I began my retirement with a concert by Travis Haddix which led me back to my old love of promoting blues, this in turn meant that I have become re-acquainted with other enthusiasts from the good old days and in particular with David Popple from The Stamford Arts Centre who had kept the faith almost single handed with a superb series of Guitar Festivals which are now in their 8th year. Together Dave and I decided to run a series featuring 'top dollar' black American blues people who in the main have never been to the UK before and do not rely on 'Sweet home Chicago' to win over the audience.
The aim of the series is to allow aspiring blues musicians the chance to see, hear and feel the music of working black American artists and to re-establish the link between the music's true origins and it's future 'stars'. All the gigs have been enjoyable, if not always financially sound. Fortunately in one of our darker monetary moments we were visited by a sponsor who was happy to meet our shortfall. 'Bottom Line' is that the shows are being run for the love of the music and it is our way of thanking the originators for all the years of enjoyment that they have given us.
Our thanks go the artists for travelling 1000's of miles to be with us, Rowena for putting up with me, Caroline Gilder for her help in the 'office', Ian Sheldon for setting up everything and being a good friend, Dick Cartmel for his unstinting support, Duncan Vessay for his photography, Evening Telegraph, Stamford Mercury, Blues & Rhythm, Juke Blues and Tales from the Woods for their interest in the project, Dave Williams for his tireless enthusiasm, the various members, past and present, of the Blues Crusaders without whom none of this would be possible, Rex Gates for all his help and friendship and finally Jeremy Watson who makes it all happen on the night with his charts and his open-ended generous offer to help with loans of guitars, amps, PA etc;
We would also like to thank the few independent shops and restaurants that display our posters and distribute our leaflets - we know who you are- and to Paul Jones on BBC Radio 2, Foz on Radio Suffolk, Gary Hearn on Fen Radio, Key Theatre for listing us in KeyTimes and Spalding Art Centre for handling our flyers also Hereward Radio, Radio Cambridge and Lite FM for their 'What's on' mentions.
I was recently asked what had prompted me to promote Jazz and Rhythm and Blues in the 60’s. This question made me think about the early days, the people involved in nurturing my interest in Afro-American music. I thought perhaps some of you might be interested in the answer.
Thinking back over the years I realise that my interest in jazz was fostered by my elder brother John’s collection of modern and main stream jazz records. He also inadvertently lit the fuse of my lifetime obsession with Blues by bringing home a Decca 78 of ‘Rock Around The Clock’ by the white Louis Jordan stylist Bill Haley. I had never heard anything so exciting and from that day onwards I decided to devote myself to buying as many Rock and Roll records that my meagre pocket money allowed. Little did I know that Alan Freed had coined the name ‘Rock and Roll’ to encompass a mishmash of different musical styles including Rhythm and Blues, Doo-Wop, Rock-a-Billy and pure pop and so each week I would buy the latest ‘must have’ rock record by Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, The Moonglows, Little Richard or Chuck Berry - all of which were being touted as being ‘a great R&R record’ by various record companies.
In 1956, whilst languishing in a boarding school in Hitchin, I crept into a local cinema one Saturday afternoon to watch Alan Freed’s film ‘Rock, Rock, Rock’. I became so engrossed by the performances by Lavern Baker, The Flamingos, Frankie Lyman and Chuck Berry that I was late returning to school and soundly beaten for my misdemeanour. Undaunted a few months later I went to see ‘Rock Around The Clock’ - and caught my first glimpse of Little Richard and the wonderful Platters. The following year I managed to see ‘Mr Rock & Roll’ and I still remember being bowled over by Clyde McPhatters superb rendition of ‘Rock and Cry’. ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’ came next featuring Fats Domino and the Treniers with their ‘oh so cool’ drummer twirling his sticks.
More importantly, as far as furthering my musical scholarship was concerned, I queued up during the holidays to pay my sixpence in order to watch the seminal 1958 Newport Jazz Festival documentary ‘Jazz On A Summers Day’. This film starts with the brilliant ‘Train and The River’ by Jimmy Giuffre and wends its way through performances including those by Theolonious Monk, Billy Holiday, Chuck Berry - singing, playing and dancing with Sydney Bechet, - Big Maybelle, Mahalia Jackson
and the wonderful Chico Hamilton Quartet. At the end of the film I was left feeling dazed and shortly thereafter I came to the realisation that the music which really appealed to me was being produced by black Afro-Americans.
