Listening to music was a big thing!

It all started when I realised that I could play my brother's records when he was at work. This was around 11 - 13 years old. However, all my brother had was what we call Traditional / Revivalist Jazz - what our US friends call Dixieland. This pile was interesting because it contained some stuff that will all have heard of and some stuff that is very unusual. Here is what I can remember:


Chris Barber
The Firehouse Five Plus Two
Sharkey's Southern Comforts
Lou Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band
Bob Scobey with Clancy Hayes
The Cell Block Seven


There was also a record of limericks - sung - clean ones as well but I can't find any trace of that anywhere.


Anyway, I never stood a chance of liking anything else so my life was set on Trad Jazz. The next event was to get friendly with Pete Tolhurst at school. I went home with him one day and he played me an Acker Bilk record - well that was me done!


The first thing I bought when I left school and started work was a Record Player. I made sure that I bought the best I could find for sound - I had to compromise on the deck but I was to replace that fairly quickly. So, even then I was into 'HiFi'. We had a great record shop up on Streatham High Road and it was there that I bought the deck and my first LP - Acker Bilk of course.


My best man, Roger Whittle, who should stand out more here than I make him, was just as keen on the music so together we would sit in my front room, modelling away, listening to Acker.

Acker's Paramount Jazz Band always, at that time, appeared in waistcoats and bowler hats. Same as me except for the bowler, of course.

Acker was quickly followed by some of the originals - I had a 10" LP of The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and 12" records by some of the more suspect Trad bands such as Bob Wallace - who would try to sing - but had a permanent sore throat so sounded gravelly all the time - oh and did try to stay in tune.



Well, what do you think. Love seeing 'Fluff' so young.

At the same time as I was buying into Jazz, I was also becoming aware of the popular music scene. This was 1961 just as I was leaving school and I was mostly recording the pop stuff onto our home tape recorder. With a mother that worked for Philips, is was relatively cheap to have one of these as we got a staff discount. Dad was busy recording all of the '30s dance bands and I was recording all of the pop and the jazz. The pop was mostly coming from Radio Luxembourg and the Jazz from the BBC.

The pop stuff I remember are things like 'Sea of Heartbreaks', Bob Lumen's 'Let's think about living', 'Save the last dance for me' by the Drifters and other such items. However, it was still jazz that held me and I was mostly recording Alex Welsh at the time. Funnily enough, I never got to see his band live.

With Roger's able assistance, we built up quite a large library of Jazz on record and on tape. However, two memorable things happened. We were very keen on The Dutch Swing College and when they brought out their Souza march LP with the Band of the Royal Dutch Marines, we were ecstatic. The big one for me though was a Count Basie LP. Now, I have never gone for Modern Jazz and am no fan of screaming saxes so quite what made me buy this LP is a bit of a mystery. The one in question, which set me off on the road to Basie was 'Sinatra Sings and Basie Swings'. We were already fans of Bobby Darin - especially Lazy River and Mac The Knife, so Sinatra singing with Basie was fantastic. This led onto me buying 'The Atomic Mr. Basie'. I am still listening to all of this 50 years later!

Lots of Jazz and Basie followed. However, in the middle of the '60's, I got more and more interested in Rhythm and Blues which involved me blowing a blues harp (small harmonica) along with many of the tracks. This desire to play along resulted in a particular purchase, which was done purely for the harmonica accompaniment - 'Love Me Do' by the Beatles. So I was there at the beginning - something that happened twice later.



The trend for R&B stayed with me for a good while - I bought some early Rolling Stones but they soon left me behind. I was also into Howling Wolf - 'Smokestack Lightning' still gets me. I still have a CD of Howling Wolf recorded in the UK with lots of known stars playing in the band.

Lots of information on the CD here

Between this point and getting married was a bit of a desert - I had better - or more interesting things on my mind - and my music became less of an issue, except that I used to make Valerie listen when we were at my house - and she famously put up with some of my interest - but more of that later.