Trad Jazz Britannia 50s Britannia

TRAD JAZZ MUSIC

In the post-war years, a bunch of British musicians

looked to New Orleans for a taste of freedom

and a generation caught on.

-It was a journey of revelation.

-Unbelievable.

And desperation.

That band shouldn't have been broken up.

Of musical highs... and lows.

A story of festival feuds, spats and squabbles.

This was a jet airliner and they were a Tiger Moth.

Purists and progressives, mouldy figs and dirty boppers.

-The jazz police didn't like it.

-HE LAUGHS

Of how young ideals deteriorated into a commercial fad.

And the forgotten moment when New Orleans jazz became great British pop.

Get us back to New Orleans, man.

Chutzpah!

AIR-RAID SIREN BLARES

Britain during the Second World War, a time of great uncertainty.

For a young generation, the music of the day offered little hope.

You got Music While You Work,

which was the current popular records of the time,

which was probably dance bands, I suppose,

playing whatever new songs there were.

SUPPER JAZZ MUSIC

There were the great American swing bands.

And you got dance bands basing their styles on that sound for dancers.

But it had no character whatsoever.

It was a sterile sort of music in terms of jazz.

I suppose it was just... so predictable.

For me, it was...my dad's music.

Mum and Dad waltzed the night away,

but strict tempo offered little to inspire a generation

hungering for a music that moved them.

The murmurings of an alternative began in amateur circles,

underground cliques of jazz fans called rhythm clubs.

They were just groups of collectors of gramophone records

who got together probably once a week.

These young people were discovering records of music

that had been half forgotten about

and much of it hadn't actually been heard in this country.

These rare 78s became gospels,

early jazz that held an instant emotional appeal.

Records by Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver and Louis Armstrong.

The music had a freedom to it which we didn't hear in the dance bands.

You feel it. You can feel it. These guys are not playing off dots.

So there seemed to be a kind of a zeitgeist

for looking back at the earlier music that maybe wasn't as sophisticated as all the big bands.

In 1943, at a pub in a Southeast London suburb, a handful of working-class amateurs

inspired by the energy and authenticity of this early New Orleans jazz,

tried to recreate the music live.

The local dance band musicians

played their jam sessions

in The Red Barn at Barnehurst.

They gave us a turn, but we would hardly play.

The audience, they went wild.

They were hearing in the flesh the live music

that was similar to what they were having on gramophone records.

And it was just sheer, raw emotion and passion, which they felt.

It was the first live jazz I'd ever heard.

As I walked in, they struck up.

It was a big sound they had, a very big sound.

And I was, you know, bowled over.

And after a few months it was really packed.

That was pretty exciting. It was very exciting, in fact,

to be hardly starting to play and packing in people.

That was the first band in this country

that ever sat down and played,

copied the...innovators, the Olivers and the Armstrongs

and the early '20s.

Nobody else was doing it.

These ordinary young men, cartoonist, shopkeeper, librarian

and factory worker started a revival of New Orleans jazz in Britain.

In May 1945, as the war ended, the George Webb Dixielanders

made their first recordings.

The first records we made, we were virtually thrown out of Decca,

because our technical ability was so poor.

And the review of the first records when they eventually came out,

we were condemned for being rough.

Pro musicians from dance bands had no time for these DIY mavericks,

but their mockery did little to affect a determined George Webb.

Feisty little guy, very aggressive.

I mean, considering he played with clenched fists, he did very well.

And there was a time when we were playing in a concert

and the other band was full of professional musicians

and one of them put his head round the curtain and pulled a face.

And George just stood up from the piano

and whacked him straight in the face with his already clenched fist.

This amateur music attracted a young generation looking to escape

the musical and social dogmas of post-war life.

In New Orleans jazz, they heard freedom for the individual.

Early jazz was of course the ultimate example of nonconformity,

not having to follow the rules of the older generation.

It was a way of reinterpreting the rules

and a way of rebelling against the rules

without completely destroying everything.

The 1920s' recordings of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band

were a key source for the Dixielanders.

You know, King Oliver was a gardener at one time in New Orleans,

he was ignored, what he thought didn't matter,

he was just an anonymous black man.

But through the music, he became royalty.

King Oliver made his first recordings in Chicago,

featuring a young protege who was set to change music for ever.

He knew that Armstrong was developing well in New Orleans

and he invited him to come up to Chicago to join his band.

