Jazz Professional               

GEORGE CHISHOLM

Spike

Hand over mouth
Spike
Talking to Les Tomkins in 1976

Yes, Spike Milligan is essentially a musicians’ comic; he loves musicians, of course. As is Max Wall. It’s the same language, really, whether it’s music, singing, the spoken word – it’s all in the same field.

I mean, the first thing that Spike used to do, in the break during rehearsal, was to come in and ask, could he have a play with the fellows? He’d get his trumpet out or sit at the piano, and Peter Sellers used to get on the drums—they’re both frustrated musicians. Which certainly helps.

They were very enjoyable days. We used to turn up about lunchtime or the Sunday at the Camden Theatre Camden Town; they’ve been there already in the morning, rehearsing script. So we rehearse the tunes, and we hear the first run, fall about laughing—ridiculous, absolutely senseless stuff.

Fine—break, you see, and we come back and do a dummy run. Spike was known frequently to go off at a tangent somewhere in the script—he’d get bored, go off somewhere else, and you’d all have to follow him—and the second run through was an almost completely different show from the first one. That’s two shows, falling about laughing. Break, they let the audience in then they do what they call the warm–up, which was different from the two previous ones—and we fall about with that. Then we do the show proper—and this is different from the previous three. So in one day we had four shows—an absolute feast of entertainment. We’d finish up literally sore, from so much laughing. Sheer genius stuff. People said: “Can’t they come together now, and do it all again?” Well, it’s like honeymoon hotel—you know, it doesn’t happen twice; it’s not the same. And they’ve all gone, more or less, on their own paths. They could come back for one perhaps—with a bit of luck, it would spark.

A style of humour that I can identify with very easily is that of the Goons. I mean, hilarious things like, when we were working on the shows, Spike Milligan taking Harry Secombe for a walk, in the break, up Camden High Street—when they came to an undertakers’ shop, he whipped Harry in, laid down on the floor and shouted: “Shop!” Harry, all embarrassed, runs for his life, of course, but Spike carries it through to its logical conclusion. He still lays there; so you can imagine the guy coming out and measuring him up.

Although I’ve never gone quite as far as that, I have indulged in things, at times. As long as it wasn’t hurting anybody, that’s the thing.

I’ve no time for people who, crossing the street, pretend to limp, so that the traffic pulls up, then get to the other side and walk away briskly—I’ve seen that done, and that turned me right off. That’s sick humour; that’s not funny. Or people who emulate somebody who’s having a fit, or put on a simulated stammer. I don’t mean to take a part of someone who stutters in a play—that’s a character part—but attempting to get laughs out of the impediments or misfortunes of others is not funny to me. You get phases when there’s a lot of Irish jokes, but as for them making sick jokes about the guy who fasted in jail, for whatever principle he had, and he died—and you’re supposed to laugh. Well, not for me.

Yes, situations are it, rather than jokes. Frequently, out of the blue, I just see a situation out in the street that strikes me as funny; I’d love to lift that, put it in a television show and let people see it, just as it happened. It never happens twice the same way. You see little characters up North or in the Midlands somewhere that you’d like to just take and plant on the stage of the Palladium, and let them stand there and talk, the way they do in their little village. It creases you, absolutely, because there’s no side to it—it’s all truth.

Same as music—it’s either truthful or it’s simulated. You know, someone’s trying to gain something from somebody else, and they put an attitude on—that kind of thing. That sounds a bit pious, but I aim towards trying to be as tolerant as possible—it’s a very difficult thing to do.

There’s so much natural humour about—in bus queues, anywhere. I know people, for a fact, who get their material from bus queues. Tony Hancock, who was a giant, as far as I was concerned—he didn’t try to be funny; he was a naturally funny man—he used to stand in bus queues and fall about. He couldn’t believe what he heard. People talking, expressing their views on things, in their natural accents—it’s great.

I used to do an impression of a drunk. I did it rather well—probably because I was halfway there! So guys used to get me at it; in pubs, they’d say: “Do the drunk, George.

Go up and ask for a drink.” Of course, I fall for that—I have to do it properly. The barman says: “Okay—you’ve had enough. No more for you”—and I don’t get a drink. I twigged that one.

