Dave Allen recalls 24th April 2020 (Lock down!)
For today and tomorrow a story in two parts. The date of the 'tomorrow' bit is important and will be revealed then, and while it's a fairly detailed story of things that happened long ago but not so far away, I'm as interested in the coincidence that occurs as in any other part of it. I've mentioned before I love what we choose to call coincidences.
It begins in the summer of 1967 when after one year in the sixth form I'd had enough of grammar school rules and teaching and left, hoping to go to art college in 12 months time but with nothing to do. I decided eventually to do a second year of 'A' levels at Highbury College, which was where I met up with some old school friends who had a band. I had previously played with one of them (Pete) in my days as a musical beginner - shifting from the Shadows to Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and when they decided to expand their Hendrix/blues-inspired outfit to an eight-piece soul band called Harlem Speakeasy, I was hired as a second singer; among all the influences, our biggest role model at that time was the Alan Bown Set (important information) who played often at the Birdcage and then Brave New World (name changed to The Alan Bown).
The band was very ambitious. We did pretty well around Pompey and beyond - mostly clubs and youth clubs - and got involved in a scene in Romford run by the infamous agent/manager Don Arden (Small Faces, Amen Corner, daughter Sharon Osbourne). The quick version of all that is that he promised much ("Mickie Most is interested boys") and delivered nothing, just making door money from us on Saturday nights. One morning, a few of us went to his office in Soho to confront him, and found him with a couple of 'heavies' and a message which put simply read "Fuck off".
We went to a coffee bar in Denmark Street to discuss what had happened and a guy in the next booth overheard us. Here's big coincidence one: He asked about the band, we described it and mentioned Alan Bown. He revealed that he worked with them as a roadie and they had just split with their agency/management who in turn were looking for a replacement. He gave us a contact (Richard Cowley) and we approached him.
He wanted us to do an audition at the Speakeasy Club with the offer of a recording deal. The night before the audition there was a serious fire at the club, so the only time he heard us was in his flat playing semi-acoustically. On that basis alone we had a recording (Polydor) and agency deal (Chrysalis) and released a single "Aretha". We were his new Alan Bown Set.
The short version of what followed is that I left college (no 'A' levels, didn't go to Art College) and had instead an extraordinary adventure which was over by Christmas with no record sales, no agency and a new band. All quite remarkable and if we hadn't been in that coffee bar at that time with that story, none of it would have happened. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
Part Two: As my official biographer Mo Maureen Buckingham says there was Harlem Speakeasy, then Rosemary, then Gilbey Twiss by which point I was digging and weeding flowerbeds on Southsea seafront for a living. In 1972, a week or two from my 22nd birthday I went to Milton's College of Knowledge to train to be an art teacher. I chose it because I could get out in three years rather than five through art college and PGCE - I needed a proper career and I thought that was the end of music.
It wasn't. During my first year I was elected for a 12-month spell as Social Sec and also I met a fine acoustic guitarist Bob Cooper-Grundy - he looked like a cross between a mountain man and Roy Wood, and unlike me wasted few words. We got together because some of the people studying English were making recordings of Bob Dylan songs for a school project (he's a poet you see?). I remember little of that but Bob and I found a common fondness for the good old country/folk/ whatever blues and associated wonders (ragtime, string bands etc). We started playing together, mostly just at the College and became advocates for that stuff with a column in the student 'newspaper'. Neither of us had much interest in the way pop and rock were going.
So far so modest, but two key things happened. Firstly, Bob was about my age and although neither of us arrived at the college with significant qualifications or academic records, we both did well and we were taken on to a fourth year to complete a degree. I loved almost every minute of my time there, including playing with Bob. The decision to say 'yes' to the fourth year was crucial because early in that year (1974/5) a bunch of publicity arrived in the Students Union about a national talent competition for student folk and rock acts. It was sponsored by Tartan brewery and the deal was you went to a college venue, played alongside three other acts, one act won and went forward with a bit of dosh and everyone got free beer.
Easy decision then, but Bob and I reckoned our somewhat 'purist' approach to the blues might warrant livening up and anyway if we had a bigger band there would be more free beer for more of our mates. And so, Skys Is Cryin' was formed as a country blues/jug/skiffle ensemble with violin, harmonica, mandolin, guitars, washboard etc. And off we went as one of the folk acts to Worthing College for round one where Radio One DJ Pete Drummond decided we were the winners! OK long story so, next round Thames Poly, we won again, Semi-Final (Geordie also played headline) we won again and so we were in the FINAL at Hammersmith Odeon; four acts in the first half, followed by Steeleye Span (MC Bob Harris) and prizes on offer for best folk act and overall winners, and of course I wouldn't be telling you all this unless we won the lot which we did ( 750 not to be sneezed at in 1975)
The band lasted about four years and did some interesting, mostly folk gigs. It was also the first time I had played with fellow student Dennis Reeve-Baker with whom over the years I have now played in Skys, the Operation, the Mooks, the Reds, Reet Petite & Gone, Sky Divers, Scarlet Town and the Southsea Skiffle Orchestra (which includes Skys washboard man Roger Easey). But in the context of this story, the REALLY SIGNIFICANT two points are: (1) It was 45 years ago TODAY (Saturday 26 April) and (2) The Chairman of the judges on the special night was ALAN BOWN.
Dave Allen
16th October 2020
If you're stopping in tonight, there's a big choice on the telly. Part-way through BBC4's enticing tribute to birthday boy Cliff, Sky Arts - now pretty broadly available - screens "White Riot", the story of Rock Against Racism, and nominated by 'Radio Times' as today's Film of the Day. It's followed by 'Don Letts: Dread Meets Punk Rockers'. Tough choice huh?
Sky Arts is often good although sometimes a bit over-stocked with films about old Hollywood stars or slightly less old rock bands - but it's been pretty good this week. A few days ago they screened a 90 minute film 'Born in Chicago' which looked at the link between the great 1950s blues men - Muddy, Wolf, Sonny Boy, BB etc and the white blues players of the next decade.
But (thankfully) this was not the usual Jagger, Richards, Clapton story, it was the white Americans from Chicago like Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musslewhite, Elvin Bishop and the formidable Nick Gravenites who wrote the cracking 'Born in Chicago'. It was terrific.
There was also a documentary about the strangely intriguing Ivor Cutler, presented by KT Tunstall. He was in Magical Mystery Tour, as the original Buster Blood Vessel, and I seem to recall that John Peel played his tracks - particularly from 'Life In a Scottish Sitting Room, volume two' (there was never a volume one). I read a Facebook entry by Maggie Sawkins this morning quoting the good review in the Guardian then a couple of hours later she came into the studio with her new dog and we chatted about it. She met Ivor and has a tale or two.
If you'd like to see that, it is on again on Monday night/Tuesday morning at 1am, while 'Born in Chicago is on even later tonight, after midnight at 2.15am. Set record (or take lots of amphetamines.)
Dave Allen
21st October 2020
I've read already some fine tributes to Spencer Davis who died on Monday (Colin Carter, Tony Rollinson, Paul Anderson, John Roberts, David Bennett Cohen) so I thought I'd add some of my memories.
The period from 1963-1965 was a thrilling one for me (I was 14-16) as I discovered there was more to popular music than 'pop', particular thanks to the blues/R&B and then soul 'boom'. It was a wonderful time to see some of the finest bands in small clubs and ballrooms and regular encounters with Graham Bond, Georgie Fame, Chris Farlowe, the Animals, Downliners Sect, (the original) Moody Blues and others opened up a whole new musical world - enhanced by the increasing numbers of American artists who appeared live or on record.
I saw the Spencer Davis Group in Pompey twice and I thought that as exponents of the British strain of black American music they were as good as any. This was a lot to do with the extraordinary talent of Stevie Winwood of course - even more extraordinary when you think he was just 18 months older than me. I think he sang the blues as well as any British vocalist at the time, and added guitar, piano and organ. For a wonderful blues, try a B-side "Stevie's Blues" which, like their early single "Strong Love" featured a form of scat singing.
The whole band was great. They had a fine rhythm section and their range of material was impressive. They played the 'classic' R&B stuff like "Dimples", soul tracks like "Every Little Bit Hurts" & "I Can't Stand It", there was a Jimmy Smith-style organ instrumental "Blues in F", and when I first saw them at the Rendezvous there was a fascinating 'folk-blues' interlude when Spencer and Stevie played acoustic 12-strings on songs like "This Hammer" and "I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water" (sung by Spencer). On the first album there's also a great track "My Babe" which is not that My Babe but a track I think originally by the Righteous Brothers (?).
I think Spencer Davis had started out on the folk scene (?) and there were also jazz roots in the band, all of which stood them in good stead. I saw them a second time at the Birdcage (29 January 1966) after which they got famous with those hit records - good for them too. But they remain among the most memorable of British R&B bands for me - and I suspect had they come from South London instead of Birmingham they'd be mentioned more often in tales of those times. They were lovely.
Dave Allen
Novcember 3rd 2020
Me and my pals in Scarlet Town planned a rehearsal last Sunday in anticipation of a gig at the Barley Mow towards the end of November. It would have been our first get-together and gig since January but ... (you know).
News too from John Roberts about this week's Blues Club gig with my old pal Steve Browning:
"THE EXPERIMENTAL BLUES ORCHESTRA at The Dockyard Club in Southsea on Thursday 5th November cannot now go ahead- however this is NOT a cancellation, merely a postponement, and we'll get this wonderful band back as soon as we can!
Our next scheduled gig is on Thursday December 3rd -the day after lockdown finishes - with Bullfrog favourites STOMPIN' DAVE'S BLUES 3, so unless the goalposts are moved again this event WILL go ahead and your tickets can be transferred to this event if you wish. Just turn up with your November ticket". Alternatively, you can retain your tickets for ANY future
Bullfrog Blues Club gig".
Dave Allen
7th November 2020
Generally, I don't do politics on Facebook because it's either a matter of preaching to your converted mates or setting people off against each other. It never seems to me to be the best of 'change agents'.
I am however, very interested in politics, always have been, and I've been intrigued and absorbed by what's been going on in the USA this week. America's Saturday is just opening up now which makes it Day Five since Tuesday, when those who voted in person had their chance, and for five days an increasingly confident Joe Biden has been counselling 'patience'. I like that; five days of patience.
Of course culturally for some of us on this side of the great water, five days of patience, with no certainty about the result is part of our birthright - it's what Test Matches were deigned for, and it strikes me that Mr Biden might have the makings of real cricket fan. The best one might hope for the other bloke is playing the coloured clothing short form where at some point during the three hours he gets cross with the other players and takes his bat home.
There is no doubt really that cricket is the foundation and backbone of our stable culture - after all we have a leader who does not merely understand the value of patience over five days - he even plays the game! How blessed we are.
Dave Allen
10th November 2020
My irregular purchase of the local paper is determined almost entirely by sporting events, so I bought one yesterday to read about mighty Pompey's triumphant cup march (bring on King's Who?)
There's always the added bonus of the letters page however and a couple caught my eye yesterday. One was a woman writing on behalf of her "vulnerable" friend who works at the University and tells her that students walk around without masks, move tables to sit close, while one who tested positive was "wondering (sic) around the communal area without a mask.
There's no reason to suppose she made it up, but it's anecdotal and students are an easy target. The ones who held two street parties a few weeks back were donuts but they are being dealt with, and since I still do bits there part-time, I am kept up-to-date with all the precautions they are taking, which are considerable. Further, it begins to seem that the 'Eat out to help out' scheme may have had a bigger impact on an upsurge in Covid cases than the return of students.
A little while back I posted about my uncertainty - to teach or not to teach? Well you can see from my photo that I went in and it's been fine. Since Lou & I are also participating in the ONS survey I can confirm all test results are OK so far. I didn't see a single student without a mask, there was a clear one-way system around the building, sprays for table, and for those who chose not to attend we were doing it on Zoom simultaneously - an interesting challenge after 50 years of teaching! The students were without exception engaged, very sensible and relaxed about the whole business and I enjoyed it hugely.
So that's another anecdote, different from the first one. If I was a Professor of Social Science I'd need an awful lot more of those before I drew any (general) conclusions, but the mention of Profs and 'science' brings me to the other letter that caught my eye in which a correspondent observed that "we are overrun by a plague of professors, many of whom don't seem to know what they are talking about". This is an increasingly prevalent view out there and one which I find as shameful as it is mystifying. It's as if the Daily Mail now drives many people's worldview. It's also very dangerous. I'm bloody glad the people who treated my prostate cancer last year were highly educated scientists taught by informed Professors and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I think there is an answer though. People not able for legitimate reasons to wear anti-Covid masks are asked to display a lanyard. We could organise the same thing for people who are contemptuous of Professors and science (which has never claimed to be infallible). Then when it comes to emergency treatment in science-led NHS hospitals or when this new vaccine becomes widely available they can be at the back of the queue.
Dave Allen
11th November 2020
When they come to sticking in the vaccine, I'll be pleased I was born in the 1940s. I think I'll get one fairly early because I'm old of course. I never have believed all that stuff about age being just a number, my knees say otherwise.
If there's any doubt, I've had a couple of extra reminders lately. Yesterday I picked up my new glasses - pretty well my constant companions now, while today, for the first time, I woke up and put in my new hearing aids. I had this test (see the picture) showing my hearing as absolutely fine for the bottom end of Dub Reggae or Drum & Bass but then it plummets rapidly and when you get towards the higher pitches it's utterly knackered (follow the crosses and circles).