In 1923, they made this series of recordings

that really took jazz from simply a way of playing music

and elevated it to the level of art from.

It wasn't long before Louis Armstrong broke free with a group under his own name.

In 1925, he made the first recordings with his Hot Five.

In Louis Armstrong you had someone that was becoming a genius,

someone that was taking this improvised music out of the ensemble

and developing it as a solo art.

TRUMPET TRILLS

Armstrong was a huge influence on a young British trumpet player,

who'd make a big impact when he joined George Webb's Dixielanders for a gig in Scotland.

I taught him all the routines on the train journey up there.

On the way back, I said to George, "If he joins the band, I leave."

HE LAUGHS

-He was too good.

-HE LAUGHS

For Old Etonian, Humphrey Lyttelton,

Jazz offered liberation from the expectations of his formal upbringing.

His accomplished style took things a step further.

Suddenly there was somebody playing... Obviously, he was intending to play it right.

He was actually playing phrases that actually were accurate phrases.

And some of them, even Louis Armstrong phrases that one could recognise.

HE HUMS

Instead of being the slightly stodgy approach that we had...

HE HUMS

-He would go...

-HE HUMS

He'd be off, you know.

The Dixielanders split.

Humph formed his own band,

eventually hosting regular club nights at 100 Oxford Street.

A frustrated generation finally found release in this goodtime music.

Art school and university students were the first catch on

and a revivalist scene began to emerge.

We used to go down and listen to Humph every Saturday and Monday.

I said, "Can I sing a song with you, Humph?"

And he gave the absolutely classic answer he gave to anyone

who wanted to sing with him, "No."

-And so...

-HE LAUGHS

I noticed he always closed his eyes during his solos,

so I crept up to the stage and stood by

while he played the chorus of Dr Jazz

and then when he reached the last phrase, I jumped up on the stage, grabbed the mic and sang it.

Chutzpah!

A long-standing union ban prevented American musicians from playing in Britain,

but in 1949, New Orleans legend Sydney Bechet was due to appear in France.

For Lyttelton, it was too good an opportunity to miss.

We were playing at the Winter Garden Theatre

and we worked out a way of smuggling Bechet over from Paris,

putting him in the audience

and then inviting him onto the stage.

He was black, he was from New Orleans,

he had played with Louis Armstrong in the earlier days.

The spotlight went onto the box and it was Bechet waving at the crowd.

I thought, "Wow!"

Unbelievable.

It was unbelievable.

No-one knew it was going to be on.

We had no information and it was...

And you can imagine that when...

Sidney Bechet stood up and started playing...

A magic moment.

Absolutely magic.

It was a flouting of the union ban,

a purposeful rejection of the establishment.

Organisers were fined heavily,

but Bechet's appearance was a seal of approval.

Revivalist jazz took off and bands formed all over Britain.

It happen like a bushfire.

It was spontaneous, if you like, all over the country.

There were The Merseys, the Saints,

the Yorkshire Jazz Band in the North.

It was sort of exciting.

It was far better than being in a bank or something.

Bands like The Mick Mulligan Band,

that was like a mobile drinking club, that was.

HE LAUGHS

We were terrible boozers and quite randy as well,

so we had quite a bad reputation, rather like the Stones.

TRAD JAZZ MUSIC

But one man begged to differ with the source material.

For him, the records the revival was based on weren't the pure New Orleans sound.

Ken Colyer and brother Bill formed their own ramshackle outfit

called the Crane River Jazz Band.

We used to drink at The White Hart, Cranford.

And the punters in the pub

they were standing at the door listening to the band rehearsing.

Bill Colyer suggested, "Well, if they're going to stand there,

"why don't we charge them to come in?"

Why should they, you know,... get in for free, sort of thing?

It was quite different what Ken was trying to play as the Cranes

to a lot of the other revivalist bands here who were copying 1920s' records.

Colyer based his music on old-time musicians

who stayed in New Orleans and didn't go to Chicago in the '20s.

Jazz men like George Lewis and Bunk Johnson

had only been recorded in the early '40s.

Back in New Orleans, Bill Russell found Bunk Johnson,

who had certainly preceded Louis and claimed to have taught him...

Fitted him up with some spare teeth and dragged him off his tractor

and got him playing again.

It's not Louis Armstrong at his most sublime,

it's basic playing, really.

Not necessarily very technically able,

but playing from the heart and moving you.

Ken thought it was the most perfect example of jazz music.