But I was doing a broadcast once with Lew Stone, at the Paris Cinema. We’d broken, and we came back into the studio at five minutes to nine. We were on at nine o’clock—live; it wasn’t a pre–recorded one, like you get these days. Jock Bain, who was the other trombone player, said: “Do the drunk for Lew.” Well, dear old Lew was going through his parts, getting everything right, seeing that the timing was correct for this tune and that—very tied up—and he hadn’t the greatest sense of humour in the world, shall we say. I went out, and I did the full drunk on him—falling against him, grabbing him by the lapels, slithering down, apologising to him about the state I was pretending to be in. And he recoiled in absolute horror—he could see total chaos on his broadcast. We were on in two minutes, and here’s this fellow lying on the floor, saying: “Sorry, Lew—sorry”, and all that. Oh, a terrible situation. All the fellows are falling about; they know the score, but he wouldn’t believe it—I must have been rather convincing. Anyway, we did the broadcast—it all went fine, of course. At the end, he called Jock Bain over—Jock told me later—and he said: “Don’t ever book that man again. I’m not having drunks on my show.” Even though Jock told him it was a gag, he was adamant. And I never worked for Lew Stone any more! The humour had got me out of a job. Yes, it backfired on me—not half. After that, I was very careful: when somebody said: “Do the drunk”, I didn’t necessarily do it.

During the war, we had lots of fun with the Squadronaires, in the way of getting into crazy situations. See, we were very popular with higher ranks, but we were just lowly LAC’s, equivalent to Lance–Corporals in the Army, and we got the lowest grade of pay. After each concert we did, we were usually invited to the officers’ mess. You went in there and you stood well back, very conscious of the fact that they were officers and you were not.

They thought we were “jolly good”. It was a revolting mixture of brown ale and cream cakes for the band.

That was fine, but at one point there was a voluntary American squadron came over—this was before America came into the war—called the Eagle Squadron. These guys were all operational pilots; consequently, they were officers. It was in Ireland, in actual fact; we were doing a thing over there for the troops. The Americans went mad about the band; they were talking in terms of our reminding them of the Bob Crosby band. We used to play things like “South Rampart Street Parade”, and they thought this was great. So I think we frequented the officers’ mess more than the airmen’s mess. Well, they were sharing, of course, with terribly staid English officers, who took a very dim view of these Americans, anyway, and their reckless kind of behaviour. But being operational, perhaps they would die tomorrow; so they lived for today. They were inclined to be a little loud, to put it mildly. They’d invite us back, and there was nothing the English officers could do about it, because by the time we’d had a few drinks, we used to forget we were in the officers’ mess.

The Americans had these marvellous uniforms, like you see on the films, with the cut–out shoulders, the beautiful, expensive material, while we had this terrible, hairy, thick stuff. This particular pilot and I were both a bit in our cups, and I was saying admiringly: “That’s a great uniform.” So he says: “Well—do you want it?” “Well, I’d like to’ try it on.” So we swapped uniforms, except that I kept my clumsy Air Force boots on, and he kept his very suave patent shoes on. As I was about the same build as him, his uniform fitted me, and I felt great in it. And we decided to go down into the town—I think it was Londonderry.

We went down there, and there were two service policemen on the corner—looking for any stray drunks in uniform. As we passed them, they saluted me; I suddenly thought: “Good God—I’m an officer”, and I quickly gave them an American salute. Which they accepted—until they looked down and saw the boots. There were puzzled expressions on their faces. Then they looked at the American guy—who had the hairy uniform on, with the patent shoes. And he got done—because he was wearing the wrong shoes! They couldn’t do me—I was an American. Had I been caught, I’d have been court–martialled and what–have–you, for impersonating an officer. But we roared about it; being three parts in the cups, it didn’t matter very much.

It was great fun with those guys, as it was with the Sam Donahue Navy Band musicians. We were in these terrible uniforms, but there was no side with them. They were just great guys; we had a lot in common. I used to go down and jam with Johnny Best; he was a sort of a cross between Berigan and Bobby Hackett, I suppose, the way he played jazz—a very thoughtful player. We’d all go down the clubs: Johnny Best and I, Dick Le Fave, Sam—and Gozzo came down once.

I mean, he was the lead trumpet that everybody used to book for film sessions in the States—you had to have Conrad Gozzo. And he’s in this band, with Johnny Best and Frankie Beach. I used to actually go on their jobs with them, and sit down on the floor, in the middle of the brass section, just listening—with all this wall of eight–brass sound around me.

Oh, a tremendous band. Then, after the job was finished, they’d say: “Right, which club are we going to?” We d play together till they put the chairs up in the morning, and then all go to Lyons Corner House, which, at that time, was open all the night round. There’d be musicians, prostitutes, race gang types—with an unholy bond between all three companies! The atmosphere was terrific—as was Soho in those days. That was a place of atmosphere; every few yards there was a bottle party—they used to say: “When you finish there, nip over here and play a few tunes.” You went from one to the other.

