Twenty Years a Jazz Writer

I realised recently that I’d notched up 20 years writing about jazz, mostly for The Herald newspaper in Glasgow. There was a lot more of the kind of jazz I love being played in Scotland back then and I was able to gain a great deal of writing experience in a relatively short space of time.

Indeed, it was my passion for jazz that led to my very first commission: I was a student doing an unofficial work experience on The Herald Diary when the then arts editor, John Fowler, came over to say hello. He asked me what my interests were. I told him jazz and film. I explained that the jazz I loved was not the stuff that was deemed cool and current, and that I was always the youngest person at every gig I attended.

It so happened that my favourite saxophonist was playing in town that very week – so John asked me to try writing a personal preview. He liked it, printed it – and promptly commissioned me to review the gig. And so, my fate was sealed … as was that of my Aunty Tanny, from whose archive these cuttings come!

From The Herald, April 6, 1993

From The Herald, April 8, 1993

What Bix Means to Me: Alain Bouchet

The wonderful French trumpeter, pictured above (with me, a long time ago!) recalls his first impressions of  “l’ami” Bix:

“When I was a young jazz musician, I – of course – listened to the records by King Oliver, Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven, but also the ones by Bix Beiderbecke. His music was different, very individual and recognisable; as was his style of phrasing. I’d go so far as to say that for the time, his music was “modern”, advanced.

“He was surrounded by marvellous musicians like Frankie Trumbauer and Hoagy Carmichael. I was lucky enough to appear in a French TV movie To Bix or Not To Bix, in which I played his friend, Emmett Hardy.

“He only lived a short time but 80 years after his death, Bix’s music is always with us. Two of his compositions sum up the musician: In a Mist (Bix was an excellent pianist) and the beautiful Davenport Blues.”

* For more information on Alain Bouchet, visit www.alainbouchet.com . Tomorrow: Bent Persson.

My Silver Jubilee in Jazz (Part 2) – In Photos

Gus Johnson (drums), Harry Edison (trumpet) & Al Grey (trombone) at the 1986 Edinburgh Jazz Festival, (c) Donnie Kerr

So, to recap, the 1986 Edinburgh Jazz Festival was my first …  I was 14, I accompanied my Dad, whose annual jazz festival routine involved taking the week off work and taking up smoking (it seemed to make the Pub Trail pints taste better). The main event and reason for my being invited was to hear piano wizard Dick Hyman play at the Royal Overseas League that night. But, being a youngster, I had to go wherever my father went – and, of course, he had a full day of jazz planned.

Buddy Tate at the Speigeltent, at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival on Thursday, August 21st, 1986 (c) Donnie Kerr

Many of the musicians I heard on my first day were already elder statesmen of jazz when I was born. I speak, of course, of the musicians I was privileged to hear playing in the Speigeltent (a venue that I’ll be virtually inhabiting over the next week at this year’s event): Harry “Sweets” Edison (trumpet), Buddy Tate (tenor sax), Al Grey (trombone), Ray Bryant (piano), Milt Hinton (bass) and Gus Johnson (drums). In all honesty, I don’t remember much about what they played (and these were the days before I took notes) but I’m pretty sure that – as with Doc Cheatham eight years later – there was a strong sense of

Michel Bastide,Virginie Bonnel & Jean-Francois Bonnel of The Hot Antic Jazz Band at the Festival Club, Edinburgh Jazz Festival, Thursday August 21st, 1986 (c) Donnie Kerr

being in the presence of guys who were part of the fabric of the music’s history.

From the Speigeltent, we undoubtedly followed part of the old McEwan’s Pub Trail, to the now-legendary Festival Club for a 3pm set by the band which had much to do with my conversion to fully-fledged jazz fan: The Hot Antic Jazz Band. This Gallic group should be compulsory listening for anyone who thinks jazz is po-faced or inaccessible. Humour, style, joie-de-vivre and terrific musicianship are the hallmarks of an Antics concert. They won me over – and they’re still going strong. My seven-year-old sons love them too…

One of my abiding memories of my early jazz festival visits is of hot-footing it from venue to venue (often across town) in order to catch ten minutes of a set and cram as much into the day as possible. With our gold badges we could get into any gig that wasn’t already full to capacity and this meant that if you only

Spanky Davis (trumpet) & Al Grey (trombone), at the Festival Club, at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival on Thursday August 21st, 1986 (c) Donnie Kerr

wanted to hear the first band in a three-set evening in one venue, you could take a chance on getting into the second or third set in a different venue – usually (at Dad’s  suggestion) the one furthest from Waverley Station where we’d catch the last train home. These gambles usually paid off (and were worth taking if you realised that you had perhaps chosen the wrong gig to start your night in), though there was a memorable occasion when Dad and I pitched up at the “Tartan Club” in Fountainbridge only to be told that we’d have to listen to Kenny Davern, Scott Hamilton and the rest of the all-star group onstage from outside the front door as the club was already full. I don’t know if I’ve dreamt it, but I am sure I heard Hamilton storming through a superb version of Back In Your Own Back Yard (the only time I’ve ever heard it live) on that occasion – playing it fast and furiously as if to ensure that those of us straining to hear the music from outside wouldn’t miss out.