I blame all the drummers and guitarists of course, all those Saturday and Sunday mornings waking up with a loud ringing, all those muffled conversations and now suddenly ... extraordinary! I can hear. Yesterday, I promised Jim Lush a tick-tock story; well I have a clock in my 'office' upstairs where I often sit typing or painting and for the first time in years I can hear it, tick-tock, tock-tick.
Fortunately I'm also still 17 - have been since the Summer of Love, guess I always will be - and to take my mind off all the scientific (that word again) implements that now keep me 'human', I've bought a new face mask, just for confirmation.
But on the subject of 'old' again, here's the author Hilary Mantel. I like this:
"The truly old should revert to myth and live in the greenwood with Robin, spying out for the long curve of that arc that is said to bend towards justice" (The Observer 4.10.2020)
Dave Allen
November 15th 2020
I walked down the road for a paper or two just before 7.30 this morning and started feeling nostalgic for Lockdown number one. Back then I'd be in shorts and a T-shirt, might stroll on a bit to see the sea, back for breakfast, followed by a bike ride along the car-free seafront after which maybe a spot of gentle gardening on the hot sunny days.
I get out everyday still but boy this Lockdown is a damp and gloomy one. I have plenty of enjoyable things to do and an endless soundtrack to do it to, but for whatever reason, I've sometimes found myself preferring the radio to my music library - and by that I mean principally Radio 4, including its Archive and More 4. Lots of stuff there from drama & literature to current affairs - my favourite book dramatisation so far is Somerset Maughan's 'The Razor's Edge' and inter-war social drama with an intriguing spiritual sub-plot.
I'm also listening to the radio news more than TV right now - I like the fact that it's not driven by pictures and often more analytical. A couple of days ago 'PM' was full of Covid, plus speculation about Trump & Cummings ("leaving by Christmas?") - I'm delighted to see the back of those two, who share contempt for their fellow human beings, and might both expect a ghostly visit on Christmas Eve. Last chance for redemption boys - or at least a fashion makeover?
Then PM played out, as so often, with something lighter. In this case it was a woman called Kirsty Alsop on the question of whether Christmas is starting "too early". Wikipedia tells me she does property shows on TV and is worth 16m - I wouldn't pay that much, but while she spoke on the topic (no great insights I'm afraid), they played bits of music. This allowed the presenter/interviewer to indulge the usual comments and clich s about hating any Christmas music until around 26 December.
What did they play? All the usual suspects: Mariah Carey; Brenda Lee, Band Aid, Chris Rea, Slade and 'Jingle Bell Rock' - prizes for naming the singer on that one (no cheating).
As some of you know, I like Christmas and I like lots of 'Christmas Music' - for some years my special Christmas cards were CD 'mix-tapes' and I managed to make them every year without any of those well-worn tracks. So I figured since I can't do another Lockdown special about Pompey Pop, I might play around with this instead, and here, just to kick it off are a few images that might be interesting and possibly my all-time favourite Christmas record, from the jazz world of 1940s USA - maybe Trump heard this in short pants?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QA30sgqsRY
Dave Allen
16th November 2020
Lou and I have lost too many friends this year - more than ever before I think, some unexpected, and yet not one to Covid-19. Today I'm going to the funeral of an old Hampshire cricketer, Alan Rayment, until a couple of weeks ago the only one still with us to have played in the 1940s - now there are none. I never saw Alan play as he retired the year before I first went down to the old US Ground, but over the past 20 years we became great friends - often taking trips out to the cricket, sharing writing and talking most weeks on the phone.
Since I can find great comfort in music, there's a temptation to play Roy Harper of course, a beautiful and fitting piece but these days maybe a bit obvious. Then, entirely coincidentally (?), last week I discovered this: Icelandic composer Jon Leif's 'Requiem Opus 33b for Mixed Choir'. It's a short piece featuring just voices in which he created a collage of Icelandic folk images and poetry.
It is also know as 'Crossing Over' - Leifs composed it in the 1940s in memory of his daughter who drowned in a swimming accident in 1947, which just happened to be the year that my friend Alan played his first major match. So just for today I shall 'borrow' it for him. I'm very fond of choral music and I think this is five minutes of sheer beauty.
Dave Allen
November 17th 2020
The oldest 'record' in my collection (a CD track) is "Mama's Black Baby Boy" by the Unique Quartette - forerunners of the Drifters, Temptations etc and recorded on a cylinder in 1893. It comes from a fine Box Set of American Popular Music 1893-1956.
One of the many tracks on the collection is Lil McClintock's Don t Think I m Santa Claus - Lil was a (male) country blues songster who recorded that and just three other tracks in 1930. I'm surprised that it's the first 'Christmas' record on the long list, 37 years into its chronological survey, because there were a number of recordings prior to this which might be described as 'Christmas' records, released for an increasingly popular market.
Why the inverted 'commas'? When people start talking about liking or disliking Christmas music, they tend to talk implicitly as though Christmas music is a genre, like punk or reggae (etc.) with specific stylistic characteristics and a particular audience. But 'Christmas' music isn't like that - it ranges across almost every genre, popular or classical. What we tend to call Christmas music is linked thematically by having something to do with Christmas but even that shifts between the devoutly spiritual, having a bunch of fun, sentimentality or feeling especially lonely and blue while everyone else is having fun.
I have a couple of tracks on a different Christmas CD collection recorded as early as 1908 & 1913 but they are perhaps broadly Christian religious songs issued for a Christmas audience. By 1915 however, John McCormack recorded "Adeste Fideles" and the following year Enrico Caruso "Cantique de Noel" (O Holy Night).
As far as I'm aware then, the earliest commercial Christmas records were religious, recorded by artists from America, Europe and Britain. There was also a separate Black audience in America for what back then was known as 'Race Records' and in the mid-1920s some of the leading blues artists recorded Christmas Blues tracks, possibly starting in 1925 with the great Bessie Smith's recording of a fun song At the Christmas Ball . Another of the great women blues singers, Victoria Spivey released Christmas Morning Blues (1927) with guitarist Lonnie Johnson, and in the same year came the very influential Santy Claus Crave by Elzadie Robinson. Then in 1928 there was Blind Lemon Jefferson's Christmas Eve Blues , and in 1929 Blind Blake's Lonesome Christmas Blues .
Christmas comes but once a year; And to me it brings good cheer; And to everyone, who likes wine and beer - Bessie Smith
Next Christmas I won t be here to get this Christmas bad news; Just mark my tombstone, I died with Christmas mornin blues - Victoria Spivey
I know I did do wrong, I'm just as sorry as I can be.?It's the day before Christmas, mama come back to me - Blind Lemon Jefferson
Now here are some more pictures
Dave Allen
18th November 2020
Do you recognise these song lyrics?
"The sun is shining, the grass is green, the orange and palm trees sway; There's never been such a day, in Beverley Hills LA ..." (All will be revealed).
Colin Carter has praised Phil Spector's 1963 Christmas album (comments in previous post) and I agree, it's a cracker - and some of the tracks will be very familiar I'm sure. Chris Abbott has previously praised Darlene Love here and she has four tracks on that album, including a cover of THE most famous Christmas song, "White Christmas". She's not alone there - Alec Adams mentioned Otis Redding's slower soulful version, another fine one - but Darlene's version has one feature which I think is unique.
That takes me back to those lyrics at the top. When Irving Berlin first wrote the song in 1940 those words appeared at the start of the song, almost in a spoken form, a format (known as a sectional verse) that was used quite commonly in the songs of the Great American Songbook in the 1930s & 1940s. After what you see above, that 'intro' ends with the words "But it's December the 24th and I'm longing to be up north" and then the singer croons "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas ... (etc)".
When Bing Crosby recorded it in 1942, however, this opening sectional verse was omitted and it's rarely heard nowadays, although there are versions that include it by, among others, Mel Torm , Pink Martini (check on Youtube) and - sort of - Darlene Love, EXCEPT that in her version those lyrics appear in the middle of the song.
Why is it there? Maybe because without it, "White Christmas" is just about the most basic 'pop' song that ever rose to the heights, let alone right to the top. Bing's version is basically one chorus with a slight lyrical shift (v1 "Just like the ones ..."; v2 "with every Christmas card ..."); after which the third same chorus is sung by the Ken Darby Singers, and then they sing it again as Bing whistles, finishing the song with the last line. But that's it, there is nothing more to it. It's not verse; chorus; verse; chorus, bridge etc as many classic pop songs are - it's minimalism! And maybe that's why Spector and Darlene Love used the sectional verse in the middle?
Dave Allen
Nov 20th 2020
The weather and the lockdown might be crap but it's an amazing music day on the TV today for anyone who likes the stuff I like. At 8.30 pm on PBS America there is a fabulous documentary about country music, hillbilly and rock & roll (thanks Phil), then BBC4 gets going (you'll need the recorder). At 9pm they revive 'Jazz 625' to feature a number of the best young UK jazz musicians, then at 10.30pm is a repeat for 'Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool" a documentary about the most popular, maybe most accessible 'modern jazz' album of all time. It's a very good documentary about a really fine album.
Then at 12.25 am there's a repeat for the documentary about Ronnie Scott, probably the most important of all British jazz musicians. It's another really fine, if ultimately very sad story.
I ain't going nowhere.
Dave Allen
November 21st 2020
There are lots of reports in the media wondering whether Boris 'The Grinch' will let us have a 'normal' Christmas - which seems in 2020 to be conceived almost entirely as a secular, family affair. Over the past few months there have also been many comparisons between the Covid-19 experience and life in wartime. Well in 1944, the last wartime Christmas, 'The Times' hedged its bets somewhat. Under the headline "Christmas a Festival of God" they wrote Why has it become a magnetic focus of all that is tender and human, and the unchallenged festival of childhood, the family and the home?
Three years earlier, on Christmas Day 1941, Bing Crosby had sung White Christmas in public for the first time on Kraft foods-sponsored radio Music Hall Show, and it was released in the UK in 1942 as part of an album of songs from its cinema debut in 'Holiday Inn'. It was not a war-time song of course but it had a huge sentimental impact on troops abroad and the folks back home , once America entered the war following the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour.
By then, Britain already had at least one very specific war-time hit record, Gracie Fields I m Sending a Letter to Santa Claus (1939) in which the Lancashire lass recites the tale of a little lad posting a letter, telling Santa he wants his Soldier daddy for Christmas; He s better than all the toys . But it seems to have been the success of White Christmas that alerted the record bosses to the potential for sentimental Christmas songs to bridge the gap between those at home and those overseas. It was followed rapidly by at least two 'classics', Judy Garland s Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas reassuring us that next year all our troubles will be out of sight and Frank Sinatra promising I ll be home for Christmas but maybe only in my dreams .
Christmas Eve 1944 was a Sunday, and in Britain, the BBC Radio s Home Service featured Christmas gramophone records, as well as a Morning Service, Christmas Music from Wales, a review of the week s films, a modern nativity Drama, and the traditional Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols from King s College Cambridge - will that be missing for the first time this year?
There was just one alternative to the Home Service in those days, known as the General Forces Programme, which became subsequently the Light Programme, and which, in turn, split into Radios One & Two in 1967. In 1944, it offered mostly a mixture of live and recorded music, ranging from Chopin to Anne Shelton or Ambrose & His Orchestra, plus greetings from India, Cairo, East Africa, Canada and elsewhere where our boys were still serving.
We're often told of the wartime spirit and how everyone 'pulled together' but I'm sorry to report (from 'The Times') that there was the threat of strike action on the London Underground on Christmas Day over the issue of working on Christmas Day, and there was also the gloomy prediction of Less beer next year .
Dave Allen
22nd November 2020
Here's another Christmas Music post and with that hint, what do the following 1960s UK chart acts have in common?
The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Who, Small Faces, Hollies, Kinks, Dusty Springfield, Manfred Mann, Sandie Shaw, Animals.
The answer is that none of them made Christmas singles during the 1960s - in fact the UK charts in that period hardly featured any Christmas hits, so if you are around the same age as me and grew up with 1960s pop & rock, then Christmas hit singles weren't much of a feature in your pop-pickin' life.
The British record charts first appeared in the New Musical Express in late 1952 so if we then list the first four decades (1952-1961 etc) then the number of Christmas hits each ten years were as follows:
1952-1961 25 hits (16 top ten)
1962-1971 6 hits (3 top ten)
1972-1981 17 hits (8 top ten)
1982-1991 17 hits (8 top ten)
I've compiled those figures (and a complete list of acts and titles) from a book that shows each month's Top 20 - and I've focused entirely on December, so there might other tales to tell. To pick just one example, it doesn't include Elton John's 1973 hit "Step Into Christmas", but it indicates a tendency - although I shall offer a different version of the Swinging Sixties next.
I wonder whether you could name the six Christmas hits from 1962-1971? I couldn't. You'll find them alongside one of today's pictures
Dave Allen
23/11/2020
I was talking about how popular music responded to the Christmas Holiday season in the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s while pretty much ignoring it during the Swinging Sixties. Much the same, albeit from an earlier starting date, is true of Christmas movies. Starting with a version of 'Christmas Carol' in 1938, I can find at least 10 fairly major UK/USA Christmas movies over the next 15 years including 'It's a Wonderful Life' 'Miracle of 34th Street', 'Scrooge' and 'White Christmas'. But then, there is almost nothing until the musical 'Scrooge' in 1970 - unless you count 'Santa Claus Conquers the Martians' in 1964. Maybe the only entertainment medium interested in Christmas was TV (and Pantomime)?
Well, not so. While yesterday I produced a list of major 1960s pop acts that did not respond to Christmas, today I have another list of those that did - and what links them all is that are Black American acts, because just like those old blues singers in the 1920s, Black musicians responded to Christmas, often in the latest styles but with a sense of tradition going back over more than 300 years.