There was the smell of different cheeses, the sound of different languages. As it was then, it was alive, it was real. But now—I wouldn’t go down Soho after eight o’clock. It’s a plastic, sleazy, horrible place, with all the sex shops, strip clubs, and the funny little men beckoning to you from doorways. I haven’t worked down Ronnie’s yet, but they’ve been hinting, and I’m dreading it, simply because the club is where it is.

It’s very sad to see it, remembering how it used to be. You could walk about London at all hours then; it didn’t matter. People would say: Good morning”; there was no kind of hassle. A great, great shame, because it had so much potential; it still has, but it’s all covered in plastic now, particularly all round the Piccadilly area. If I have to go into the West End, which I avoid if humanly possible, I get out as quickly as I can—down the nearest tube and away. Hamburger stands, late–night chemists, kids hanging about—these hold no attraction for me. So I’ve got this thing about staying home; I know when you start to mature in years you want to be home more—but I would like to go up the West End, if it was anything like the way it once was. I’d love a place to go and have a play.

Yes, there’s the odd pubs. The best ones are, in fact, outside the West End—like the Bull at Barnes, the Hopbine, the Tally Ho and that kind of place. The Leather Bottle—I’ve had some good gigs down there, with the Tony Lee Trio. That’s a great trio, too. There’s nothing I like better than to sit in and have a blow with the fellows.

British musicianship, undoubtedly, can compare favourably with that found anywhere. And this isn’t something that just happened in the last fifteen years. In the ‘fifties, with the BBC Show Band, we used to regularly have guest appearances by very important artists—one of which was Frank Sinatra. He brought over all those marvellous arrangements, like “Birth Of The Blues”, where the brass is screaming—great stuff—and put them down to the guys. As you know, he’s a guy who calls a spade a spade; if he doesn’t like a thing, he tells you, in no uncertain terms. We played it through, and we stopped—and there was a terrible silence for a bit. He had a very puzzled look on his face; he said he couldn’t understand how he could put that arrangement down to a bunch of guys here, who could immediately read it correctly, interpret it correctly, and make it feel as though they’d been playing it all their lives. Sinatra was so knocked out with this. He said : “In the States we don’t get that. We have to try—and eventually we get it.” He was absolutely bowled over—perhaps because he’d been told that British musicians are square, there’s no heart, or something. Well, he found out that was a lot of rubbish. He then became one of the fellows, and it was as though he was at home. And that’s as big a compliment as you can get—if you make him feel at home, you must be doing the right thing.

He meant what he said on the air about us. There’s such a thing as being polite about the band, just because you’re a guest in a different country. But he wouldn’t have been, anyway—he’d have either spoken his mind, or said nothing, if he wasn’t happy. No, he was winking at us in his sixteen bars off; if the guys were taking a bridge passage, he’d be around shouting out “Yeah, yeah”, by way of encouragement. He really felt at home—as did other guys who came over, such as Mel Torme. The comedy patter we heard from Sinatra on that broadcast? It was a surprise to me, really, because you regard him as a musician, and deep–thinking, and perhaps a little obstreperous at times—probably with just cause. But to hear him come out with all the funnies was something else. Yes, great.

As I say—it’s all the same whether you’re a singer, whether you write, whether you play music, on whatever instrument. It it’s right, it’s right. It’s either good or it’s bad.

You know, there’s so many people with ears for holding cigarettes, and nothing else; they don’t really hear or identify—but there’s an awful lot of people who do listen. Certainly, there are easier ways than others of getting to the public.

If you get amongst just musicians alone, you might take a flyer a bit more way—out than perhaps you would if it depended on the audience understanding it. I don’t mean playing down, on a “That was no lady, that was my wife” level. Not that rubbish; I mean, as in humour, trying to be subtle about it. This is why I like people like Hackett. Hackett was acceptable to anybody—his thing was so pure, his construction of a tune was so perfect. Not clinically perfect—it was all warm and beautiful. I’ve played Hackett records to just ordinary folk—that’s not meant to be derogatory at all—people who don’t mix with musicians, who are not in the business at all.

And they thought: “What a nice sound that is”: they couldn’t explain it beyond that—it was nice. Well that’s it. I suppose you could say that the bebop of the ‘forties was the start of a trend towards losing the public.

