Jazz

Wednesday

There isn't and never has been much of a jazz scene round where I live. If you want to see live jazz played by musicians of international recognition on anything like a regular basis you have to travel.

I got into jazz in 1955 through records by the Benny Goodman small groups and Big Band and led to my discovery of Duke Ellington. They were all recordings that my father had listened to during World War 2 when he wasn't working as a radiographer on a Hospital Ship.

My first live jazz experience was a gig by the Humphrey Lyttleton band in 1959, which included Tony Coe, Joe Temperley and Jimmy Skidmore.

Some time after that a branch of the Ronnie Scott club opened up at a local pub, now demolished and replaced by a supermarket. A group of us went along there to see Tubby Hayes a couple of times.

Norman Grantz's J.A.T.P. tours were coming into the UK so we went to those and saw Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck and Sonny Stitt.

Miles Davis played dates in the early sixties and one with John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley stands out in my memory as the most moving live gig I have ever been to. Every time I listen to Kind of Blue, Milestones or Two Bass Hit, I'm seventeen again and sitting with the Tubby Hayes band standing up behind us. "We haven't missed a gig man."

I vividly remember a Duke Ellington gig in Dundee, Scotland in 1967. The days when jazz shared the charts with pop bands ended as the world went mad with Beatlemania. My jazz record collection increased in size but the opportunity to sample live jazz decreased dramatically.

Years later, one of my sons went to see local jazz musician Tony Richards play drums with Jimmy and Alan Skidmore. As a result I started looking at the local jazz scene again and went to see Jean Toussaint at a birthday gig for Andy Hamilton. Gigs by Peter King, Spike Robinson, Scott Hamilton and Tal Farlow followed.

In New York I saw Chick Corea, Roy Haynes, Kenny Garrett, Christian McBride and Wallace Roney and later in the week, Randy Brecker, Bob Brookmeyer and Lee Konitz in a tribute to Gerry Mulligan at the Bluenote Club. The guy on the door said that he thought I was the first person to have booked on-line and that it was good to know the system worked.

I rediscovered Stan Tracey and followed him round gigs at the Custard Factory - Birmingham, the Band in the Wall - Manchester, Warwick Arts Centre, Appleby Jazz Festival and a terrific quartet gig in Sheffield's Crucible theatre where Gerard Presencer's spit key seemed to be directly over my right foot and I could have reached out and touched the piano keys from where I sat. It was like having the band in your living room at home - until they turned the main lights back on.

There were four great Dave Holland gigs in Birmingham. Michael Brecker and his brother Randy played Symphony Hall, Andy Sheppard played Birmingham, Warwick and a gig in Wellington, Steve Swallow was at Ronnie Scott's as were Randy Brecker, Terence Blanchard, Joshua Redman, Alan Barnes, where has your website gone? Oh yes.....HERE.....and a Tubby Hayes tribute band. The Ray Brown Trio and Christian McBride Quartet played the same gig at the Barbican in London shortly before Ray Brown died and I finally caught up with Sonny Rollins there last May. I saw John Scofield's Bump there too and Herbie Hancock with Dave Holland.

What amazes me is that all these gigs are very well attended which proves that there is a vast jazz audience out there and yet jazz remains the poor relation when it comes to regular venues and media exposure.

P.S. There are some fine tracks on Ron Carter's website Just open it up and explore or let it run in the background and get on with your work.You could also browse the swing bands on this site that has streams and downloads.