There is much evidence even from the 1600s of the importance of Christmas in the lives of slaves, because Christmas offered them a few days of holiday from endless oppressive work, and even in the 1960s that tradition and sense of pleasure persisted. Intriguingly, relatively few of the songs were religious in the spiritual/gospel styles although the best vocal groups often began in that style.
I might say more but for now consider these top 1960s Black singers and their songs - I've added more in Comments against the images today:
Aretha Franklin "Winter Wonderland"; BB King "Christmas Celebration"; Carla Thomas "Gee Whizz It s Christmas";
Esther Phillips "Far Away Christmas Blues"; The Impressions "Silent Night"; Irma Thomas "O Holy Night"; James Brown "Please Come Home for Christmas"; Little Eva & Big Dee Irwin "I Wish You a Merry Christmas"; Marvin Gaye "Purple Snowflakes"; O Jays "Christmas Ain t Christmas "; Otis Redding "White Christmas/Merry Christmas Baby"; Percy Sledge "Christmas Wish"; Ray Charles "All I Want for Christmas"; Solomon Burke "Presents for Christmas"; Staple Singers "Who Took the Merry Out of Christmas"; Supremes "Just a Lonely Christmas".
Dave Allen is with William Beaney.
25/11/2020
Many thanks to Tony Morris for a reminder of that Barron Knights Christmas 'cracker' (?). It takes me back to my story about which major 1960s UK acts aimed a record at the Christmas 'pop' market.
I included Dusty Springfield in my list of those who did not but in fact you can see from the first image that there was a Springfields Christmas EP in 1962, before she went solo. If you look top left however, you can see it came with the magazine 'Woman's Own' - it wasn't a commercial release.
There's a similar story about the Beatles too. In 1963, exactly three weeks after their last appearance in Pompey they began a run of 16 nights at the Finsbury Park Astoria, headlining their own Christmas show which also included The Barron Knights, and their NEMS colleagues Billy J Kramer, Tommy Quickly, the Fourmost, Cilla Black (and say it softly, Rolf Harris). At this point Brian Epstein was clearly intent on turning them into 'all-round entertainers' so in addition to music they dressed up and mucked about in a number of sketches.
But that wasn't all because in fact, for three years, they did make Christmas records, but they were 'floppy' discs that ran at LP speed (33.3 rpm); they were distributed to Fan Club members and again they just mucked about. The photo shows the first record (1963) and the covers for the first two. They sell nowadays for 100+.
If you want to hear the first one, with a number of images including the Finsbury Park poster it's on Youtube. I'll find the link and post it in a comment
Dave Allen 26/11/2020
I think I'm reaching the end of my stuff about Christmas music and today even the early blues stuff will seem pretty 'modern' because it is about centuries of what we might call 'traditional' or maybe in some cases folk music.
In truth today's offerings are a bit of a mix of two traditions. On the one hand Christmas has always been a part of the UK's folk world - and that includes Mummers and Morris dancers as well as musicians, and there is this fine 4-CD box set called 'Midwinter' which stresses that the 'holiday' traditions in this country are older than Christmas and extend beyond the 25th in both directions.
The other thing is that musically 'folk' music is stylistically more diverse than say, the blues. There are here unaccompanied traditional songs, singer-songwriters and performances by the big names of our folk revival including Martin Carthy, the Watersons, the Copper Family, Ewan MacColl, Shirley Collins, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson but also from USA Leadbelly, Joan Baez, Mahalia Jackson and Loudon Wainwright - and loads more. It's nicely presented with an informative illustrated booklet.
It's not the only example of Christmas folk (for example try the album 'Wassail' by John Kirkpatrick) but I'm no expert, I just pick up things that seem interesting and some are. Much the same is true of the choral side of things where a number of highly respected ensembles have produced collections focused on the holiday period. My favourite which I've been listening to for many years is called 'the Carol Album' by the Taverner Consort & Players - who sing and also use authentic instruments on some of the medieval songs.
Songs are in Latin, European languages (German, French etc) and sometimes English, most but not all are religious ('God Rest You Merry Gentlemen') and for the most part these are not the carols - or at least the arrangements - you might hear at the local church or on the radio. "Ding Dong Merrily on High" is a particularly lively piece starting with drumming and whistles before all kinds of wind instruments join in (it's an instrumental).
Dave Allen 12/12/2020
My good friend Paul 'Smiler' Anderson has been regularly posting images of books, music mags, and album covers from wayback in the 1960s and 1970s. Some fascinating stuff there so I thought, sticking with my 1949 theme, he (and you I hope) might enjoy this.
In the 1960s the New Musical Express was maybe a bit ordinary and mainstream - Melody Maker was cooler - but as NME in the 1970s it was suddenly the thing to buy. Back in 1949 however, it was called 'Musical Express and Accordion Times' and while it was HUGE (check out the pink pen) restrictions on the availability of paper meant it had just four sides.
I don't have a copy from Christmas 1949, but I managed to get this, published on Friday 7 October, just five days before I was born ("Wednesday's child is full of woe"). We were still three years from them publishing the first UK record charts but there is a Top Ten of sheet music - some familiar, some I've never heard of.
It's much the same with many of the songs advertised in the pages ("Lucky Old Song" is one I recognise) although familiar performers include Gracie Fields, Frankie Laine, Sarah Vaughan, Stan Kenton, Billy Eckstein and Ted Heath.
That took me to my set of CDs of R&B hits in the late 1940s/early 1950s and it's interesting that while UK music of 1949 seems almost another world, many Black American records and performers from that year are very familiar, including John Lee Hooker, Louis Jordan, T-Bone Walker, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Jimmy Witherspoon, Lightnin' Hopkins and early rock & rollers Roy Brown and Wynonie Harris. I suspect too that the CDs didn't include Chess recordings (licensing issues) - Muddy Waters for example made a number of records in 1949 and two months into 1950 there was a song you might recognise called 'Rollin' Stone'.
Dave Allen 15/12/2020
I'd like to thank EVERYONE again for your contributions yesterday. I'm not shy of political debate but I'm wary of it on Facebook - I thought all tthe contributions were great.
But today, a bit more fun and from a personal point of view one of those coincidences that I LOVE. My friend Paul Anderson (Smiler) is a great collector of 1960s memorabilia, mod especially but more broadly across popular culture, and yesterday he posted on his site a poster for three gigs in Torquay in 1967 (see first picture) which he has on display at home.
I glanced at it, noted the Move who I liked back then, thought 1967 was quite late for the Art Woods and of course spotted Pompey's own Simon Dupree & the Big Sound who I'd seen a number of times around Pompey as the Roadrunners and SD&BS. I wasn't in truth a huge fan but I could understand their appeal and there they were in Torquay.
Then I clocked the date, early August 1967 and suddenly things started clicking. I was 17 and I'd left school a month before that with no idea what to do with my life. The last thing I did at school was play a cricket match at Hilsea (check the info on picture 2) and then I took off with a mate called Steve, hitch-hiking as far west as we could go. 'On the Road' we'd often encounter older beatniks and embryonic hippies, with Cornwall as the preferred destination but two teenage boys found lifts few and far between.
In the end we got a lift that took us to Paignton where we gave up and dossed on the beach for a week or so. I can't remember that much about it, except a caf where we hung out with some locals and being moved on by the police while kipping in a seafront shelter. We had little money but we'd spotted that SD &BS were playing up the road in Torquay, so we went to the Friday night gig in that poster. Seeing it yesterday suddenly triggered a rush of memories!
A week later we hitched back to Pompey, another long and difficult journey; I probably slept most of Saturday and then on Sunday with another pal Les drove up to Windsor for my first Festival outing on the Sunday evening of the annual Jazz & Blues Festival where the bill opened with the debut of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. followed by Chicken Shack, Pentangle, Denny Laine (string band), Alan Bown, Cream, John Mayall, PP Arnold & the Nice and Jeff Beck with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood. Pretty good bill huh? Talk about guitar heroes
Next day I got a bad dose of tonsillitis, missed the rest of the summer of love (been making up for it ever since) after which I went to Highbury College where I was a terrible student but I met up with some old pals and joined their group, Harlem Speakeasy ...
Dave Allen 31/12/2020
I always have fun at Christmas, these days I make sure to mark the Winter Solstice, and birthdays are fine but I'm a bit of Grinch when it comes to New Year's Eve - except for music.
Musicians like gigs on NYE because the money goes up (and up) and if you're really lucky you get a gig where you're not expected to provide music for a conga or Auld Lang Wotsit ...
I don't recall my folks ever staying up until midnight so my earliest memories of NYE are, rather fortunately, the two at the Birdcage Club in 1965 with the Action (7/6d) and in 1966 an all-nighter with Graham Bond, the In Crowd (later became Tomorrow with singer Keith West) and locals Wrong Direction. In 1967 the club had become the Brave New World and Jimmy James and the Vagabonds were then but I missed that playing with Harlem Speakeasy by the water at Woolston.
Among the photos here is one of early Pompey rock & rollers the Cadillacs, playing at Hillside Youth Club on NYE 1959 - I do love the thought of playing in the 1960s without knowing what was in store. You could see them plus Tony Porter for 3/6d but if you fancied 'posh' there was a Dinner Dance at the Guildhall for 30 bob ( 1.50)
At the other end of the swinging decade, in 1969 I was playing with Rosemary at Kimbells on a bill that also included Coconut Mushroom, Dragonfly and Internal Combustion for 12/6d. Mushroom and ourselves were both anticipating productive futures with record/song writing deals but the 1970s didn't quite work out that way.
I guess we were fairly 'cutting-edge' in 1969 but upstairs at Kimbells the dancing was just as it might have been ten years before as it was at Dorothy Whitbread s Dancing School in the city centre. The Oasis in North End offered a quartet and insisted collar and tie essential ; Lace appeared at the Tricorn Club; Sinah Warren offered a Ball and Buffet, while Ron Bennett, his band and Bill Cole were playing the dinner dance at the Queen s Hotel. On the folk scene, the Broadsiders sang in the 1970s at the Jug of Punch, while original British guitarist Bert Weedon starred in Aladdin at the King s Theatre.
One NYE gig I recall since then was with the Reds in 1984 at Portsmouth Rugby Club, organised by my pal Alec Adams (remember Alec?) but in more recent years my NYE music tends to be supplied by Jools Holland on the box. I guess that's the menu for tonight - at least I'll have a clear head in the morning.
Happy New Year folks!
Dave AllenPompey Pop 1/1/2021
I'm VERY sad to report that 2021 has opened with the death of my old friend MICK LEGG with whom I played in three consecutive bands from 1968-1971. He had been poorly for some time.
I first met Mick when he was playing bass guitar in one of Pompey's early 'psychedelic' bands Tangerine Slyde - I went with them
a couple of times to the famous Middle Earth Club in Covent Garden and in late 1968 we were playing together in the last incarnation of Harlem Speakeasy. That led to the formation of Rosemary - a very special experience for all us (1969-70) although ultimately disappointing when our first single "If" was pulled by a dispute between Warner Chappells publishers and the record company.
Mick and I then played together in Gilbey Twiss until 1971. Mick played in other bands locally before he moved to the Isle of Wight and continued to play - including a rock & roll covers band. Three years ago, he contributed some amusing interviews to Nigel Grundy's film of the Pompey scene "Cool Days & Groovy Nights".
RIP Mick - and thanks for the adventures
Dave Allen 12/1/2021
I was playing a game with myself recently, a variation on Desert Island Discs, where you can choose eight artists and have EVERYTHING they ever recorded loaded onto whichever device you prefer, which would then be on random selection, so you would have to be prepared to like - or at least put up with - whatever played next.
I started out with the lovely Sonny Boy Williamson (again) until I remembered all the tracks he recorded in the UK with the Yardbirds, Animals & Chris Barber - I can't be doing with most of those. The Beatles are out for a different reason - imagine a sequence of Bungalow Bill, Octopus's Garden, Savoy Truffle, Rocky Raccoon, Ob-La-Di, Maxwell's Silver Hammer and Yellow Submarine - as they said themselves 'It's All Too Much'.
JR would pick Bob Dylan of course, but might end up listening to loads of tracks from his dreadful Christmas album or the two that covered the Great American Songbook. Speaking of which, I'm pretty confident I could live with and love the complete Sarah Vaughan, while in the blues there are people like Robert Johnson who recorded relatively little, all very fine.
I'm not fishing in the 'classical' pond here but what about post-mid 1950s and the Rock & Roll revolution? From back then, Chuck Berry would be fine I think as long as you could turn down the volume on 'My Ding-a-Ling' and maybe Eddie Cochran (?). In the soulful section I'd be giving careful consideration to Marvin Gaye and Smokey, with Curtis Mayfield (Impressions and solo) certainly one of the eight. Miles Davis would be another for me while more recently I've never heard anything dodgy from the recordings of Massive Attack or Amy Winehouse.
But I wonder whether my strongest overall vote would be for David Bowie. There are one-or-two less than glorious moments around the very early days or Tin Machine but even that's OK. He's not my 'favourite' artist of all time but he might be the most consistently interesting, inventive and accomplished. Maybe (?)
Dave Allen 28/1/2021
Thursday 28 January 2021 and the first GIG date in this year's diary, Scarlet Town at the Barley Mow - also of course, sadly, it's the first cancellation - and I know already it won't be the last.
The black & white photo below is the earliest I have of me doing a gig - it's Harlem Speakeasy, Red Door Club, Copnor, in late 1967 or early 1968 - so 50+ years ago - and while there have been years here or there when I've not been in a 'regular' band, I've never gone a year without at least a gig or two - and in most years, many more.