Although what they played in the beginning was most acceptable music; you knew exactly where is was going. Musicians didn’t find any difficulty; so the public might have found a little more difficulty. Obviously, if you played “You Made Me Love You” “Georgia On My Mind”, or a tune that Armstrong made famous, like “Mack The Knife”—something they all knew—they’d identify and say: “Oh, I like that music.” Whereas, to a sequence based on a given set of chords they’ll say: “I’m not sure about that. Where’s the tune?” I’m convinced anyway, that basically people like tunes. Tommy McQuater said exactly the same thing to me the other week. Whatever it is you’re playing, if you’re extemporising, it’s a tune of some sort—it’s got to make sense. It’s not three bars of that, then sling another three bars of something else in, so that it’s all bitty. I find, playing to the general public, that if you play the first chorus reasonably near the tune, if they know the tune, they’ll take practically anything after that, if you end up roughly with the tune again. You can let loose in the middle—go as far as you like, really—because they’ve got a reference point. And they applaud at the end.

What tickles me, quite honestly, is: I listen to Jazz Club on the air, and you’ve got an avant garde band on; absolutely perfectly played—but there’s an audience there, and. when it winds up, they applaud. Now, I would love to be there, and go to any one of that audience, and say: “Why are you applauding?” I’d be very interested in tbe answer. Which would probably be: “Well—it’s modern, isn’t it?” “Yes. I know. but why did you applaud?” “Well, it stopped—didn’t it?” “How did you know it stopped?” “’Well, they stopped playing, didn’t they?” I think you would get some very strange answers—as opposed to somebody who went on and played something an audience could identify with, that they would really enjoy.

I mean, I heard a Jazz Club programme recently by the Brian Lemon Octet—and the audience were cheering. I’m told they stood on the seats and yelled. I’ve never heard that on Jazz Club before—there must have been a reason for that. Brian Lemon, to me, is an tremendous piano player—he’s highly underrated. Kenny Baker, Tony Coe, Danny Moss were on it, and they played blues tunes—not any recognised tunes. They had a few originals; one was dedicated to Sandy Brown called “Sandy’s Blues”—an attractive theme, then they all took off, and played the theme at the end. The cheering must answer something, because all the others get polite, restrained clapping, and that’s all.

Of course, there’s always a rebel faction. Like people who dress differently, whether it be mods, rockers, skinheads or whatever. Now they’re identifying to Glenn Miller music of the ‘forties and ‘thirties by wearing the dress of that period.

Well, I’m delighted with that, because it’s good music coming over. I don’t care if they turn up to the ballroom naked, so long as they turn up to hear good music. Even if it’s an accident, they’re exposed to good music just once—and it could grow.

And I’m told that there’s an enormous cross–section, particularly in the provinces, listening to Syd Lawrence, the Million–Airs. and other offshoots of that kind of band, They’re not playing Miller stuff all the time, but they stick in arrangements of Basie, Dorsey, Herman and others.

The previous, more extensive big band boom in this country came to an end in the ‘fifties because a lot of it became selfish music. Which is a great shame. Then along came the Trad boom for a bit, and that was spoiled, too. That was saturation point—there were so many alleged ‘trad bands knocking about, and the handful of really good ones were submerged. The three–chord trick pop scene that followed was very sad—except that, by a devious route, it led again to music. I’ve got some tapes of Singers Unlimited, which are absolutely out of this world musically.

I’ve been delighted with the musical progress my son and daughter have made in their listening. Like every other kid, I’m sure, they went through the Beatles era; they bought Monkees records, because they liked the clothes thy wore. And then they went on to the Beach Boys and I thought: “That’s nice. ‘That’s a good move.” They went on to Peggy Lee ,and I thought: “Good God! That’s a musician’s singer, that is.” Also they bought Perry Como records; I said : “Great—I can listen to Perry Como and Peggy Lee all night.” The odd Crosby: then they starting listening to Oscar Peterson and stuff like that.

All without prompting. I mean, the fact that they’ve got weals all down their backs from my hitting ‘em with a big whip is not the truth, your Honour! They did it strictly on their own.

And I’m delighted in the provinces, that I find youth orchestras all over the place, organised by schools and local councils, where you find a little girl of ten playing French horn. You find a host of people playing instruments other than six–string guitar—and it’s marvellous. Very encouraging. Furthermore—the good rock groups today are very acceptable; they’re finding they have to do it right because there’s been too many bad ones.

Music is coming to the surface, and it’ll triumph in the end—it’s just a question of living long enough.