A kind of ensemble music where everyone played together

and there were no real soloists.

And there was this kind of thing going on in the band that was almost telepathic.

Colyer called this old-time style, traditional jazz,

rather than revivalist and a new school of jazz was born.

A high point for the Cranes was a rather royal affair.

1951 saw the Festival of Britain,

where all the post-war blues were supposed to be cast off

and they had a fantastic site on the Southbank.

This is the Festival.

Something Britain devised halfway through this century

as a milestone between past and future

to enrich and enliven the present.

They arranged a jazz concert.

And they had people like the Lyttelton Band,

the Freddy Randall Band, the Joe Daniels Band,

the Crane River, the Manchester Saints.

And that was a changing point in the music, because it became accepted.

A lady called Princess Elizabeth came along.

I believe she's done quite well since.

And she was in the audience, you see.

-So that was a bit of a prestige thing for jazzers.

-HE LAUGHS

-What did you think, my dear?

-Quite remarkable, I thought.

Couldn't get the hang of some of it at first. Artistic no doubt.

Even though it had royal approval,

British jazz was growing in a greenhouse and Colyer hungered for the real thing.

The Crane River Band split

and after three months with the Christie Brothers Stompers, he had a revelation.

These men were still playing in New Orleans, they weren't all that old.

And they must still be there and still playing,

so the logical thing was to get there

while they were still playing.

And the only way I could think of doing this at the time

was to rejoin the merchant navy

and somehow or other find a boat that took me to New Orleans.

They were looking for crew for this Empire Patria

which was sailing out of Mobile, Alabama.

As soon as I heard Mobile, Alabama, "That's near enough!"

HE LAUGHS

On 25th November, 1952, Ken jumped ship.

Slipping away quietly at night,

he caught a Greyhound bus on a single ticket

and was in New Orleans by midnight.

At the Mardi Gras Club on Bourbon Street,

Colyer heard his heroes live for the very first time.

TRADITIONAL JAZZ MUSIC

"The Lewis Band were playing when I walked in.

"I sat down. Then I ordered a drink and I almost went into a trance.

"Marrero was about five feet away from me with Drag just behind him.

"They all play unpretentiously and so wonderfully."

"Fortunately, I met some friends of the band, the Bernants,

"and I asked if there was any chance that I could sit in with them

"and she said, "Of course!"

"There was Marrero, Slow Drag Pavageau, Alton Purnell,

"Jim Robinson and George Lewis."

At Manny's Tavern,

Colyer sat in with the George Lewis Band for the first time.

"It's a dream to play with them men, no fighting, no carrying,

"just sit back relaxed, blowing easy and play the greatest horn of your life.

"I took the first break and heard Lawrence quickly turn his head

"and say to George, 'Ain't that Bunk?'

"I had a big, warm cavern of sunshine in my belly and not a care in the world."

Ken's journey had led him to a musical paradise

set in a social hell.

In the 1950s there was still segregation going on.

Black people were very limited in their mobility.

You couldn't go to certain restaurants, clubs,

bars, public facilities.

You couldn't stay in certain hotels, you couldn't try on clothes in department stores.

Black and white water fountains, black and white sides of a lunch counter.

Even in death, black sides of the cemetery.

Legally, blacks and whites were not supposed to socialise together.

So it was actually dangerous for Ken Colyer to go into these bars where black musicians were playing.

And certainly the idea of pulling out an instrument and sitting in

and just sitting right next to them and playing like equals,

I mean, that was a very, very risky and dangerous thing.

15-year-old American Bill Huntington was well aware of the prejudice.

He was studying with Lawrence Marrero,

the banjo player in George Lewis's band.

He would come out to our house on Sundays

dressed in a three-piece suit with his banjo.

And my mother would take his overcoat.

"Mr Lawrence let me put your coat on the hanger." He would say, "No."

And he would take his coat and fold it and put it on the floor.

And then we would invite him to dinner...

and he wouldn't sit at the table with us.

He wouldn't, so my parents would make a special table

for the two of us to sit together.

You know?

After staying in New Orleans for just over a month,

Ken left his house with a view to extending his visa at the local immigration office.

Things didn't go to plan.

"I was taken into custody as soon as I had made a sworn statement.

"It appears I have broken the law by obtaining work here for a start.

"I'll be kept here now until they find me a ship or deport me.

"Looks like my luck has run out."

Dreams were in the dust, but eventually out on bail,

while awaiting to be deported, Ken fulfilled another ambition.