The other two photos were both taken recently in one of the smaller venues at the Guildhall, one with Scarlet Town (my buddy Denis with whom I've played regularly since 1975) and one with the Southsea Skiffle Orchestra (and Roger with whom I also played in 1975; we re-united after many years apart!).
I played with both outfits in the first two months of 2020, but nothing since. I keep telling myself, and sometimes other people, that I'm missing it, that I wish I could be out there gigging again, but as the months roll by I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm kidding myself. I've always wondered when I might stop and why, and it might be that if the current situation persists, gigging will become something I used to do.
I guess partly it's because I've always been a bloke who sings with musicians, a bit of an entertainer maybe but in reality someone who relies on those real musicians to be a singer. And while I have been involved in creating songs, in writing, quite successfully at times, I haven't done it for years and I feel no need to take it up again.
I couldn't live without listening to music and I have loved the collective enterprise of making it with other people, but I don't make music at home, so for 11 months now I haven't been a musician. The truth is, my 'real' and lifelong 'creative' activities have been in writing and visual arts
I'm always writing, probably always will. I find it easy, I don't get 'blocks' (although I don't write 'imaginatively'), the problem if there is one, is taking it for granted. My visual work has taken various forms over the years and in recent years it's been back to painting, which never comes as easily as the writing but it keeps nagging away at me. It won't leave me alone.
So, tomorrow morning after a few weeks away, I'm picking up again at the Hotwalls Studio, locked away from the public but able to work on a new piece. But no gig tonight - and maybe, just maybe, no gigs to come?
Dave Allen 31-1-2021
Bit of an astonishing surprise this morning. I've written quite a lot about Rosemary in recent months following the deaths of John Lytle and Mick Legg, then today I have discovered that our single, "If" and "One Hand Clapping" has appeared on Youtube as an "Unknown Italian Psych/Folk/Acid" band. Well I guess I can't deny the last bit, but Italian?
I think this has to do with the fact we recorded it (Orange Studios London) for (Warner) Chappells with whom we had signed a songwriting deal. They planned to release it as our first single (April 1970) but it fell through and we split. Presumably a copy found its way to Italy for possible release?
I have a crap tape version of the A side "If" but I haven't heard the 'B' side "One Hand Clapping for over 50 years (I'm singing there with John doing the harmony). I guess it's not the 'smoothest' thing but thinking back to my post of two days ago, I'm still very proud to have been a part of all this - magical days.
ROSEMARY Part Two: 1/2/2021
A man said to the Buddha "I want Happiness" to which the Buddha replied, "Remove I, that is ego, and remove Want, that is desire, result: Happiness!"
I shared the You Tube link with you but kept a bit quiet about the fact I had been alerted to this by a couple in Italy who were selling the acetate on Ebay. Yesterday was the last day and someone told them it might be a group called Rosemary from Portsmouth (I wonder who spotted that?). They checked out various Pompey Pop websites, found my email address contacted me and at about 9.30 yesterday morning I set about bidding for it.
I'm hopeless buying stuff on sites like Ebay (never use Amazon either) but I bid $50 and led the race all day. The bidding ended at 9.46pm and one minute earlier I was still ahead and poised to up the bid. Then everything went barmy, a 'private' bid came in then someone else, then a figure of $168 and then everything shut down and I lost it. As it happens I'd have paid considerably more than that but ...
I find it odd to consider that someone out there somewhere owns a thing that would have been VERY precious to me and simply cannot mean the same to them. I was one of the writers of both sides (including all the lyrics), sang both sides and was playing in a band that for 18 months was one of the most important experiences of my life. But I didn't get it.
I was struck by a couple of ironies. The 'A' side "If" - especially the chorus - is topically anti-materialism ("... we're wasting time by claiming them as yours or mine") while the 'B' side includes the line "It's only me that's losing out".
So, after 51 years I've still never owned a studio copy of the two recorded songs that mean most to me in my life. But I have a lesson to learn which might end up being more valuable.
Dave Allen
February 17, 2021
The Kinks, Annie Lennox and Electric Light Orchestra
By Dave Allen Local music buff and regular at the Guildhall
After re-building, the Guildhall re-opened in June 1959 with concerts of classical music and top British Trad Jazz bands. Exactly ten years later, in June 1969 the main events saw visits by Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. It was a very different world as the swinging sixties drew to a conclusion.
In early January 1970, Led Zeppelin were back to open new decade. Through the 1960s, Guildhall gigs had presented a broad range of genres and stars, reflecting the extraordinary variety of music in pop s early years following the rock & roll revolution of the mid 1950s. During that decade many major names in popular music appeared at the venue mostly in concert and quite often playing two houses in an evening. There were acts from both sides of the Atlantic including some original rock & rollers, modern and traditional jazz, folk and blues acts, beat groups, pop packages, light entertainers and historic names such as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, the Supremes, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. There was a remarkable bill in November 1967 with Pink Floyd, the Move and the Jimi Hendrix Experience topping the bill.
In the early years even the most modern acts used fairly small amplification the Beatles famously toured in 1963 with 50-watt Vox guitar amplifiers, and groups were often required to use the house PA system designed principally for civic speeches. In the autumn of 1965 the local newspaper reported that some groups were dissatisfied with that sound, and increasingly they began touring with their own larger PA systems, while guitar amplifiers became more powerful. This was more than simply a matter of clarity or volume, it allowed groups like the Who, Yardbirds and then Jimi Hendrix to use the amplification as an extra instrument their amplifiers were doing more than amplifying the guitars, as distortion, sustain and feedback became a part of their sound.
Not everyone went down that path of course the Guildhall still presented mainstream pop acts or modern jazz concerts but popular music was changing rapidly. When the Hendrix package show arrived in late 1967, Jimi, Pink Floyd (and the Move) had already enjoyed hit singles and appeared on BBC TV s Top of the Pops but they were bands (no longer groups ) that became known more for their albums as the LP format became increasingly important for a certain audience. More and more acts followed the Beatles lead in writing their own material and they often preferred to play just one show a night, with longer sets than on a two-house package tour.
Although he led an English band, Jimi Hendrix was one of many Black American headliners who played the Guildhall in the 1960s in addition to those above they included Miles Davis, Muddy Waters, Nina Simone, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, Stevie Wonder and in 1969 a number of major blues names in the second British Blues Boom , including BB King and John Lee Hooker. But by 1970 concerts were narrowing in focus around the newer and largely white rock acts, even where the roots of acts like Led Zeppelin, John Mayall, and Free all visitors in 1970 were firmly in the blues. When John Lee Hooker returned in 1971 it was as a support act to Mungo Jerry.
There were far fewer jazz gigs too. Early in 1970 Johnny Dankworth came with Cleo Laine and there were one or two visits by American singers whose Easy Listening style might occasionally hint at a jazz influence; for example Jack Jones in April 1972 and Johnny Mathis six years later. Other more mainstream popular acts included Val Doonican, Gene Pitney and Leo Sayer but these were rare, and apart from T Rex, and Olivia Newton-John, few of the bigger 1970s pop names such as Bay City Rollers, ABBA, Mud, New Seekers, Showaddywaddy, Queen, or Sweet came to the Guildhall, although some, including Bowie and Slade appeared elsewhere in the city. One man on the way to super star status who did come was Elton John, just a few years after he d depped briefly with Portsmouth s hitmakers Simon Dupree & the Big Sound when their keyboard player was taken ill on a Scottish tour. The Dupree boys were now a Prog outfit Gentle Giant and they played their home Guildhall in 1974 and 1975. Today they are on the venue s Wall of Fame .
Gentle Giant
While the range of acts that appeared at the Guildhall in the 1960s attracted a broad variety of audiences, in the following decade, many of the shows attracted a more specific following perhaps resembling those who watched BBC2s new rock programme The Old Grey Whistle Test or listened to John Peel s radio shows. That local audience was enhanced partly by the growing number of students in Portsmouth (with its new Polytechnic) as a result of the gradual expansion of Higher Education in the UK.
Beyond rock, perhaps the most regular style was on that borderline between what some contemporary audiences considered folk or folk-rock, and singer-songwriters. Traditional folk acts were rarely big enough to fill the Guildhall although there were still a number of active local clubs, but in the bigger concert venue, the more acoustic visitors to Portsmouth began in 1970 with individual concerts featuring the Strawbs, Ralph McTell, Al Stewart and Pentangle and in following years, the Spinners, the Incredible String Band, Americans Loudon Wainwright and Tom Paxton last seen in these parts at the 1969 IOW Festival Roy Harper, Fairport Convention, Lindisfarne, Steeleye Span, John Martyn, the return of the Strawbs, Ralph McTell and Pentangle and then in 1976 the last and perhaps biggest of them all, Leonard Cohen. From that point the contemporary bands pretty much dominated the venue.
In the first couple of years of the decade launched by Led Zeppelin, came local favourites Family, plus Traffic, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Free, Deep Purple, Electric Light Orchestra, American Leon Russell, Groundhogs, Mott the Hoople and Genesis initially as support to Van der Graf Generator King Crimson and Soft Machine. Then followed an historically significant evening on 21 January 1972 when Pink Floyd arrived again, as headliners. Their tour had begun the previous evening in Brighton and they were planning to perform the whole of their planned next album each night, but when technical problems prevented that along the coast, Portsmouth Guildhall was the first venue ever to hear Dark Side of the Moon from start to finish.
After this the top rock acts mostly from the UK kept arriving, with Procul Harum followed by Black Sabbath, Status Quo, Wishbone Ash, Jethro Tull, Curved Air, Electric Light Orchestra, Hawkwind, Yes, Rory Gallagher, Bad Company, Humble Pie and others, many returning for a second and even third appearance. In the summer of 1974 The Who gave a special free concert for all the local extras who appeared in Ken Russell s film of their rock opera Tommy, shot almost entirely around the city.
Not all the visitors were from the UK; Dutch band Golden Earring and Americans Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band both appeared in autumn 1975, Germany s Tangerine Dream came 12 months later and Americans Lynyrd Skynyrd and Focus (Holland) in early 1977. Also in the mid-1970s, new visitors included the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Gong 10 CC, Be Bop Deluxe, AC DC (supporting back Street Crawler), Thin Lizzy, Man, Uriah Heep and the Ian Gillan Band. But in 1976 and 1977 a new audience and a new sound came to challenge the dominant progressive and heavy rock sounds. Many of the early punk gigs in the city were elsewhere, notably perhaps Clarence Pier, but there was a broader stylistic shift often called New Wave and a number of those exponents began to appear at the Guildhall.
The first in March 1977 were the briefly fashionable, Graham Parker & the Rumour, then in October the original Dr Feelgood came, supported by Mink De Ville. The following year another double bill brought Eddie & the Hot Rods and Squeeze, the Hot Rods returned for the first Guildhall gig by Elvis Costello & the Attractions , and through 1978 came Ian Dury & the Blockheads, Blondie, the Buzzcocks and the Jam plus the Dickies. Some of the older acts came from time-to-time; Manfred Mann s Earth Band, Judas Priest and at the start of 1979 Van Morrison and the Hollies, but the new bands continued to bring in the younger audience with the Jam returning in June 1979 and selecting local band The Time as their support. Other visitors were the Pretenders, the Vapors, Annie Lennox & Dave Stewart in the Tourists, and in July 1979, the American punk (ish) band the Tubes. They had originally been scheduled to play on 11 November 1977 but after City Councillors watched them at another gig they were banned from the Guildhall because it was Remembrance Sunday.
As the decade reached its end there were two particularly interesting gigs. The first which brought a ska influence to contemporary UK music was the now historic first Two-Tone tour of The Specials, Madness and Selecter. Then the 1970s ended with another of those rare things, a home grown national star, as Joe Jackson appeared just a few days before Christmas in the year of his big cross-Atlantic hit Is She Really Going Out With Him .
Madness
Dave Allen Birdcage Boys Modern Men. 22/2/2021
Most 1960s teenagers will remember radio shows like 'Saturday Club' or the Pirate Stations but I wonder how many Birdcage (& Rendezvous) Boys (& Girls) remember a Saturday night show on the Light Programme called 'Jazz Beat'? Many club favourites played 'live' sets on there, starting on the first day of January 1966. The full list (compere George Melly) was
1.1.1966: Georgie Fame + Brian Auger Trinity
8.1.1966: The Art Woods + Mike Cotton Sound
15.1.1966: Chris Farlowe & Thunderbirds + Mark Leeman Five
22.1.1966: Manfred Mann + Graham Bond Organisation
29.1.1966: Herbie Goins & Nightimers + Dave Davani Five
5.2.1966 Zoot Money s Big Roll Band + Pete Bardens Quartet
12.2.1966: John Mayall s Bluesbreakers + Dickie Pride & Sidewinders
19.2.1966: Manfred Mann + Bobby Breen & Cole Richards Combo
And that was it - the R&B acts finished 55 years ago this past weekend, and it shifted to Trad Jazz apart from one later show with Jimmy Witherspoon & Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. But it was good while it lasted.
Dave Allen 25/2/2021
I mentioned that Bessie Smith book. It's a bit of a golden period for some of the greatest women blues & jazz singers right now:
'Ma Rainey s Black Bottom (movie of stage play on Netflix)
The United States vs Billie Holiday (movie on Sky Premiere from Friday)
Radio 4 s Book the Week Jackie Smith reading from her book about Bessie Smith.
Over the years people have written books about the British blues scene (Korner to the Stones to Mayall & Clapton etc) but I don't think anyone has ever written about the changes in taste among British blues and (vocal?) jazz fans with regard to the American 'originals'.