When they start talking in terms of electronically reproducing saxophones and brass instruments, I’m afraid I’m strictly against it—in jazz, anyway. I believe there are some contraptions going around now that you can fit to a trumpet or a trombone, in order to get up to various electronic tricks. The voice is the natural sound; next is what one blows into—that’s as near to the human voice as you can get. Surely, to stick a synthesiser or whatever on it is to take it further and further away; all it’s doing to do is distort it.

It’s all unreal; the whole thing is ethereal. It’s all right if it’s for one effect only; electric piano, particularly, and vibes with a very slow vibrato can give you this almost unreal, smoky, cloudy, blobby thing with no edges on it. For an effect, it’s great, but not to accept that every time you go on to electric piano, that’s what you’re going to hear—or any other device of this kind. Fine for Dr. Who, the arrival of the Martians, or Night Gallery—being frightened out of your wits at twelve midnight. But to be frightened musically out of your wits at midnight, or any other time, is not on.

As for the valve trombone—I play it occasionally, and it’s a nice instrument; it’s easier to play, having valves, obviously. It’s not a trombone sound—it’s neither one thing or the other. It’s a slightly artificial sound. I think the best noise I’ve heard out of it has been from Dave Horler—I could listen to him all night. He gets as near the correct trombone sound as you can get. Of course, he plays slide trombone as well—he’s just a hell of a player, period. Because you have to humour it, since it’s not really a natural instrument as such; it’s not a straightforward trumpet, trombone, cornet, euphonium or whatever. It’s like soprano sax—it takes an awful lot of humouring, but it’s a great sound when it’s played well.

Where valves are concerned, you do have to change your personality—it’s up another street entirely. If I discarded slide trombone, and only played valve trombone, I expect I’d get more accustomed to doing it subconsciously, and forget about the valves. For a start, it’s a different mechanical thing, anyway, and this must make you think differently.

The same as if I’m playing slide trombone and I get fed up playing a particular tune. If you’re forced to play this tune because it’s been requested so many times, and you think: “Oh, God, not that tune again!”, the best thing to do is change the key—put it in a difficult key, if possible. Change to a sharp key—and immediately you’re away somewhere else, on the same trombone, the same mouthpiece. It forces you into other channels. Apart from being good practice—I love playing sharp keys. So I tend to do this quite a bit.

In fact. . . as you know, you turn up at a venue, and the proprietor’s last consideration, normally, is the piano. It’s something four strong guys humped from Mrs. Jones’ down the road, because he got it for nothing. Piano is just a name: “Oh, you want a piano? Yeah, we’ve got a piano.” But the state that piano is in is something else. You get there, and the piano is anything from half a tone to a tone out; so either the piano player’s got the headache of transposing to match up, while everybody else plays it in the key that they figure it is—or you transpose. And I prefer that I transpose, because it makes the night very interesting.

Days that I’m playing, I use the gig as practice, and see how far I can go—I warm up first, naturally. But days I’m not working, I have to practise along with records—Peggy Lee records, things like that. For me, that’s necessary—the muscles round the lip get weakened. I suppose it’s like a runner or a boxer; if he lays off training, his muscles get flabby.

Oh, there are exceptions. Kenny Baker can leave his trumpet down for a week, pick it up, and just take over where he left off. Extraordinary. His is what is called, because it involves the least pressure possible, the non–pressure method; although there’s no such thing—obviously, if two things touch, there’s a measure of pressure somewhere. But he can practically suspend the trumpet on a string and play it, by touching. And Tommy Dorsey was like this, too.

He wouldn’t have to take an instrument with him, to practice; he could just go along making buzz noises with his mouth, just to keep the muscles flexible, and that would be practice. I have to take it on holiday with me. You can imagine being in a hotel or digs or whatever, and, not wanting to disturb anybody, having to find a field somewhere! Which I’ve done, often. I have to hire a car, not so much for seeing the sights, but primarily so that I can run myself out to some lonely spot. I’ve shared many a hilltop with a cow—me practising, and the cow giving vent to the odd moo.

I use the piano mainly for arranging and tootling at home; then I do a piano routine in the cabaret act. I admire piano players, of course—musicians in general. We’ve got some great ones. I think we’re better off for individual musicians now than we ever were before. More of them, too. I’m encouraged by these youth ventures, because at one point we were worried: “We’re getting on a bit. Is there going to be a terrible gap, and then suddenly nothing, or what?” But there’s an awful lot coming along.

