sail for Selly Oak accompanied by the beautiful melodies of old New Orleans as rendered by Mr Dan Pawson’s Artesian Hall Stompers… it rained, and rained and rained, but the bar was open and the band played on , encouraged by an appreciative audience and regular rations of Newcastle Brown Ale and Vodka’.


What more could you ask for in life? Well Guinness might have been preferable.
 
Hi Richard,

wonderful memories in John Lancaster's 'memoire'. A few names that I'd forgotten over the years...and not a few pubs, too.

One small point: The Degvilles played at The Crown, Brownhills, at the junction of the A5 and the A452 out of Brownhills. Big road island where you have to watch the traffic. The Crown is still open and thriving. Back in the 1960's/early 1970's the gaffer of The Crown was Fred Degville (not Tom), and he and his son Paul played rhythm and lead-guitar respectively, laying down some truly memorable Django Reinhardt stuff every Monday night. I can remember the faces of some of the other band-members, but not their names. The bassist was a tall bloke with long hair and a beard (well, we all had those...) and the fiddle-player was a little bloke called, I think, Tom, whose day-job was at a bank, but in the evening he cut loose with Stephane Grapelli with a pipe clamped between his teeth as he played. I well remember one Monday night Noddy Holder from Slade called in - he got hold of a guitar and showed that he was capable of a lot, lot more than the great stomping rock stuff he's remembered for. He was also a hell of a nice bloke. I also remember a good friend of mine called Bob (I'll say no more...) who sat in on rhythm guitar, and the bass-player called out all the chords to him - including terrifying 11ths and 13ths. I was never one of the 'in-crowd' at The Crown, so never had George Rafters, but it didn't matter - it was a great way to spend a Monday night and - it was free! I was not long married, and we chugged our way to Brownhills from Perry Barr in our knackered Austin A40, its tail-gate held on with gaffer-tape. One night we had a puncture on the way home, and as I was changing the wheel PC Plod appeared and took a rather more-than-usual interest in what I was doing, given the state of my car and the state of my head...

Fred is no longer with us, sad to say, but Paul is, and if anyone can tell me where he's playing these days, I'd be more than grateful.
 
Great to hear from John Lancaster, or "Legs" as I knew him. I have happy memories of his Albert Warner-like contribution to the Artesians. I'm glad Dan enjoyed playing at Lichfield where I often heard him. The AHS were, of course, quite different from the usual weekly fare at that venue but were always popular there.
 
paul spedding said:
View attachment 36277

View attachment 36278

View attachment 36279These photos are more from the lost thread which I'm re-uploading.
Sorry if any are "repeats" !
Spud.
Click to expand...

Spud, a thousand thanks for these images, I think the Dan and Slapstick will make a great tray-inlay picture for the 3rd Dan Pawson Tribute CD to be released on 504/La Croix.

Also - the picture of 'Legs' Lancaster led by the kid, makes for a fabulous picture. So far it is is the best I have of 'Legs'.

I have not been able to locate a band picture featuring Dan, 'Legs', Spud and Clinton Sedgley - the line up of the 1979 session that I hope to include in this 3rd Dan Pawson CD.

Can anyone else help?:cool:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top