Along with Bill Huntington,

he recorded with New Orleans clarinettist Mealy Barnes.

We did this recording at Mealy's apartment.

What I remember is how hot it was.

And that people from the surrounding apartments

were coming in to listen to the music.

And that... I felt, like, scared to death

but this is wonderful at the same time.

Scared because I knew the implications of us all being together.

And I remember that Albert Glenny was there.

He passed out during the recording session.

And they had to call an ambulance.

And all the white people had to get out of the neighbourhood immediately.

Because they were aware that the police would come and if they saw us all mixing together,

there would be a big problem with that.

SHIP'S HORN

You know, after hearing such a wide selection of jazz over the years,

I finally resolved to the New Orleans style.

I felt that was the essence of the thing.

I still think it is.

In early March 1953, Ken was deported back to England.

A young Chris Barber,

who'd recently formed his first professional band,

was waiting for him.

When you get deported, they send you first class.

On the best liner in the world, it was.

HE LAUGHS

Chris Barber was looking for a new trumpet player.

Together with Monty Sunshine and the then Tony Donegan,

they became Ken Colyer's Jazzmen and made a groundbreaking record.

New Orleans to London, 1953.

I love to hear it because I enjoyed it so much.

It was beautiful music to make.

There's one tune on here called The Isle Of Capri.

Let's see if I can make it start at the right place.

There, got it.

MUSIC STARTS

It's a record that...began my professional life, just about.

And I'm still proud of it when I hear it.

What Ken Colyer introduced with Chris Barber

was the pianoless sound, which for us,

that was something fresh and new.

Together they had created a brand-new British sound.

But Ken and Chris had opposite ideas.

Chris was much more meticulous in his approach.

Ken was more traditional.

Don't rehearse too much, you know.

Let it all hang out sort of thing.

In little over a year, tensions came to a head.

Ken's brother Bill was managing the band.

Bill finally broke the band up in front of Ken.

Ken's standing there, not saying a word, he never did.

He had the opposite of gift of the gab.

And Bill just said, "Ken and I are not happy with how things are going."

He fired the rhythm section. Ron Boyden was too modern,

Jim Bray didn't swing and they hated Lonnie's guts.

So, of course, Chris piped up and said,

"Ken is in no position to sack anybody in this band.

"It's not his band. It's his name but it's not his band."

And then Chris said to Bill, "WE are going to sack HIM."

They found a tape of that band from about a month before we broke up.

I heard that back, I cried,

because that band shouldn't have been broken up.

HE SOBS

It was... To play with that band was perfect.

Ken and Chris went their separate ways.

This new traditional jazz drew more young fans into the fold

and was cutting across class divides.

Around Soho, cellar clubs and late-night dives throbbed with young, sweaty jivers.

Ow! Oh.

Windmill Theatre. And our rehearsal rooms.

Cy Laurie moved in. Band leader, played the clarinet,

and he ran an all-nighter every Saturday night for some time.

Can't see a number. 44 was right over here somewhere.

One of those there. Now it's fresh meat and fish, chilled and frozen foods.

And that same premises...

61 years ago when I played in it... was a jazz club.

Now this was Studio 51.

Which became Ken Colyer's club.

I played there about a year before he started there.

A very long time ago.

Wow! The 100 Club. Dear me.

TRAD JAZZ MUSIC

I think the stage came across from about there to here. It was quite big.

There and back to...here.

And it was quite... About this high.

All I wanted to be was a part of the movement that is traditional jazz...

a part of it, not an outsider playing a bit of it or imitating it, but being in it.

But alongside this scene, a rival movement had developed...

modern jazz.

BEBOP MUSIC

This was jazz from New York.

It was harmonically extended, high-speed and heavily improvised.

At that time, bebop was roaring.

New York, 52nd Street, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band,

the whole street was rocking.

British musicians like Ronnie Scott and John Dankworth had been digging this contemporary jazz.

It was the antithesis of the New Orleans sound.

Dixieland had a definite, sweet, deliberate, non-offensive line,

as it were, and we were exploiting the "urhh, eeeh", all those things to stop and make you think.

The squabbles within the traditional jazz scene were nothing compared

to the war between them and the British beboppers.

It was called bebop because it went, "ba-boomp".

"Ba-doodle-di-ba-doodle-ba-bomp."

"Loo-ba-bop-la-loo-ka-mop That's Professor Bop."