I have a great affinity for good brass bands, too. I did two concerts with Grimethorpe, one with Yorkshire Imperial—and I’m hoping, in the very near future, to make an LP with a brass band. They’re like anything else—if they play the old hackneyed brass band tunes, it’s boring in the extreme; as I’ve often thought, why don’t they play something different? Well, they’re starting to stretch that way now, to lean into. . . dance music, if you like. I’ve sent arrangements up, like “The Man I Love”, Body And Soul”, and things of this nature. I mean, there’s nothing better than having this warm blanket of sustained sound around your shoulders, and extemporising on top of that—a most thrilling sound. Also, on this LP, I want to take a flyer with them on tunes like, say, “That’s A Plenty”. Because technically they can play anything; they make me feel very humble when I hear them doing individual practice—it sounds like a different machinegun in each corner. Yes, I’d love to play a special piece of brass music that had been written for me.

Some three years ago, there was a phone call, and it was a breakaway group from one of the symphony orchestras. You know, these little groups break away and call themselves the Sinfonia or something —the younger guys, who want to do more Stravinsky, more outlandish music than the normal Beethoven sort of repertoire. And they sent me a tape, which I still have, of a piece written by Berlioz.

As a child, apparently, Berlioz used to worship Grock, the clown; he used to go and sit in the audience, watching him, with his eyes popping out. Eventually, he wrote a piece of music which was his interpretation of how he saw Grock. It’s scored for trombone only—nothing else. They said: “We’re doing this concert at the Wigmore Hall, and we’d love you to do this piece. It’s right up your street.” But I already had a booking on the date they’d chosen; I tried very hard, but I couldn’t get out of it. I really wanted to do it, as soon as I’d played the tape, because it’s hilarious.

This tape was made by a little, rather stout German trombone player—which I think is funny in itself. The only other thing he uses is a rubber plunger. I can see the whole scene: the orchestra having played all their big party pieces, there’s an announcement about this new piece by Berlioz. On walks the lone musician, in the full tails and all, bows very seriously, lifts his trombone.

And you’re instructed to wait, not to start too soon; then a very nasty A flat comes out, followed by a series of short, erratic, staccato notes—that kind of thing. It goes on, and then, the middle of it all, the score instructs you to stop playing and shout: “Why?” Then you continue playing, finish the piece, bow, and go off. It’s damn hard to play, but there’s a little bit of carte blanche with it, I think. It just tickled my sense of humour.

I suppose there can be an element of humour in the way I play.

There’s a trombone player called Les Carew, whom I played beside when I was with Ambrose’s orchestra—and I couldn’t understand it at first, but every time I played a solo he used to fall about laughing. I thought: “Rude blighter. What’s the matter with him? Are my flies undone, or something? No.” When I asked him, he said: “I can’t help it—your playing makes me laugh.” And as recently as about six months ago, I did a concert with the Gents Of Jazz down at Johnny Dankworth’s place, at Wavendon. Les, who’s married to Johnny’s sister, was in the audience, and whenever I played I looked down, and he was creasing himself laughing. So it still seems to tickle him.

My Gentlemen Of Jazz group gets together as often as the phone rings, and it’s a broadcast or whatever. We’re doing a thing over at the school where Eddie Harvey teaches, in Hertford; they have a proper music class there, and run their own orchestra. I’m looking forward very much to doing a jazz concert for the kids. That’s the kind of thing that we get the Gents together for, and, where possible, we have the same guys every time. That’s Brian Lemon on piano, Lennie Bush on bass, Bobby Orr on drums; Jack Emblow is on accordion—I haven’t usually got much time for accordions, but Jack is the only one who doesn’t make it sound like an accordion, and he plays absolutely great jazz on it. The frontline is John McLevy or Ronnie Hughes on trumpet, Tommy Whittle or Kathy Stobart on tenor, Peter Hughes on alto, and myself. Eight in all, and we have a really great time.

The idea is to make it sound compact, but biggish. Yes, similar to the old Baker’s Dozen sound; somebody sent me a tape of some of those broadcasts recently, and it sounds amazingly big—even the Half–Dozen sounds big. They stand up to time rather well, too. With the Gents, we start off by playing a regimented type of tune, before taking off on solos and things. Then it gets quite loose in the middle, once the audience have accepted what we do, and they’re having fun. And to me, at the end of a jazz evening, or whatever evening, there’s nothing better than for people to go out and say: “Well, I don’t think I’ve spent such an enjoyable evening for a long time.” That means that we made it.

Copyright © 1976 Les Tomkins. All Rights Reserved.