I guess I'm one of the last generation who encountered the blues originally as partly 1950s 'Chicago' style (which remained popular over here) but also through those older styles - the acoustic blues of (in particular) Broonzy, Lightnin' Hopkins or Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee or the jazz-oriented sound of Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and the other great women of the 1920s and beyond (Victoria Spivey even toured here around 1963?).
On the folk and jazz scenes there were British acts that played that stuff (George Melly loved singing Bessie Smith) but it became rather unfashionable, while the newer electric guitarists (plus Robert Johnson) rather 'took over' (the three Kings, Buddy Guy etc.).
The fashions have shifted again a few times since then but it's rather nice to see those three great women getting some attention and maybe a new younger audience. The best music never dies.
Dave Allen 2/3/2021
I was reading an interview with Charles Hazlewood a couple of weeks back. He's an all-round 'proper' music man, a conductor, composer, arranger, done lots of interesting things integrating 'disabled' and non musicians. The interview concluded with the question "What are you listening to (now)"?
His answer intrigued me because he said "Krautrock" (Faust) and then added "the English band Japan".
I was never very fond of all that early 1980s New Romantic stuff EXCEPT for Japan who I thought rather quickly became terrific - especially their album 'Gentlemen Take Polaroids' (check out 'Swing' or maybe 'Methods of Dance'). I saw them back then at the Guildhall and liked them loads. I still listen to them regularly today, so this was a fascinating surprise.
Then last night Mrs A & I were watching a slightly cute ITV detective thing called 'McDonald & Dodds' set today in Bath and they kept mentioning Japan - and played their big record "Ghosts". It seemed weird - it's a sign I thought, a coincidence!
I think at least one guy in the band Mick Karn who did interesting things later is dead now, but I have kept buying the solo albums by the singer David Sylvian - they are really interesting too.
Maybe Japan are poised for a cult revival? If you don't remember them have a listen maybe - they were incidentally astonishingly pretty!
Dave Allen 5/4/2021
Do you remember the Kinks? They were pretty good huh? Nice songs by Ray Davies. Then in the early 1970s (and for decades after) there was King Crimson, while Kiss looked better than they sounded and Kraftwerk came a bit later but I'm not sure they were real people. Were there any punk bands beginning with K (The Klash maybe)?
In the past 20 or so years however there were suddenly lots of bands beginning with K. I wonder why that would be? There were the Killers, Keane, Kaizer Chiefs, Kula Shaker, Korn, Kasabian etc. I'm not sure I care much for any of them, but I've just read something about the the Kings of Leon which intrigued me.
Apparently (and I quote from the Guardian today) they "are releasing their new album as a non-fungible token" otherwise helpfully abbreviated as a NFT.
Now I can recall quite a lot about the costs of records - 6/8d in pre-decimal days for a single, 21 shillings for a Pye Golden Guinea album; 32/6d for a full price album - and on and on. I tend to leave price stickers on LP covers and CDs so I can remind myself occasionally of the vast fortune I've invested since I started purchasing recordings back around 1960.
But now, at my great age, I must admit defeat. "A non-fungible token (NFT)?"
Not so much NFT as WTF? as they tend to say these days.
Incidentally in the mid-1970s I played very briefly in a student 'blues' band called Kindhearted Women. Didn't last long, no photos or recordings, but I did like the name.
Dave Allen 9/3/2021
I've just learned of the death a few days ago of Chris Barber. I'm not sure whether younger people would know of him and even for my generation there's a sense in which he was mostly part of the trio of 'Trad jazz' guys (Barber, Ball & Bilk) who had brief commercial success around 1960 before the Beat groups knocked them out.
It didn't stop him continuing to play however and he was so much more than that. He played back in the early 1950s along with Ken Colyer and from their two bands came the origins of the Skiffle movement of the mid-1950s - his band included the banjo/guitar star of Skiffle Lonnie Donegan and skiffle was the root of most British rock.
But Chris Barber was also a key figure in bringing visiting American blues singers to Britain, touring with the likes of Muddy Waters as early as 1958, plus Broonzy, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Howlin' Wolf.
He was involved in the setting up of Soho's Marquee Club, initially for Jazz and then the R&B boom of 1963/4 - and there was also the first British jazz, blues and rock Festivals through the 1960s at Richmond, then Windsor (now Reading). br>
On top of all that, his band was only the second act to appear at the rebuilt Portsmouth Guildhall in June 1959 - the first night was a classical concert.
RIP and thank you.
Dave Allen 21/3/2021
Music has always been a big deal to me. Through the fabulously swinging sixties I was pretty much in the know, hip to what was groovy, although for much of my life I've lived rather more in a musical past. I don't mean endlessly playing Sgt Pepper or Donovan's Greatest Hits (!!??) I mean stuff that was made before I was born, or before I found out what's happening - Robert Johnson, Ella Fitzgerald, Kind of Blue, the Mississippi Sheiks (etc).
After the 1960s I gave up on a lot of popular music and generally took refuge in jazz and blues. I didn't like much 1970s music, whether it was 'Glam', 'Prog', Abba, 'Heavy' anything, or the Osmonds (etc) - Bowie was very fine, Roxy Music good, Steely Dan fine, but even Punk - I got the spirit and the why completely, but I was too old. I've never listened to much of it on a regular basis (although the Ramones make me laugh). I think it was best live.
But as I mentioned, on Friday I spent the day listening to Funk and Disco (with a dash of reggae) and that's different, because it's music that WAS around when I was, and I missed it, simply because I ignored it. I should have spent more time out dancing I guess.
I had a way in, partly through the work of jazz guys like Miles or Herbie Hancock and partly through some of the people I listened to in the Birdcage days. I'd bought James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and Impressions (Curtis Mayfield) records in the mid-1960s and what they recorded in the 1970s was really interesting, but it took me years to join up all the dots.
It first made a real impression on me around 1980 when 'between meaningful relationships' I went out clubbing, dressed up, drinking, dancing ... (hard to imagine?). It didn't last long but the music has. My Top Three (any order): "Stomp" by the Brothers Johnson; "And the Beat Goes On" by the Whispers, and "Hard Work" by John Handy.
"Everybody Take It To The Top ..."
Dave Allen 23/3/2021
Here's a list of interesting musicians:
Dizzy Gillespie; Duke Ellington; Ray Charles; John Lee Hooker; The Supremes; Sarah Vaughan; Smokey Robinson & the Miracles; Modern Jazz Quartet; BB King; Nina Simone; Oscar Peterson; Rev Gary Davis; Stevie Wonder; Jimi Hendrix; Miles Davis; Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee; Louis Armstrong, Martha & the Vandellas; Ella Fitzgerald; Count Basie; Chubby Checker; Coleman Hawkins; Stevie Wonder; Cannonball Adderley; Louis Jordan; Shirley Bassey; Sister Rosetta Tharpe; Josh White; and Albert King.
Here's a second list:
Cleo Laine; John Lee Hooker; Johnny Mathis; Boney M; Selecter; the Specials.
The first list consists of black artists who appeared at Portsmouth Guildhall in the 1960s (I haven't even started on the Birdcage and other clubs). The second list are the black artists I've managed to discover who played there in the 1970s. There might be more but I haven't found any and I'm not sure any were playing live in clubs in that decade, although there was plenty of black music to dance to in the discos.
There's quite a difference huh?
Dave Allen 25/3/2021
A follow-up to my Guildhall lists
My swinging sixties were my teenage years - and therefore in much of music, the arts and culture, my formative years. My 13th birthday in October 1962 coincided with the release of the Beatles' first single, and I left my teens as a professional musician, a couple of months before 1970 arrived.
I might draw a so-called 'politically correct' conclusion from those lists of Black acts but here at least that's not my intention. To the 1960s list I might add all those wonderful Black artists that came to the Birdcage, Kimbells, the Rendezvous etc - Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, Wilson Pickett, Ike & Tina Turner, Jimmy James & the Vagabonds, Geno, Herbie Goins, the Drifters and so on.
I might also add LOADS of white jazz, blues and rhythm & blues acts playing music rooted in the USA who came here - Ronnie Scott, Georgie Fame & Blue Flames, Tubby Hayes, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Long John Baldry, Cream, Graham Bond Organisation etc.
My point is a fairly simple one. My 1960s, my teenage years were unbelievably ENRICHED by encountering music from other places and/or times. The same thing is true is a host of stunning European film-making, painting and art from the USA and all kinds of other activities and practices.
I doubt whether that was ever the case with previous generations, particularly 'ordinary' people - to a large extent my dad, a Pompey bloke born in 1916, grew up liking white British culture; music, painting, films etc., and my generation out in the provinces didn't - or at least we didn't have to.
I think at that age we took it for granted but having spent the 50 years since then working with young people, I reckon we were very lucky - compare that 1960s list with what I could find of the 1970s, where the main acts at the Guildhall were usually our white British contemporaries (Led Zep, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Free, ELP, T Rex, Status Quo, Elton John etc). If the people singing to you are essentially talented versions of you, maybe you don't travel so far?
The 1960s transformed my life (although Pompey were a bit boring at Fratton Park).
Dave Allen 3/4/2021
Meanwhile ... what were the 'girls' up to? There is a stereotypical depiction of the '60s which shows girls screaming at groups like the Beatles, and musically most of the active participants were singers, although there were notable exceptions like jazz saxophonists Kathy Stobart and Barbara Thompson. The folk scene too included many women performers some of whom were also players but there were few women pop group members back then (Honey, drummer of the Honeycombs and Megan, bass guitar, the Applejacks)
Around Pompey it was much the same. Audrey Jeans was a singer and all-round entertainer in the 1950s & 1960s and in that latter decade, the For-Tunes (Josie Franklin) and the Furys (Ann ???) both had 'girl' singers, fronting the 'boys' on their guitars and drums, for a while. In the photo of Frank Kelly & the Hunters (previous post) is guitarist Tony Hutchins, and pre-Hunters, he and his sister Gill both played guitars in Frank's previous backing group, the Crestas. Gill continued playing for many years in the Hampshire Guitar Orchestra.
But in many respects my favourite tale from way back is of a vocal trio that began as the Liddell Sisters who grew up around Commercial Road. In the late 1950s they were a mime act, wearing appropriate costumes and miming to records, but once told that they must sing to go further they worked with a very well-known local blind pianist Bill Cole, and became in the early 1960s, something like Pompey's equivalent of the Beverley Sisters.
Sadly, Anita, Pearl and Vilma never got to record, so we can only guess at their sound, but we know that they were in considerable demand across the country and abroad. They did TV shows, Summer Seasons and a number of package tours, appearing with stars like Adam Faith, Bobby Vee, Helen Shapiro, Cliff Richard, Ken Dodd, Joe Brown, Matt Monro, Lonnie Donegan, and Tommy Steele - and on the package tour with Helen Shapiro, they shared the bill with Danny Williams ("Moon River") and an up-and-coming quartet from Liverpool - at least until their new single "Please, Please Me" hit the charts, and they were replaced by Jet Harris & Tony Meehan.
The Honeys retired in the mid 1960s, but in 2009 it was a delight to welcome all three to my Theatre Royal talk where they were given a terrific reception. Sadly, Anita died a couple of years ago but I know that local recognition through the Pompey Pop project meant a great deal to them.
Dave Allen 4/4/2021
Thank you to everyone who contributed significantly to my education on yesterday's post - book and albums on order now, so I shall learn more. I'm still intrigued to discover anything I can about how and where Pompey people got to hear that stuff in a musical environment dominated by white rock.
My fondness for some music over others is dependent mainly and simply on liking it, but my pleasure is usually enhanced (occasionally diminished) by understanding the context. I've devoted many decades of my life to studying the blues (mostly 1920 - 1970) as well as listening to it, which helped me to understand and enjoy what I was hearing, and in a different way I will always treasure the whole 1960s Mod scene, the whole lifestyle, with its wonderful Black American music - and that wasn't history, that was living it in the moment
When it comes to that Hippie shit, San Francisco in the mid/late 1960s fascinated me far more than most English stuff because the city is and was previously such a creative centre for writing, music etc. There was no 'lifestyle' link for Funk however, I got into it in a general way via jazz - Miles, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report etc - and then came my brief and somewhat unhappy disco years in the late 1970s, rescued by an excess of alcohol and dancing (crap, but I love it) as the beat went on. But I don't KNOW much about funk - I could write a book about Sleepy John Estes but very little about Funk.
I think being able to hear the specifics of BritFunk around the late 1970s and understanding the context, will make more sense for me and probably enrich the listening as I begin to discover what was happening - although I start from the advantage of liking it a lot.
Of course the key to all that stuff (and more) is that apart from the smoky acid haze of 1967/1970 and the wonders of Grateful Dead, Country Joe & the Fish and Jefferson Airplane, it's all Black and mostly American. But there was always Jamaica too, and now there's BritFunk.
So thanks again for my education.
Dave Allen Pompey Pop 4/4/2021
I am very sorry to report the recent death of David Yearley. In the early/mid 1960s he played bass guitar and flute in one of Pompey's leading R&B bands, the Sons of Man - it was rumoured after one support gig to the original Moody Blues (Go Now) at the Rendezvous Club (Kingston Rd) he talked to Ray Thomas about his flute-playing and when next in Portsmouth, Thomas was playing flute with the Moody Blues.
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In the late 1960s, the Sons of Man reformed as Aubrey Small, made an album, were popular with Radio 1 DJ Bob Harris, and became something of a cult act. A few years ago, they re-formed when 'Record Collector' magazine got them to record a new album of original material and they played locally at various venues - I last saw them maybe three years ago at Victorious.