With a little research, using back copies of Jazz Journal, it dawned on me that ‘The Blues’ was the bedrock of all great Afro-American jazz, R&B and R&R records that I enjoyed. For a while I decided to only buy ‘pure blues’ recordings by the likes of Skip James, Blind Gary Davis, Sunnyland Slim, Little Brother Montgomery, Bill Broonzy, Scrapper Blackwell, Snooks Eaglin. However, this phase didn’t last too long because a chance hearing of Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Smokestack Lightnin’ on a London EP knocked me sideways and put pay to my purest period. After that my shekels were also spent on Muddy Water’s, Big Joe Turner, Little Walter and Young Jessie.
In the early 60’s I moved to Holland and my arrival happened at the same time as the flowering of the Dutch main-stream/modern jazz craze. My new friends bombarded me with jazz records by the likes of Lionel Hampton, John Coltrane, Charlie Mingus and the MJQ. I reciprocated by playing the latest rhythm & blues records by John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Buddy Guy, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles.
Moving to Paris the following year coincided with the first ‘American Folk Blues Festival’ and my being able to see my blues idols ‘live’ was a mind blowing experience. That same year saw the ‘American Blues and Gospel Festival’ in town and my first ‘live’ encounter with Muddy Waters and Otis Spann was almost eclipsed by the brilliant set by the electric guitar toting gospel artist Sister Rosetta Tharpe. During that time in Paris live music was not just confined to the odd festival experience. Every Friday night I would venture into the Quatre Latin and would encounter the likes of Memphis Slim, Curtis Jones. Mae Mercer, and Ornette Coleman playing in tiny bars that would be full if thirty people turned up! Sessions would start around 10pm and end at 3 or 4am. Memories are made of this!
Moving back to Britain I found the first U.K blues boom in full swing with regular tours being organized featuring Freddie King, Buddy Guy, Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Spann, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson. Alexis Koerner, John Mayall and Eric Clapton were becoming household names and they could be seen playing on the bandstand or as audience members attending these gigs. By this time the blues and gospel fusion, known as soul music - created almost single-handedly by Ray Charles - was also being adopted by the blues/jazz fraternity who correctly considered it to be a blues form. The British bands enthusiastically ignored pigeonholing the various blues styles and created a new and exciting music which embraced Jazz, Blues, R&B and Soul and added a British twist. The future for the music looked bright and my record collection expanded with sides by Eugene Church, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke and Don Covay.
Meanwhile, whilst the rest of Britain basked in a surfeit of live blues music, we in Peterborough could only read about these legendary shows with envy as one by one these tours passed us by. The odd gig by Freddie King or Sonny Boy Williamson might turn up in March or Wisbech but Peterborough remained a desert as far as Blues, Rhythm and Blues, Soul or any other decent music was concerned.
There was of course the Peterborough trad; jazz club at the Halcyon and the Peterborough folk club at The Crown Inn. As I had an intense dislike of the former and a distain for the latter my choice was limited. I think I eventually drifted into the folk club simply because it had a surfeit of good looking women in the crowd. However, it was here that I met a bearded guitar player Ed Humphries and his harmonica playing sidekick Rod Garfield, who made the evenings bearable for me with excellent versions of Leadbelly and Broonzy songs. We kept in touch and had long conversations bemoaning the lack of live blues in the area. This then eventually led to us beginning a series of concerts, initially under a variety of banners, which included The Bloo-Doo at the Crown Inn in Peterborough, which morphed into the Blues Project at the Elwis Hall, and eventually becoming ‘Shakedown’. The booking policy assumed blues to be a jazz form and included a number of modern and avant-garde jazz sessions. By the time the programme had became housed in the Halcyon under the Shakedown banner we had decided to form a house band. With the help of Ed’s friend Bob Green we advertised in The Peterborough Evening Telegraph for local musicians with a penchant for the blues to audition for a place in the Ma Grinder’s Blues Mission.
For those of you who have wondered about the name of the band and the club - Shakedown was the title of the initial album by the Savoy Brown’s Blues Band and I liked the name. As for Ma Grinder’s Blues Mission the first half was a brilliant piano piece by Alex Moore and should have been the name of the band however Bob insisted on calling it ‘The Blues Mission’ so we compromised on a combination of the two.
So there you have it
Gerard