# There's a cat in Harlem town

# Got a new craze going round

# Ooh-be-da-bla-hey-ya-vop

# Call Professor Bop... #

The war is over, the world's going forward, we're heralding it with

this great music, this pull towards something.

Didn't quite know where it was going

but it wasn't going backwards, it was going forwards.

Forward to what? To a rhythm section that doesn't swing? It didn't.

It was modern, but anything modern, "We don't want that.

"Get back to New Orleans, man."

We dressed in suits. A zoot suit with a reet pleat.

A big... It had to be...

You had to be cool.

Quite different to the sandals and the hairy shirts of the traditionalists.

This was a jet airliner and they were a tiger moth.

PROPELLER RATTLES

PLANES DRONE

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

The boundaries of traditional jazz were set.

At Birmingham Town Hall, in a bid for progress, Humphrey Lyttelton

invited saxophonist Bruce Turner to join his band.

So we had an alto sax instead of a trombone. "Hey..."

"This is disgraceful(!)"

In the middle of the concert, Bruce Turner came in

and played the saxophone.

They stood up with a banner which said, "Go home, dirty bopper."

Which he'd never been.

For avid traditionalists, the sax was an icon of the modern movement

and had no place in a true New Orleans-style band.

Humph had defected, but in 1956 his Bad Penny Blues became

the first jazz track to make the top 20.

It so happened that the first of what I call

the creative sound mixers...

Joe Meek, came in,

and being Joe Meek, he fiddled about with everything.

I went off on holiday for about three weeks

and I hadn't heard it then,

and if I'd heard what Joe Meek had done to it, he distorted

the bottom end of the piano,

so that it made a sort of bonging noise.

Pianos don't go, "Bong-om-bong-om-bong."

And he heavily over-recorded Stan Greig's brushes.

"Boom-phrum-phroom-phrum."

If I'd heard a test pressing in time, I would have rung up whoever

produced the record at EMI and said, "I don't want that to go out."

However, by the time I got back from holiday,

it was number 19 and I shut up.

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

Meanwhile, Chris Barber was also

kicking against the traditional jazz boundaries

and had discovered a young Irish girl with a remarkable voice.

Ottilie Patterson was the best blues singer of either sex

ever produced by, not just Britain, Europe.

# I'm feeling so down-hearted

# Ain't ever felt so blue

# I've done spent all my money... #

This petite lady singing in that style, but in her own way,

and she got inside it and there's been no-one like her.

The other people singing traditional jazz at that time had no timbre,

no tone, no phrasing.

What else can you not have?

The recording of hers that's best, seriously,

is the one where they'd all play with the band, doing St Louis Blues.

I'll tell you what.

If you weren't a serious student of it, of the style,

and someone said to you, "That's Mavis Staples," you'd say, "OK, it is."

HE SCOFFS

That's the absolute perfection, singing, that is. Really great.

# I-II hate to see

# That old evening sun go down... #

The Barber band also sparked a new teenage craze,

which tapped even further into jazz's amateur roots.

In between sets, they thrashed out old American folk songs

and called it skiffle.

They put the skiffle group number into the show,

which would be a couple of guitars usually.

Chris would move onto the bass, which was his other instrument,

and a washboard perhaps.

People were staying in during the interval rather than go out during the interval

because of the skiffle group. It became popular in that way.

For the skiffle numbers - Tony, now Lonnie Donegan -

took centre stage.

To all intents and purposes, Lonnie Donegan started the craze.

He was fearless with an audience, which is a special quality.

# I fooled you, I fooled you... #

Lonnie had showmanship and a personality that came across the footlights.

# Did I tell you where I'm goin', boy?

# Where are you going, boy? #

It was like turbo-charged folk music.

# Well the Rock Island line

# She's a mighty good road

# The Rock Island line is the road to ride

# The Rock Island line is a mighty good road

# And if you want to ride

# You've got to ride it like you find it

# Get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island line... #

When Rock Island Line hit the charts in '56, all the groups started

listening to that kind of music and emulating or trying to copy Lonnie.

It was some new sound and it was accessible.

# You've got to ride it like you find it

# Get your ticket at the station

# On the Rock Island Line... #

You would get a tea chest and a broom handle

and a bit of string and something else, and you had a skiffle group.

Now we'll try playing it.

THRUMMING

Skiffle broke free and became its own DIY '50s phenomenon.

One instrument was free and ready-made.

You can scrub it or beat it.