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RIP David - and thank you.
Dave Allen 4/4/2021
I have a tale or two about David Yearley which begins in October 1964, 57 years ago, in the Oddfellows Hall, Kingston Road, the final home of the jazz and (by then) R&B Club, the Rendezvous.
It was my first visit to the club, the original Moody Blues were playing there, around the time they released 'Go Now' and David was a member of one of the regular local support bands at the club, the Sons of Man, with a classic R&B repertoire of that period. David was the bass guitarist in the five-piece band but he also doubled on flute and there is a tale that Ray Thomas the Moody Blues 'part-time' singer picked David's brains and fairly soon was playing flute in the Moodies.
Sons of Man split and David pursued a career as an architect but in the late 1960s, the members of the band re-formed as Aubrey Small, made an album, were popular with Radio 1 DJ Bob Harris, and became something of a cult act. A few years ago, they got together again when 'Record Collector' magazine got them to record a new album of original material and they played locally at various venues - I last saw them maybe three years ago at Victorious.
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A few years ago, David his wife Mary and I were approaching retirement in the same creative arts Faculty at the University and after we finished, all three of us found time to paint and make other art works. David and Mary were leading figures in a Gosport artists collective, Peninsular Artists and they invited me to give a talk to their group and then to exhibit with them in Gosport as an Associate Member.
We weren't close buddies but every now and then over those 50+ years we'd meet in these musical, university or arts contexts - and then by chance a couple of years ago we both became local patients of the NHS, with varieties of cancer. I've told how I got a positive result about 12 months ago, and last I heard David was much the same, but sadly it was not to be. I am very sorry to report that after a short recurrence of the illness he died last week.
My thoughts go to his music-making pals, especially Rod Taylor and Alan Christmas of both bands, who became friends of mine over the years, and to Mary. David was a delightful man and a fine musician and I'm very glad to have known him.
RIP
Dave Allen
1/6/2021
I was chatting here yesterday about a Buffy Sainte Marie gig at the Guildhall in 1965 where she appeared with Rev Gary Davis and Josh White, two black guitarists/singers who had first recorded between the wars and are often described as 'blues' singers. They both sang and recorded blues although Davis was more ragtime & gospel and by the time he started coming to Europe post-war, White was more broadly a singer of coffee house folk songs - often to a white audience.
I've been doing some digging around about black performers who came to Portsmouth way back and following the Josh White trail came across this fascinating entry in 'Radio Times' from Friday 13 January 1956 on the Home Service (now Radio 4)
Under the illustration, it says "Negro Spirituals: At 8.0 Josh White sings songs in which the Negro expressed his faith". The programme information shows White with Jack Fallon on string bass and the George Mitchell Choir. The use of the language of the time is interesting 65 years on but so too the presence of George Mitchell since it was his singers who soon became the Black & White Minstrel Show on BBC TV.
In his early days at BBC Radio, the producer Charles Chilton presented a show called 'Swing Time' and another, 'Radio Rhythm Club'.
I love the illustration - but in almost every respect, subject matter, language, graphics, it's a different world now.
Dave Allen 3/6/2021
I'm still in two bands although neither the Southsea Skiffle Orchestra nor Scarlet Town have done a gig in more than 15 months (things are looming now).
My old buddy Denis Reeve-Baker is in both bands, indeed Scarlet Town is essentially his project. We've been playing in a number of bands together since 1975 when we were at college together. Back in those days we played occasionally with a fellow student, drummer Paul Hookham - with whom we have reunited as the drummer of Scarlet Town.
Around 1980 the three of us were together in an intriguing, London-based and very big R&B/soul/ rock & roll band with another drummer Andrew Ranken, who then sang great rock & roll before going off to join a nice little pop group called the Pogues. One of our posher gigs was on the South Bank to an audience including Prince Charles and a lady called Diana.
Paul then had an interesting 1980s playing at times in the Wooden Tops, the Lemons and the Redskins, the fascinating 'left wing' skinhead band who are featured in the current edition of Mojo magazine.
Nice:
Dave Allen 19/6/2021
The road outside my house is too narrow for a car and a bike. I cycle a lot around the city and on Thursday morning I was off to the Library when I heard a car approaching - I braked to let the car pass, pressed the front brake too hard, went over the handlebars and ended up in a pile with the bike on top of me!
The only serious damage was to my self-esteem but boy am I stiff - too stiff to dance, even on a Friday night. There is an irony there because I was going to look up the reports of the Motown Revue that came to Portsmouth in April 1965 - stimulated by a brand new project by that fine chronicler of all things Mod and Mod-related Paul Anderson - about which more later.
That Motown tour finished its run in Pompey but as elsewhere it suffered from disappointing audience numbers - it became known as the 'Ghost Tour'. Why would that be? Well I discovered in the following Thursday's 'Evening News' that Spinner, in his weekly 'pop column' was reporting that it was not the only recent package tour to suffer nationwide - a couple of others headed by PJ Proby and Chuck Berry, which didn't come here, suffered similar problems. Spinner, rightly, predicted the demise of these tours - they barely lasted into the 1970s.
One reason, different from today, is that they did two houses (6.30 & 8.50) so you needed 4,000 punters to sell out. A couple of months later the local Mod contingent packed the Savoy to see the Who, but that was only 1,000 for the whole night.
Another issue was whether the soul/Motown fans - then in its early stages of excitement, outside London - wanted to sit still all night and watch the best dance music performed to them. Consider the options: on the previous Thursday the recently opened Birdcage (Kimbells version) presented Chris Farlowe & the Thunderbirds and Brian Auger Trinity in a double bill, while the still popular Rendezvous Club had the Moody Blues, recent chart toppers with "Go Now", on Saturday night. Sunday was probably quiet but the Hollies had been at the Savoy on Friday, so three dance nights out of the previous four.
One idea of the promoters was to add Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames to the tour, to attract their British following, but they had played a weekly residency at Kimbells the previous year and had been at the Rendezvous in mid-February, just six weeks earlier, so that wouldn't necessarily work here .
Spinner reckoned the show was "superb" and "had everything: professionalism, first class presentation building to an intense climax". And although the tour was not a huge financial success it led to a one-hour 'Ready Steady Go!' special with the Temptations added to the bill and by the end of 1965 out in the provinces, Motown and Soul were replacing the older blues and guitar/harmonica R&B in many people's affections. Especially the dancers'.
Dave Allen 23/6/2021
Some bits & pieces from my post below:
The earliest record I can find of a major black star performing in Portsmouth is PAUL ROBESON, the son of a slave and a singer, actor, poet, activist. He came first to rehearse a touring play at the King's Theatre in 1922 and stayed in 'digs' in Southsea. He returned in 1930 for a concert on South Parade Pier, then in April 1960 he appeared at the Guildhall, where his repertoire covered a variety of styles, including Americana, popular standards, classical music, European folk songs, political songs, poetry and spoken excerpts from plays.
The singer ADELAIDE HALL appeared at the Theatre Royal in 1952. She moved to Paris from the USA in 1935 and then to Britain in 1938. In America she had recorded with Fats Waller and most famously with Duke Ellington on Creole Love Call and other sides. FATS WALLER meanwhile played a week in Variety at the Hippodrome (Guildhall Square) in May 1939. The building was demolished in a bombing raid two years later - it's Sainsbury's now. Fats Waller was a 'stride' pianist, a style that influenced DUKE ELLINGTON who appeared at Portsmouth Guildhall in February 1967. During the show the 'Duke' played a light-hearted impersonation of one of the original 'stride' players Willie 'the Lion' Smith.
The Beatles' first album included a track "Anna", the Rolling Stones released "You Better Move On" on an EP and Johnny Kidd & the Pirates released a 45 rpm single "Shot of Rhythm & Blues". They were all covers of recordings by ARTHUR ALEXANDER who appeared at Eastney's Birdcage Club in April 1966.
Dave Allen 1/7/2021
I mentioned another book. Around twenty years ago when chatting to people at the City Museum and/or Library I would ask why there were quite a number of social and cultural histories of 20th century Portsmouth, which described (for example) Southsea's tourism business and the entertainment linked to it but hardly ever paid serious attention to the music/fashion 'revolution' that happened across the country from the mid-1950s, through the 'swinging' sixties and beyond.
These were histories written by 'proper' archivists and academics so I didn't get why they would ignore something so significant in so many lives. I suspected a certain cultural snobbery but the answer was always that these were archival researchers and there were no archives.
I wasn't convinced but figured there was a simple(?) answer - create an Archive. The City Museum helped greatly in 2003 with an oral history project published, and still available as "Singing Out" and I contributed to that along with my pal Mick Cooper. Shortly after we met in the Library where we were both researching histories of local popular music in the film archives of 'The Evening News' which are full of great information.
The consequence of all that has been a series of talks, blogs, websites and publications all of them documenting an expanding history of popular music locally. In some cases Mick and I have joined forces, publishing the two editions of "Pompey Pop Pix" and his website is full of fascinating stuff.
I like all this online stuff because people can contribute but the thing with books is that barring some global catastrophe (in which case none of it matters), books survive. I have books about Hampshire cricket for example well over 100 years old. I like books.
So my next one will be "Black, White & the Blues: Jazz & Blues, Soul & Ska in Post-War Portsmouth" and will document the amazing black artists that visited Portsmouth from 1945-1970 (with a nod to Paul Robeson and Fats Waller in the 1930s) examining also the impact they had on British musicians, nationally and locally. Chapter one then begins with Louis Armstrong in 1962 at the Guildhall but traces him back to New Orleans 40+ years earlier and how that music influenced the British jazz revival of the 1940s & 1950s.
Every now and then I'll post something here about other chapters, taking us through Ellington, Muddy Waters, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, ray Charles, Motown, Wilson Pickett, Prince Buster up to Jimi Hendrix in 1967. Incidentally "the Blues" in the title has of course a double meaning since it refers not only to the music but also the city of Portsmouth.
Dave Allen 20/7/2021
OK, back to the book where I've so far mentioned visits to Portsmouth by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and other inter-war black American jazz stars - plus Muddy Waters.
The roots of jazz lie broadly in ragtime, the blues and the church which has always figured prominently in the lives of black generations - there was an article in last Sunday's Observer about the Christian faith of some of the young black players in the England football side. Back in the 1960s when the latest groovy white 'pop' acts (Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Who, KInks etc) ignored the Christmas market most of the major black artists made seasonal records (Motown, Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson, the Crystals, Ronettes, James Brown, Ray Charles etc).
The church was important partly in that it offered great songs, partly the prospect of a better life to come and also that the songs contained messages of liberation in the here-and-now - think of Moses leading his people out of captivity and then fast forward to one of the most powerfully gospel-influenced soul acts, Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions ("People Get Ready", "Meeting Over Yonder", We're a Winner", "Amen" etc).
In the post-war years some notable gospel performers 'crossed-over' to popular, often white, audiences and in the case of Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, the Staple Singers and others, from gospel into secular recordings. Among those who continued to perform gospel songs to festival and concert audiences were of course Mahalia Jackson and also two who came to Portsmouth Guildhall: Sister Rosetta Tharpe who came to Britain a number of times and to Pompey twice, first with the Chris Barber Band, then on the 1964 Blues and Gospel Train with Muddy Waters and also Rev Gary Davis who played guitar and sounded like a rough-voiced Mississippi blues man but mostly sang religious songs and was from the east coast. He came back to Portsmouth the following year on a bill with native American Buffy Sainte Marie and Josh White who had once recorded as The Singing Christian.
Here is Sister Rosetta Tharpe about a week after the Pompey gig in 1964, on an ITV programme shot near Manchester, looking immaculate, playing a white rock & roll solid-bodied electric guitar and singing "Didn't It Rain" (it was). She is introduced by New Orleans pianist Cousin Joe Pleasant.
Dave Allen 25/7/2021
Louis Jordan was described by the American Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as "The Father of Rhythm & Blues" and "The Grandfather of Rock 'n' Roll". One of his 'Grandchildren' then was Little Richard who came to Portsmouth in November 1966, ten years after he first appeared in the British top thirty with Rip It Up .
A few months later, in February 1957, he reached number three with Long Tall Sally an early feature in the Beatles set, and the title track of their fifth EP. Little Richard was perhaps the wildest of the early rock & rollers, toning down the original gay sex lyrics of his third British hit, Tutti Frutti with its the immortal opening line Awop Bop Aloo Bop Alop Bam Boom . In 2007, Mojo magazine placed the song at number one in their feature, "The Top 100 Records That Changed the World".
The Beatles also covered that song but while their guitar-based line-up echoed many early, mostly white, rock & rollers like Bill Haley, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly, who sang and played guitar, Little Richard was a pianist with a band that featured saxophones more obviously in the style of the post-war black rhythm & blues bands, like Louis Jordan s.
Little Richard s live performance can be seen to good effect in the film The Girl Can t Help It in which he sang the title track a recording that reached the British top ten in March 1957, but shortly after he turned his back on these songs and extravagant performances, becoming a preacher, which musically at least fitted with his gospel roots.
Little Richard returned to rock & roll music in the 1960s and gave a thrilling, memorable performance in Portsmouth s crowded Birdcage Club where the usual mod audience was pushed to the edges by the local Teddy Boys who crowded to the front of the stage
Dave Allen 13/11/2021
When I published that Jazz & Blues book earlier in the year I told myself that would be it for the writing, nothing much more to say about Pompey music or Hampshire cricket after about a dozen books, and I was keen to spend more time on the painting.
