STAN Stan Roderick A tribute by Ron Simmonds
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born leader From every angle Stan - A tribute |
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Good first trumpet players were rare in Great Britain in the 1940’s to 1960’s. Those were the heady days of the great big bands and Kenny Baker, Stan Roderick, Derrick Abbott, Tommy McQuater, Basil Jones, Freddy Clayton, and Bobby Pratt were the young gods of the period. Stan Reynolds was a sensational player, one of the best, but for some reason he never played regular lead trumpet in a name band after his early, glorious, days with the Tommy Sampson orchestra. Jimmy Watson, from Cowdenbeath, was the original first trumpet with Jack Parnell’s small band. Jimmy was the most amazing trumpet player I have ever heard in my life, but he disappeared from the scene quite quickly, having one nervous breakdown after another. The young Scotsman Bobby Pratt was the only one who could play really well up in the extremely high range of the trumpet. It was to be another ten or twelve years before Derek Watkins and Greg Bowen, the Terrible Twins, hit the scene, and added another octave to the range of the instrument.Somebody once made up a band of session players, with a trumpet section of Tom McQuater, Ronnie Hughes, Stan Roderick and myself, and we played a dance at the Hornsey town hall. The bandleader had gotten a book together of all jazz specials—there was no pandering to the public on this occasion. At one point we played the Dave Brubeck number Take Five. The dancers shuffled around happily in 5/4, doing the waltz, in which their steps only came together every three bars. Late in the evening we put up the Tommy Dorsey special Well Get It, which Ziggy Elman and Chuck Peterson played in the film Dubarry was a Lady. It was a trumpet duet, all in the upper range of the instrument, and I doubt whether either Stan or I had ever seen it before, but we played it pretty well, which seemed to surprise no one. Twenty-five years later I met the bandleader down in Ronnie Scott’s club when I played there with the Peter Herbolzheimer band, and the first thing he said was, ‘I can't still remember you and Stan playing Well Get It that night in Hornsey.’ Can't recall his name at the moment, but maybe it was Tommy Watt. Laurie Johnson had the idea of making a jazz style recording with all of us playing brass band instruments. For the trumpets that meant hiring cornets, as only Stan Roderick had his own. Although the cornet is supposed to be easier to play than the trumpet most of us found them devilish difficult to play, and none of us enjoyed the session too much. Kenny Baker played soprano cornet, impeccably of course, but the trombone players cursed continually as they struggled with the unfamiliar tenor and baritone horns. Only Jackie Armstrong seemed to feel at home on the euphonium. Stan played a marvellous solo on a tune called The Midnight Sun will Never Set, but I don’t know whether the record was ever issued. Later on we played some of the numbers in a concert in Hammersmith, but we used regular instruments, and I played the soprano cornet parts on the trumpet. The experiment was worth a try, but it was never repeated. As the years rolled by some of the other guys used to turn up in the studios extra early just to grab the third and fourth trumpet parts. Only Stan seemed to be immune from this. Alone of all the great and famous big band lead players, he still had the motivation necessary to play first trumpet, right up until he retired. If he had a part that was too high for him to play he wasn’t too proud to ask for some help on it. During the 1960’s I worked in a Berlin radio band. On a short trip home my mother told me that Bert Courtley had died. She showed me a cutting she’d kept from the Evening Standard. I phoned Tommy McQuater at once, to find that the funeral was the next morning. Here comes the weird bit. Normally, I’d travel as light as possible when I flew to London for a few days, only wearing what I stood up in, with a few changes of underwear. This time, for no reason that I’m aware of, I’d packed a dark suit, white shirt, dark blue tie, black socks and black shoes. I didn’t have my trumpet with me, so there was no question of my wearing these clothes on a gig, or anything. I don’t think that I even knew I’d packed the stuff until I looked in the case to see what I could wear to the funeral. The funeral was to take place at Mitcham Cemetery. When I arrived there it looked as if all the trumpet players in London had turned up. Humph was there, Tommy Mac, Stan Roderick, Kenny Baker, Bert Ezzard, Duncan Campbell, Eddie Blair, my old pal from Coventry Pete Warner, Ronnie Ross, and dozens more. Stan and I shared a hymn book. I couldn’t sing or even speak for tears. I could see that Stan was having trouble as well. I didn't see him again until fifteen years later I visited London and went to a Christmas party at Ronnie Hughes's place. Stan was there. Dear old Stan, with May, his wife. May died shortly afterwards, and Stan was absolutely devastated. I phoned him later on. Gone was the old sparkle in his voice. He’d always joked that when he retired from trumpet playing he would bury his trumpet in the garden, leaving only the mouthpiece showing, and train his dog to pee on it every day. Stan had named his dog Laddy, which bugged the trombonist Laddy Busby quite a lot when he found out. ‘Why Laddy?’ he cried, and Stan replied that he’d done that so he could kick it and say, ‘Take that, Laddy, you little devil’ when he felt like it. Now he couldn’t even laugh about that. Both Laddies were, alas, long gone. Laddy Busby had died up in the Isle of Man some years earlier. Most of the Goon Show orchestra members had received quite a few cheques from the BBC for repeat transmissions over the years. Freddy, Stan, and I had done a lot of those sessions, in Wally Stott’s orchestra. The contractor Jack Simmons had been the fixer for the band. I'd been told that Jack had died recently. When I asked Stan where my repeat money was he said, ‘You’ve heard the saying, You can’t take it with you? Well, Jack did.’ Now retired Stan had returned to his hobby of fishing. He had a dedication to the pastime fast approaching that of a connoisseur. Once, during a midday break in the Decca studios in West Hampstead we had a meal in the pub next door and then Stan asked me to have a stroll with him along the high street. He wanted to show me something.About a hundred yards up the road was a large fish shop, with the wares all laid out on an outside slab. We stopped there and Stan immediately engaged the fishmonger in earnest conversation. Soon they were admiring the (dead) fish, pointing out the various points of interest. At one point I noticed that the fishmonger was stroking a large cod affectionately as they spoke. After a while Stan also began absent–mindedly stroking one of the fish. I looked at him with incredulity, but he was away, eyes half closed, lost in the spell of the moment. I don't believe I noticed too many signs of deep emotion in all the years I knew him, but that was certainly one of them. Later on, when Phil Seamen was trying to straighten himself out, Stan took him along on one of his fishing trips. I was surprised at this, because it meant them setting out at 4.30 in the morning. When I asked Phil what they did on one of those outings he replied, ‘We sit.’ Stan Roderick was the exact London counterpart of the American trumpet giants Conrad Gozzo and Bernie Glow in Los Angeles and New York. Like them he spent every day travelling between recording studios, leaving behind him a trail of perfectly performed first trumpet parts. He loved the music business, and he loved playing the trumpet. It was a tough business, not always a pleasant one, but he made it his own, and carved a niche in all our hearts. His favourite, most quoted expression was, typically, ‘We are all members of what is sometimes laughingly known as a profession.’ Copyright © 1994 Ron Simmonds. All Rights Reserved. |