Dick Hyman, Royal Overseas League, Edinburgh Jazz Festival, Thursday August 21st, 1986 (c) Donnie Kerr

That first year, we didn’t do any of that kind of juggling: there was no way we were going to risk not getting in to see Dick Hyman at the Royal Overseas League, a venue which fills to uncomfortable capacity very quickly.  Indeed, there was no way we were going to risk not getting front row seats – and prime position for requesting Maple Leaf Rag, the Joplin tune which had first got me hooked on Hyman’s playing just a few months earlier.

And in case there is any doubt about my having been there that day, here’s the photographic evidence: you can glimpse my reflection in the mirror on the pillar of the Speigeltent ..

My Silver Jubilee in Jazz (Part 1)

The Edinburgh Jazz Festival starts on Friday, July 22nd and I’m both mortified and proud to declare that this year is the 25th anniversary not only of my first-ever Edinburgh Jazz Festival, but also of my first-ever jazz concert (and first-ever visit to a pub with my dad) … and it all happened on one day: Thursday, August 21st, 1986. I relived that fateful day in my first-ever (bit of a theme emerging here) Edinburgh Jazz Festival preview feature which was written, in 1993, while I was still a student and about 20 articles into my journalistic career. I remembered August 21st 1986 much more vividly when I wrote that article than I do now, so here it is:And here are the pages from the programme with the tantalising list of concerts I attended – as well as those I didn’t..

And then the main event:

Glasgow Jazz Festival Memories

In July 1988, I had recently finished my Highers but I was still only in the third year of my jazz education. Aged 16, I had notched up a couple of Edinburgh Jazz Festivals and started to build a basic jazz record collection thanks to the excellent Giants of Jazz series.

What I hadn’t yet experienced was a full-blown, formal jazz concert in a proper hall – but that was about to change. The Glasgow Jazz Festival has always specialised in big, one-off concerts and it was at the festival of 1988 that I experienced my first – in the form of the Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band at the Theatre Royal. To be honest, I’m not even sure I’d heard of Gerry Mulligan when my Dad – a master in the art of brainwashing (midnight feasts to celebrate Louis Armstrong’s birthday had been the first phase) – said he’d bought us tickets.

Hearing the sound of this terrific, 16-piece, outfit was electrifying and exhilarating and it made me an instrant fan of Mulligan’s eloquent and very distinctive saxophone playing, composing and arranging. So much so that I waited at the stage door to get his autograph. Despite his reputation as a difficult customer, he obliged willingly – another reason for me to love him. The highlight of the evening for me was the utterly thrilling number he had penned for the jazz festival – The Flying Scotsman, a rollercoaster ride of a tune.

Many of the numbers the band played in Glasgow (scroll down for the list) were on their recent LP Walk on the Water, so in the weeks following the jazz festival, I got hooked on that album in particular while also discovering such other landmarks in Mulligan’s career as the Birth of the Cool album he made with Gil Evans and Miles Davis in the late 1940s, the piano-less quartet he pioneered with Chet Baker in the 1950s, the series of classic LPs which teamed him with such other notable saxophonists as Johnny Hodges, his tentet, the original incarnation of the Concert Jazz Band, his film work – notably I Want to Live! (1958), which we’re showing at this year’s jazz festival – and his lovely 1960 album with his one-time lover, the movie actress Judy Holliday..

The Glasgow concert was recorded by the BBC to be broadcast on Radio 3 some months later. When it was, Dad and I were ready for it: we had tape recorders set up all over the house so that we could have back-up copies of the recording, and they were all started at different times so there was no chance of us losing a bit of a number as we turned over a tape when one side ran out.

The recording confirmed all my initial feelings about the concert, and I’ve been playing my favourite copy of it (the one which left in all Mulligan’s announcements) ever since. It came to Paris with me in 1991, when I went to work there for a year (a year which culminated in my seeing Gerry Mulligan

with the Re-Birth of the Cool Band at La Villette), and it came to Edinburgh with me, in 1994, when I did a brief post-grad course.

While the next Glasgow Jazz Festival concert I attended – Stan Getz’s, in 1989 – was released on a CD, by Concord, the Mulligan one has never materialised in this form, and The Flying Scotsman was only subsequently performed by Mulligan (who died in 1996) in a quartet setting. (This will be recitified by the
Classic Jazz Orchestra plus Alan Barnes on June 29, at this year’s festival.)

Frankly, Getz’s concert made nothing like the impression on me that Gerry Mulligan’s did. In fact, all I remember is the fact that I – along with everyone else – failed to get an autograph: he resolutely refused to oblige the many fans who waited for him at the stage door. Dad, who was on hand to photograph the autograph being given, snapped me walking away with a decidedly bemused look on my face.

It turned out that the highlight of the 1989 festival was hearing the legendary Cab Calloway performing Minnie the Moocher with the Glasgow audience enthusiastically yelling the “ho-de-hoes” back at him, and waiting, programme and pen in hand, for him to leave the theatre after the show…

* The Classic Jazz Orchestra & Alan Barnes play the music of Benny Carter and Gerry Mulligan, Tron Theatre, Wednesday June 29 as part of the 25th Glasgow Jazz Festival. Visit www.jazzglasgow.com for details