The music has been very odd over the past 18+ months with no gigs until very recently, although the Skiffle bunch and Scarlet Town are back out there now. The Skiffle seems to have picked up where it left off but Scarlet Town have done a couple of gigs that I found quite tough. We've been rehearsing some special stuff for the Dylan/Dead weekend and probably needed to check out some of the older songs too. The Barley Mow gig was strange because most of the tables were reserved and I spent the evening singing to a Birthday party who chattered throughout. The folks that came to see us were mostly away in the corner or on the edge. The Guildhall was ok this week but a bit of a struggle for us - a gig of two halves that got going eventually, but take away friends and neighbours and fewer than 10 people came to see us.
I don't mind that, people can exercise their choice and nobody is obliged to listen to us - but if they don't want to, there's no point for me. I'm not a real musician, I'm a singer and entertainer performing to audiences with real musicians. Either there are gigs and interested audiences or there aren't.
So I was in a bit of a melancholy mood yesterday morning when I went as usual to the Hotwalls Studio. But I love it, especially starting the day with breakfast at 8am and then getting to grips with the materials for the day. I managed to complete the reworking of a somewhat 'wild', large canvas which felt good until I was visited in the afternoon by a couple of artists from other studios and learned that our leases are up next July and it appears won't be renewed.
So I begin to think that in my seventies a significant phase of my life might be drawing to a close and it 'feels' premature. I don't have the energy (or the hearing, eyes and teeth) I once had, but I'm not ready yet for the Care Home. The challenge I guess is to figure what it might all mean if things start to disappear.
(I don't fancy a cruise, thanks!)
Dave Allen 15/11/2021
I often meet up with my friend Colin Wilkinson at the Guildhall Skiffle gigs (next one tomorrow, midday). Colin's not so well these days and can't play music any longer but once upon a time - around 60 years ago - he was in one of Pompey's star acts.
(Mike Devon &) the Diplomats were a big 'beat combo' in the early 1960s around Pompey, perhaps most famously playing support at the Savoy when the Beatles played there on the first Sunday night in April 1963.
Their lead guitarist Geoff McKeon worked in Minn's local music shop but sadly died many years ago - he left a son however who has become a fine guitar player in his own right - Scott McKeon and Scott has now done a remix and remaster of some old tapes of his dad's Diplomats from 1962 & 1963 and put them on CD (pic below).
They were recorded on pretty basic equipment and often there are just snatches of songs but they are a wonderful record of what the local scene was like in those days especially the material (mostly covers) that local bands would play. The two CDs also demonstrate clearly the incredible shifts that occurred between mid-1962 when they were a group influenced by the Shadows or the white boy pop singers like Cliff, Pat Boone, Tommy Roe and others, whereas just a year later they were covering songs by the Beatles and the American R&B acts that influenced them such as Chuck Berry, the Contours, Bo Diddley, the Coasters, Ray Charles (etc.).
It was a time of rapid and exciting change in popular music and it's captured beautifully on these two CDs - memories from long ago but invaluable today.
Dave Allen 21/11/2021
When those of us of a certain vintage first got excited by the sounds of the 'Swinging Sixties' there was very little from earlier decades still having a significant impact on popular music. Louis Armstrong had recorded those 'classic' sides around 35 years earlier and came to Britain in the early/mid-1930s, as did Duke Ellington while acts like the Bachelors had hits with the old songs but mostly stuff before the mid-1950s was swept away unless you were into specialist jazz, blues etc.
But here we are almost 60 years later and the 1960s won't go away - one act in particular, suddenly everywhere again this weekend, but more broadly the sounds of guitar-led pop/rock acts.
The 'Radio Times' says "The last days of the Beatles" but that seems highly improbable. "Last days"? They'll never end.
What to make of it all?
Dave Allen 29/11/2021
A lovely man called Russ Sainty died in Hayling yesterday at the age of 83, having been poorly for some time. I got to know Russ in later years but knew of him way back as he was one of those British pop singers that came out of skiffle and the 2ii's Coffee bar in London and with his group the Nu-Notes set off in search of fame and fortune.
He appeared regularly on the BBC's Saturday Club, made a number of records and did the tours, like this one with American Bobby Vee that came to Pompey. The reference to the 'Pillow Boys" on the poster is that he and Pompey's own Frank Kelly & the Hunters both recorded cover versions of the Johnny Tillotson record "Send Me the Pillow that you Dream On".
Like many pre-1963 acts Russ was rather overtaken by the sudden explosion of Merseybeat and London club R&B but he kept singing. He moved down south to pursue a business in gardening, and in 2010 he sang with some local guys (Mark Tuddenham, Rod Watts etc) at the launch of the big exhibition in the City Museum that led to the permanent show at the Guildhall. He also did an album recently - there is lots of information about him online.
RIP Russ.
Dave Allen 19/2/2022
The Guildhall and I have a long and very happy relationship. More than 60 years ago I went to a school prize giving there (no, not me), and shortly after that I went to the first two live gigs in my life featuring the Beatles and the Beatles. In 1968 I had the thrill of playing on the big (huge!) stage for the first time and in recent years I was involved in setting up the popular music exhibition while for seven+ years the Southsea Skiffle Orchestra has been made to feel very welcome there.
I don't get out (anywhere) as much as I used to but the last live gig I saw there a couple of years ago was Massive Attack who were fabulous. Tonight I'm going there again, to see and hear Jazzie B and Soul II Soul. Outside of Jazz, I thought briefly that along with Portishead and Amy, Massive Attack and Soul II Soul are my favourite 'modern' acts but they're nothing of the sort - they're decades old. I'm like some old bloke in 1963 hearing about the Beatles trying to tell me (correctly) about the magic of Louis Armstrong (Hot Fives/Sevens) or Duke Ellington. I wouldn't have listened back then (but I do now).
There we are then - I must getting old but I'm looking forward to tonight. I'll put on my dancing shoes and keep on movin' ...
Dave Allen 27/2/2022
I had a delightful walk around Southsea yesterday and came back with a couple of new monthly magazines including the new 'Jazzwise' which is where I discovered about Omar - these days working in the young British jazz field - and I'm indebted to my pal 'Smiler' for alerting me to related 'new' old sounds - how I love discovering music. That's why the second question appeared yesterday.
I was reading about that while the football scores flickered on my TV set, hence question three (nothing about PFC surprises me) but clearly on the whole I was just having fun. Wittgenstein? There was a reason although I just wanted to pitch something a bit daft, that's all. It was an arbitrary choice.
But I have been reading about him in a very interesting recent book called 'Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy back to Life". The four women include the novelist Iris Murdoch and the book looks at their lives as undergrads, post-grads, academics etc in 1940s/1950s Oxford where they encountered Wittgenstein part 2. It's a really fine book and I've discovered it was Radio 4's 'Book of the Week' last week. It's still out there and it's worth a listen.
The other book I have on the go at the minute is described as "a clever riposte to the 'High Fidelity' band of writers. 'The Importance of Music to Girls' by Lavinia Greenlaw has been around a while, but like Omar I've only just discovered it and it too is a delight. She describes growing up mostly in the Essex countryside in the 1970s:
"It was still early 1977 and I was still fourteen but I had stopped singing in the streets, I didn't cry in lavatories or drink till I was sick, and I was no longer interested in lovebites or dance routines".
It's easier than the Tractatus.
Dave Allen 22/6/2022
I'm pleased to report a good attendance for the Skiffle at the Guildhall yesterday. It's a place that has been a big part of my life including the first live gig I ever went to (59+ years ago), the most recent gig as a punter (Soul II Soul) and the same as a performer (yesterday).
When I posted that previous story about the Art College my new Facebook friend Sarah Houghton who had displayed the poster put the post on her site as well adding, "I m really sentimental about the art college it s been such an important and transformative part of my life".
It had me thinking about places and spaces that for whatever reason become 'special' as is the case with the Guildhall for me. It's true of what I too still think of as the Art College. I first went there as a part-time student in 1966 and kept doing courses there for a couple of years, anticipating a full-time course when I was old enough. Then music intervened but I still hung out there regularly with my pals on Graphics, a Girlfriend doing Fashion - and I was taking in what I could of the experimental music and avant-garde films (I wrote about that in 'Autumn of Love').
Eventually I went back to full-time study and prepared with another evening drawing course there. After I started teaching Art in Portchester, I did an M Phil (part-time) with a supervisor in Fine Art which by then had moved to Lion Gate (off Queen's Road). Eventually I came back to the Poly/Uni to teach in Humanities and I also did bits of History & Theory teaching to Fine Art students before early in the 21st century a new Faculty based in the Art College was created. It is now called Creative & Cultural Industries.
Before I retired I had a couple years as a Head of Dept in that Faculty, went to lots of meetings in the Art College and eventually the staff in my School mostly relocated there - it's now called the Eldon Building. When I retired I had my 'do' there in the ground floor space where I used to do Art College gigs back 50 + years ago.
So, this is another long story, this time about a place and a space that has been very special to me - and I could say much more about why and when. But there are two things that I've never quite figured out: I never got to study there as a full-time student and I never had a desk or an office there as an academic - despite which I can still wander in, feel entirely 'at home' and bump into lots of friends. It's definitely one of my 'special' spaces.
Dave Allen 23/6/2022
Festival time then. Some people don't like them or moan about who's on the bill and who shouldn't be allowed (didn't you Noel?). I went to my first one 55 years ago (Windsor Jazz & Blues) and I've mostly been very fond of them despite all the inconvenience.
These days I have my festival going very much under control. I'm about to devote much of the next three days to watching Glastonbury on the telly with a kettle and a khazi 10 yards away, then in August I'll pop down to Victorious on the Saturday, spend most of the day in the World Music Village and cycle home for tea (and a pee).
It wasn't always like that though. I've been reading in 'Radio Times' about "50 unforgettable moments" from the 50 years of Glastonbury including number 31, asking "was 1997 the muddiest ever?" and number 32 "Or was it 1998 ... the worst year for trench foot?" I know the answer because I went to two Glastonbury Festivals - both times playing with Reet, Petite & Gone - and they were (you guessed) 1997 & 1998. The first was dreadful, the second was Apocalypse Now with knobs on.
We played at loads of Festivals back then.
Dave Allen 12/9/2022
I've probably told this tale before but it seems relevant right now. Back in 1981 (I think) I met the new King - although he wasn't the King then of course - and Diana.
I used to nip up to London weekends/holidays to play in a wonderful outfit called The Operation. We were mostly a busking band in the early days of Covent Garden playing roots rock & roll, R&B etc. That year the man charged with organising the opening night of the London Film Festival decided all the entertainment should be Covent Garden Buskers, so we got a gig and HRH and his lady were the special guests. This photo was taken that night after we'd all lined-up and bowed and curtsied. Sadly there was no opportunity to chat with them about the impact of black music from the USA's southern states on British pop.
I'm in the front row with a big fringe and also back, centre is Denis from Scarlet Town & the Skiffle Orchestra. Paul Hookham, drummer of Scarlet Town (& the Redskins) is standing far left, next to saxophonist Keith Matthews who used to travel up from Pompey with me and to the right of Denis is Andrew Rankin, another singer in the Operation but soon to be drummer in the Pogues. Denis was the 'glue' because the band mixed his schoolmates from Lewes with College pals from Pompey.
Did the distinguished guests like us? No idea.
Dave Allen 3/10/2022
There is an article in today's Guardian about Eric Idle, in which the writer, Simon Hattenstone begins by suggesting that Monty Python "are still regarded as the Beatles of comedy".
I think I know exactly what that means and why he wrote it. I checked him out and discovered he was born in late December 1962, which was about ten weeks after the Beatles first record "Love Me Do" was released. It means also that Hattenstone was less than ten years old by the time the band had split for ever - but he knows enough about them to say what he did.
The Beatles are not my favourite band - indeed if I think about all the bands and individuals that have had a major impact on my life they're not Desert Island Disc candidates or anywhere near the Top Ten. Yet I think of myself as absolutely part of the Beatles generation.
In two days time that first release will be exactly 60 years old and you can bet there will be much stuff around marking the fact. Within a week of that I'll be 73 which means that I began my teenage years almost exactly when the Beatles became public property. Within about six months of that release, they were the first 'real' pop act I saw live (unless you count the Viscounts, about 30 minutes earlier on the same bill) and around then I bought my first LP which was their first album.
Despite my earlier comments, I could for sure put together a Dave's favourite Beatles tracks album (as well as one of songs I never wish to hear again), I shall always love that they were my first introduction to some black American pop acts like the Marvelettes, Miracles, Donays, Isley Bros, Arthur Alexander and even Chuck Berry of whom I'd heard little before 1963. But it's always intrigued me that while they had a real feel for the sounds of black American rock & roll, and 'pop soul' I could never discern any sense of the Blues in anything they did. Within about 12 months of my teenage birthday that sound emerged, initially from London rather than Liverpool, and really did change my life.
Dave Allen 5/10/2022
So, 'Love Me Do, is 60 years old and I'm even older. I recounted how they introduced me to a bunch of American pop-soul and that along with the blues became the defining music of my life. It took a little while after October 1962 although there were acts like the Drifters, Ray Charles and Sam Cooke to admire but it was summer and autumn of 1964 and then into 1965 when everything took off for me.
First the Rolling Stones supplanted the Beatles in my affections - their earliest recordings included covers of Muddy Waters, Marvin Gaye, Slim Harpo, Rufus Thomas, Chuck Berry, Otis Redding etc. Among the guitar-based R&B bands (unlike say the Yardbirds or Downliners Sect) they were unusual initially in exploring the more 'soulful' stuff which I soon encountered when I started clubbing in earnest.