Beryl Bryden used to play it across her chest.

RHYTHMIC RATTLING

Like that. When I do a solo I put it between my legs

and I use both sides.

She often used to sit in with jazz bands, sometimes to their annoyance,

but much more often to the audience's pleasure.

RHYTHMIC RATTLING

I hated it.

HE WHEEZES

Meanwhile, Britain was getting richer.

Home luxuries that were previously unaffordable became commonplace.

Washing machines, electronic coffee grinders,

state-of-the-art hairdryers,

blenders you could buff kitchens with.

Frost-proof houses, and the occasional bottle of champagne.

ARCHIVE VOICEOVER: 'That isn't champagne, it's a "sham bottle".'

Along with this era of mass consumption came another new music.

# We're going to rock around the clock tonight

# Put your glad rags on

# Join me, hon We'll have some fun

# When the clock strikes one... #

'I don't think too much of rock 'n' roll. I think it's a bit samey.'

But it didn't bother us, we just went on playing our jazz.

For jazz fans, rock 'n' roll was a poor man's 12-bar blues.

In 1956, they weren't interested in Bill Haley.

A relaxing of the union ban saw their hero set foot on British soil.

Just like one of them old home weeks, the homecoming, all the cats from the years

when I first came here.

Blowing out there, just brings back old memories.

-Pretty solid, do you think?

-Yes, more than that.

Anyway I would say great, personified.

LAUGHTER

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

'First time I met him, it was at a dinner in his honour.

'We ate the meal with Louis, then there was a jam session. Terrific bloke.'

I took my courage in both hands

and walked up to Louis and said,

"Mr Armstrong, is there any one tip

"you can give me about band leading?"

And the great man thought for a few seconds and then said, "Yes, Daddy, never do it for nothing."

HE LAUGHS

The gates were open.

Many jazz and blues greats followed

and British jazz was endorsed by the gods.

CND, the Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament,

is founded in 1958 as a public response

in protest at the development

of these super-destructive nuclear weapons.

When the CND started,

jazz musicians in bulk followed that movement.

'On the political demonstrations, it's actually not so much folk,'

it's New Orleans jazz, which is the music of choice.

There was no doubt about it that most of us were

decidedly left-wing.

'You get Webb's Dixielanders having early gigs put on by the Young Communist League,

'you get Ken Colyer, The Crane River Band, 1951, they go off to East Berlin

'to play at Communist rallies.'

So there's this real link of left-wing sympathies with

what's seen as this new grassroots, democratic, accessible,

collectively-oriented musical practice.

The Aldermaston march was the perfect opportunity

for Ken Colyer's Omega Brass Band,

inspired by the jazz funerals he'd witnessed in New Orleans.

SOMBRE MUSIC PLAYS

As the body came out, the brass band would play a slow dirge.

And right before they get to the graveyard, the band would split up

on both sides of the street, and let the hearse through.

After the body is dismissed, then they start the happy, up-tempo

joyous music and second line dancing.

UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS

'And the true spirit of what that was all about,

'the idea of sending someone off to a better place, to true freedom,'

that was a time for happiness and joy.

This spirit of freedom and community and the jazz of New Orleans

resonated with the ideals of the marchers at Aldermaston.

Colyer, as always, kept things authentic.

'The costumes were based on'

white shirt, black trousers,

white hats, New Orleans.

Ken knew somebody that worked on the buses and we got bus conductors' hats.

There was always someone who could help you out.

You want to know why we came here?

The simple reason is we are lovers of good music, for one thing,

and if this hell of a lot goes up,

we're not likely to hear good music any more.

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYS

While Colyer persisted with purism, Chris Barber was making early appearances

on BBC TV, swinging on the Six-Five Special

and traditional jazz was more popular than ever.

Jazz clubs had got bigger and bigger and bigger

'and were making more and more money.'

There were so many bands about

you could hear it anywhere you wanted, really.

All over the country.

By 1959, jazz was ripe,

and Britain's rock 'n' roll explosion was fizzling out.

Clarinettist Monty Sunshine copied an old Sidney Bechet record

and took the tune to Chris.

Monty played this tune. It was in A flat minor.

We found out that Monty's record player played fast.

Bechet played it in G minor, but we had the hit.

It might have been in the wrong key,

but it was a watershed moment.

In 1959, Petite Fleur hit the top ten,

heralding the start of a boom in popularity

and traditional jazz got a new name.

'We had a recording contract with a guy called Denis Preston.'

He said, "We need a short name that rolls off the tongue

"so that people don't have to say this is traditional jazz music."

The next time we had a record out, there was the word "Trad" on it.

Trad is a suitable name for a soap powder, not for music.

The jazz police didn't like it. HE CHUCKLES

If Terry Lightfoot gave trad its moniker,

it was a West Country chum who gave it a trademark image.

-ARCHIVE VOICE-OVER:

-'Acker Bilk. Sorry, Mr Acker Bilk.'

There was a bloke called Peter Leslie.

He was a publicity guy.

He said, "What about a bowler hat and waistcoat and spats?"

I drew the line at that. I said, "I don't want any spats on."

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

The uniforms came in for a record cover.

The promoters then said, "We want the band as seen."

So we had to wear these bloody uniforms.

But, of course, Acker being the quality player he was,

could back it up with his solo things.

MUSIC: "Stranger On The Shore" by Acker Bilk

I wrote it and called it Jenny after my daughter.

She was born about that time, a bit earlier.

And... It went on a TV show, I think, didn't it?

The TV drama, Stranger On The Shore, was perfect publicity for Acker.

The theme tune was a number one hit in both the UK and USA.

As a solo piece, it's superb. The tone is marvellous.

The tone, I don't really understand.

I don't know. I just blew a clarinet and that was it.

I didn't go to lessons or anything. I just blew it.

I haven't got any teeth in the front, maybe that helps.

APPLAUSE

Acker and his huge success and popularity was the reason for

so many bands adopting the idea of uniforms to attract attention

and create work.

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

Some of the creations that they came up with!

We were Mississippi gamblers. There were lots of others. Dick Charlesworth was City Gents.

Bowler hats and waistcoats.

Bobby Mickleburgh had a band dressed as Confederates.

The culmination of it for me was I actually saw

a band on television called the Louis XIV Jazz Band.

These sons of bitches were all dressed up in French frock coats and playing... Oh, man!

Trad jazz became pop.

It was the sound to let your hair down to

and Acker's trademark bowler was a must-have accessory.

Over five years, Beaulieu Jazz Festival swelled from hundreds to

thousands of ravers and in 1960 trad and modern fans clashed.

We were on a big stage with a tent on the top.

Some guy got on the stage.

Of course, all of them got up there then,

a lot of them climbing up the pole and on the roof...

Above us here we had a lighting scaffold which is no longer.

That folded up literally with the pressure of bodies.

Is that what I see behind me here?

The shambles is over here. This has all been dismantled now.

If you think of one subcultural group fighting against another one,

usually you think of mods versus rockers.

'What you don't think about is trad jazz fans versus modern jazz fans.

'It's jazz music. What's the problem here? Why are we fighting?'

The music really, really mattered to them at that time.

Mad about jazz. That's how you can put it. Mad.

Would you say you are madder about jazz than about sex?

Yes, if it came to it, honestly I would prefer jazz than sex.

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

The master of turning jazz into pop was a moustachioed trumpet ace

who'd cut his teeth playing with Sid Phillips.

He was a fantastic trumpet player.

He had that natural feel for jazz trumpet playing

in the Dixieland style, which in a sense made him unique.

Kenny Ball had a trad trick. Take a strong tune,

give it the trad treatment and you've got yourself a hit.

His most famous record had a rather strange source.

It was a traditional Russian folk song.

It was the theme tune for the Russian radio.

CHORAL MUSIC

HE HUMS

We were in Belarus, we played it there, and they didn't

like the Russians, and we were told to cut it out of the programme.

But we thought playing a Russian folksong, they'd love it.

Midnight In Moscow was a copyright-free money-spinner.

By 1962, even the films cashed in on the boom.

Anything with a banjo was co-opted under the trad banner.

Surrealist art-schoolers, The Temperance Seven, slipped into the bracket

with their mixture of Victoriana and 1920s' dance music.

It wasn't really a pose.

We drove these old cars, dressed this way all the time,

happily evading reality to a time when...

..it seemed the world was a kinder place.

# Sugar, that's what I'll name you

# Sugar... #

We played these art school dances and we were booed,

and pelted with toilet rolls.

So we kept changing our name.

We started off as Paul McDowell And His Jazzmen,

and then the next gig we called ourselves

Grover And His Bicycling Jazz Aces,

and the people who saw it was the same band were furious.

# Skiddy-iddy-iddy-iddy Iddy-iddy-iddy-iddy... #

The Temperance Seven's first hit was produced by a young George Martin.

The record was You're Driving Me Crazy.

# You, you're driving me crazy

# What did I do to you? #

I think not only to his surprise, but our surprise, it was a number one.

Gave George Martin his first number one long before The Beatles.

The Temperance Seven took the Britishness of trad to the extreme.

They whetted our insatiable appetites for novelty and pantomime.

Denatured and kitsch,

trad was a long way from the revivalist streams of New Orleans.

The two forms of music I hate the most is rap and English trad.

Oh, man!

Unless you really copy New Orleans jazz from New Orleans,

really copy it note for note, you're not going to get the same sound.

Especially being British.

They are 6,000 miles away from the real McCoy,

and the difference, you could tell an English band a mile off.

I can, even today.

Different beat.

# Over in the glory land

# I hear that happy angels' band

# Over there in glory land. #

You see, you are using two beats on that bass drum, not four beats.

But in the English band, they would be "ba-ba-ba-boom."

I don't know what they'd be doing.

In spite of criticism, the trad fad looked set to soundtrack the '60s,

but with every pop scene, there is another hot on its heels.

There was a cool Liverpudlian breeze in the air.

'We used to play the Cavern. The Cavern was originally a jazz club.'

They used to have skiffle bands during the interval which were the local musicians.

We went out, you go out for a beer,

and we came back and I saw a drum kit with BEAT - big -

and L-E-S, small.

Beat. You know, beat.

I read it as a French band. Les Beats, right?

Really. And I thought, "Oh, Lord."

The next time we went there... they played the first set.

The next time we went there, WE played the first set

and we never went there after that.

# Love, love me do

# You know I love you

# I'll always be true

# So, please

# Love me do... #

The agents who were making a lot of money out of traditional jazz,

suddenly became uncontactable when The Beatles came along.

Trad was middle-aged and a new generation with electric

instruments and slightly more sex appeal took over the pop scene.

Many jazz bands folded or went back to the pubs and clubs,

but for some there was always a variety spot on Saturday night TV.

# There's a tavern in the town

# In the town

# Where my true love sits him down

# Sits him down

# I'm going to hang my heart on a weeping willow tree

# And may all the world go well with thee... #

My band of that time was the most broadcast

'and televised band in the country.'

So it didn't completely disappear.

-Ladies and gentlemen, it's Kenny Ball.

-Are you sure?

-Yes.

APPLAUSE

MUSIC PLAYS

We done five years with The Morecambe And Wise Show.

'Only playing one number every night, but it was'

an audience of about 20 million.

-There'll be nothing permissive in this show tonight.

-You want to bet?

-I do.

-You look over there. Kenny Ball. Go on.

LAUGHTER

You'd be stood behind the piano with our top halves showing

and it looked as though we were standing there knacker-naked.

-Horrifying that, isn't it?

-Horrifying? It's disgusting.

-Looks like a butcher's shop.

-LAUGHTER

Trad became an entertainment staple, homogenised and showbiz..

With Ottilie, Chris Barber moved more towards R&B.

For him, the commercial hijacking of jazz was Frankenstein's monster.

It began to turn into kind of a Chas & Dave sort of jazz. You know?

APPLAUSE

MUSIC PLAYS

One man remained steadfast in his purism,

continuing a lifelong quest for the true New Orleans sound.

Ken was no Kenny Ball.

Kenny Ball could absolutely be your Saturday night entertainer.

Ken, not in a million years.

Certainly the trad boat sailed and Ken was not on it.

Although one of the pioneers of British jazz,

Ken Colyer remained uncompromising to the end of his days in France,

never receiving huge public acclaim.

# Well, if home is where the heart is

# Then my home's in New Orleans... #

New Orleans jazz had a fleeting moment in the spotlight, but

for those who brought it to Britain, it would be a lifelong obsession.

It sort of went through the boom into the big commercial venues...

..and when that finished, it went back into the pubs and clubs.

It still went on in clubs and jazz clubs and all over.

It's still going on. I'm playing Saturday.

HE CHUCKLES

Gives me a buzz.

Dr Jazz, they call it.

It does do the trick.

You get young people dragged into our concerts by their elders.

They all seem to be enjoying it very thoroughly and they say so.

When that band is ticking, everybody is in their places,

terrific feeling.

It's great. Nothing like The Beatles.