In Pompey the first club was the Rendezvous which often featured British R&B or jazz-oriented stuff (Graham Bond, Georgie Fame etc) but I recall a fine night with the original Moody Blues who played a range of songs from Sonny Boy Williamson to James Brown and including their cover of Bessie Banks' classic "Go Now". By the spring of 1965, the Birdcage opened in Kimbells and pursued a sound that owed more to contemporary soul than blues/R&B. The top visiting acts were the Vagabonds, Action and Chris Farlowe and the DJ Pete 'Brady' Boardman played all the latest soul singles. It was magical.
Last night, Lou and I were taken to the King's Theatre to see the live show of 'The Commitments'. It ain't great drama, the edited narrative was hardly compelling but they played and sang the songs really well - and they were pretty much all 'classics' of that 1960s era Otis, Wilson, Eddie Floyd, the Supremes, Temptations, Marvin, Stevie - almost entirely Atlantic/Stax or Motown with a bit of a surprise with the Persuaders "Thin Line" and an almost note perfect finale "Try a Little Tenderness". I really enjoyed it ...
But there is a massive difference between that show in 2022 and the Birdcage in 1965. Back then those of us involved in that scene were what has been called elsewhere 'Cultural Adventurers' - every day a new thrill. Last night was pure nostalgia - nothing wrong with that but unlike most trips to the Birdcage (or wherever) I learned nothing new.
Dave Allen 6/10/2022
Since we are talking about soul music, the Birdcage and such like we are for sure in the realm of the Mods. There was a thriving Mod scene in Pompey in the mid-1960s, a scene that seemed then to last for ever but was probably just about finished in three years.
Next week I'm booked to introduce a screening of the 1979 Mod film 'Quadrophenia' at the Southsea Cinema (Palmerston Road) it's on Thursday 13 October at 7pm. The question is always asked about its 'authenticity' - was it really like that? ("No, no lacquer ...")
I loved the Mod scene in Pompey in the mid-1960s but my relationship with it was somewhat tangential. There is a photo (below) of the British-based black soul singer Herbie Goins singing to a packed crowd at the Birdcage where he played regularly throughout its two-and-a-half years. Front left is leading Pompey mod Barry Thane, front right is Cathy McGuigan gazing adoringly at Herbie (Cathy provided the photo). I'm in it too, the only photographic evidence I have of those days. I'm second right at the back with a white shirt. That's how it was for me as a Mod when not least for economic reasons (I was still at school) I was very much in the background, on the edge, looking on with admiration and envy.
Mod was famously "clean living under difficult circumstances" but it required a certain income to get it right. I did my best but I think in retrospect I was rather more of a musical mod than a fashionable one.
Dave Allen 8/10/2022
The Birdcage opened as an independent club in Eastney as you say on the site of the original Court School of Dancing. But you can see from the poster (above) there was a club at Kimbells before that, run by the same people (Rikki Farr etc), called the Birdcage. They moved the Birdcage to Eastney after Kimbells started cancelling their bookings. The first night in Eastney was Thursday 26 August 1965 and featured The Steam Packet (Rod Stewart, Long John Baldry etc) & the Action - 5/-. When you say "we were the first to play there" I assume you mean at the Court and "we" were the Hot Rods? I have a photo of the Cadillacs playing the Court School around 1960 but while it was the same venue, it wasn't the Birdcage. This 'club within a club' was quite common around Pompey: The Tricorn had a club called Cromat, the Oasis (North End) had a club called the (Soul) Parlour etc. In the case of the Court however, that ceased to exist; it became the Birdcage, then the Brave New World and finally the Pack.
Dave Allen 9/10/2022
If he was still with us, today would be John Lennon's 82nd Birthday so here's my (probable) final thoughts about the Beatles and life in Pompey - this time around 1967.
There were of course lots of pop (and fashion) fans who weren't particularly bothered about the Mod scene - in terms of live pop music there were lots of shows at the Guildhall, the Savoy and local bands playing covers. The Pompey Mod scene centred on clubs that featured British R&B and then soul and Motown. Most of the bigger American blues acts came to the Guildhall as did the Motown revue but lots of black soul acts came to the Birdcage alongside the Mods' favourites like the Who, Small Faces, Vagabonds, Chris Farlowe and Action.
The Americans at the Birdcage included Ike & Tina Turner, Wilson Picket, Ben E King, the Drifters, Little Richard, Major Lance (the original "Um, Um, Um, Um Um"), Arthur Alexander ("You Better Move On"), Lou Johnson ("Always Something There to Remind Me") etc. But through 1966 and into its final year and the 'Summer of Love' the music began to change. Among the 'new' sounds we saw Cream, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, the Move, the Kinks, the In Crowd, John's Children (with Bolan) and perhaps most remarkably Pink Floyd with Syd and lightshow prior to any record release. What's more they came back.
And the Beatles? There is an entirely understandable claim that in the Summer of Love (1967) their new album Sgt Pepper changed everything but that depended to a great deal what you had been listening to leading up to that. For example, when the Pirate Radio London was shut down (August 1967) John Peel presented his final 'Perfumed Garden' show before switching to Radio One. The final show lasted more than five hours and featured tracks from Sgt Pepper as part of his interest then in the broadly 'psychedelic' shift but lots of the other tracks show that Sgt Pepper - out for just a couple of months - was part of something bigger, and not necessarily leading the way except through mainstream media.
Anyone could listen to Radio London and on that final show Peel played (among others) Velvet Underground, Capt Beefheart, Pink Floyd, the Misunderstood, Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds, the Stones, Hendrix, the Mothers of Invention, Donovan, Love, Incredible String Band, Traffic, Judy Collins, Country Joe & the Fish, Bob Dylan, Cream, Electric Prunes, Elmore James, Marc Bolan, Howlin' Wolf, Big Brother & Holding Co., Purple Gang, Tim Buckley etc.
The Times certainly were changing and the Birdcage closed for the last time, five days after Peel's show.
Dave Allen 18/10/2022
During the course of this week I shall go for eye checks, teeth checks and hearing checks. It's just a coincidence but in the week after I got to 73 it reminds me ... (mind you - smirk - did the gym and the swim this morning).
But surely the toughest thing about getting old is losing touch with popular music? Recently the Guardian put out a tribute to the BBC by listing their 100 best live 'pop' performances broadcasts and of those 100 no fewer than 94 were since 1970 with another three from 1969 (41 in this century).
Now, I was OK with a reasonable number of the nominations - I like Bowie, Japan, Nico, Talking Heads, George Michael, Patti Smith, Amy Winehouse etc - and from the 1960s few I love Dylan & Hendrix but never ever wish to hear Black Sabbath again. I do wonder however why the history of popular music rarely stretches much beyond fifty years (and genre-wise there was one jazz performance, little folk and no blues).
Is it possible that none of the early Beatles live broadcasts rate? That the Stones on Saturday Club weren't worth anything or maybe Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames on Jazz Beat. How about Lonnie Donegan on 'Six Five Special'? Were there no dance or jazz bands in the heyday of BBC Radio that did anything special?
I wondered whether a list of the 100 best BBC TV Shows or 100 finest British films would start at around 1969. I doubt it.
If you're interested, here's the link
Dave Allen 19/10/2022
So, the Guardian's 'history' of a 'century' of popular music on the BBC only stretches back 58 years (starting in 1964). Since my good pal Mick Cooper and I have done many years of work on Pompey's Pop history, here's a (personal) TOP TEN from 1939-1963. (There might be more).
1939, May: Fats Waller appeared for one week at the Hippodrome, south of Guildhall Square
1945, May: Final day of WWII was celebrated by 1,000+ people at the Empress Ballroom, North End
1956, March: Stan Kenton Orchestra played the Savoy Ballroom, Southsea. They were the first American band to tour Britain for over twenty years after a Musicians Union ban. Britain s Ted Heath Band, regular favourites at the Savoy, went to the USA in exchange.
1956, September: Tony Crombie & his Rockets, Britain s first professional, recording rock & roll band, made their debut, headlining a week of Variety at the Theatre Royal. British rock & roll born in Pompey!
1959, June: HM Queen Elizabeth II opened the rebuilt Guildhall. On the second evening there was a sell-out concert by Chris Barber s Jazz Band with Ottilie Patterson.
1959 October: Cliff Richard & the Shadows played in Portsmouth for the first time.
1960, September: The Miles Davis Quintet appeared at the Guildhall.
1962, May: Louis Armstrong appeared at Portsmouth Guildhall.
1963: The Beatles appeared three times in Portsmouth, at the Guildhall (March & December) and the Savoy Ballroom (April).
1963, September: The Rolling Stones appeared in Portsmouth for the first time, at the Savoy Ballroom.
Mick found two more from January 1957, that got away: Portsmouth magistrates refused to permit a rock & roll concert by Tommy Steele at the Troxy Cinema, Fratton Road
Lonnie Donegan and his Skiffle Group were booked to play at the Empire Theatre together with The Liddell Sisters, and Eddie Forehead's Rock 'n' Rollers, but it was cancelled because a clause in the Empire Theatre Licence did not allow this type of show. It was transferred the commodore Theatre Ryde. (Lonnie arrived three years later at the King's, while Tommy Steele was mobbed playing in a showbiz football match down by the funfair).
Dave Allen 11/11/2022
I write a lot, mostly about the past, or maybe just A past; one which connects with my lived experiences. Sometimes when I write about music - let's say Miles Davis at Pompey Guildhall in 1960 - or Hampshire cricket between the wars it's not precisely 'mine', because I wasn't there but it still connects to things in my life that matter greatly. Often I check the details on the internet, in books and magazines or maybe the archives of newspapers of the time.
I was conversing very amicably yesterday with someone I don't know, on Facebook; the topic was nightclubs in North End in the 1970s and he suggested the Rendezvous, where he recalled seeing Cream and the Small Faces. To trim a longish reply, he didn't and it wasn't. It wasn't a 1970s club because it closed in late summer 1965 and he didn't see Cream there because it was about 10 months after it closed (25 June 1966) that 'Melody Maker' announced the formation of that band.
He probably remembers seeing Cream (and the Small Faces) at the Birdcage in 1966. But he might have gone to the Rendezvous to see the Graham Bond Organisation with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker who played there often. And maybe he saw Eric Clapton in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. They played there too but I'm not sure whether Clapton was with them then.
None of that matters terribly unless you care about these things - getting it right won't stop the war in Ukraine or solve the economic crisis but it's kind of fun. Sometimes things people say can be wrong, while feeling completely right - and this last thought is for anyone like me born in the late 1940s and growing up in the 1950s/1960s. It's a thought triggered by George East in that book 'Pompey Boy' which I enjoyed so much. He starts one chapter by writing For us kids the distant summer of 1954 was ablaze with endless sunny days (page 187).
I can share that feeling precisely and indeed feel it about many of those glorious youthful summers of the 1950s and 1960s, living in Southsea. But sometimes the facts interrupt a good story. As a cricket historian I have a collection of the annual almanack called 'Wisden' and in the year 2000 they published an article by the BBC's weatherman Philip Eden about the summers of the 20th century. It wasn't about cricket it was about sunshine, gloomy days and rain, and against those criteria he reported that the summer of 1954 was the "worst" of the whole 20th century, 1968 was 3rd worst, 1965 in 8th place and 1956 was 10th (1958 was crap too). In addition, he said "the worst decade was clearly the 1960s". It's not how I recall it. Maybe sometimes memories trump the facts.
Incidentally, the best year unsurprisingly was 1976 and the best decade the 1990s. I guess these days we'd use "best" more cautiously?
Dave Allen 31/12/2022
New Year s Eve tales from the start and finish of the Swinging Sixties :
In 1959 Hillside Youth Club featured rock & roll with regular residents the Tony Porter Group for 3/-. Ricky s in Goldsmith Avenue offered a Rock & Roll Carnival (6/-) and there were other more mainstream Carnival Nights at the Oddfellows Hall with the De Reste Orchestra, at All Saints Hall and at the Savoy Ballroom on the seafront. The Africano Club in Fratton Road offered free entry before 10 pm, but the Tropicana Coffee Club in Castle Road Southsea was charging 2/6d for its party. The city s main event run by the Junior Chamber of Commerce was a Ball at the Guildhall with ballroom dancing, cabaret and a buffet for 30/- ( 1.50).
In 1969: Rosemary, Coconut Mushroom and other local rock bands were downstairs at Kimbells while upstairs the dancing was just as it might have been ten years before and it was much the same at Dorothy Whitbread s Dancing School in the city centre. The Oasis, North End, offered a quartet and insisted collar and tie essential ; rock band Lace appeared at the Tricorn Club, and on Hayling, Sinah Warren offered a Ball and Buffet. Ron Bennett, his band and Bill Cole were playing the dinner dances at the Queen s Hotel. The Broadsiders sang in the 1970s folk style at Havant s Jug of Punch, and original British guitarist Bert Weedon starred in Aladdin at the King s Theatre.
(Below) Ricky's Club, Goldsmith Avenue late 1950s aqlong the alley of the sweet shop
Dave Allen 12/1/2023
I still do a little teaching these days, one or two topics with the university's performing arts students, and I was in today for my first session of the new term when something apparently unconnected led me to realise it's exactly 50 years this month since my first 'proper' teaching experience as a student teacher in the Art dept of Manor Court School.
I spent the winter term of 1973 there - it seemed odd initially since a few years earlier I played there regularly at their Youth Club dances. At that time I still harboured dreams of life as a musician having turned my back on a College place in 1968 but by mid-1971 music was no longer very promising, and I had gone back to evening classes and was preparing to study full-time from September.
But what if it had been different? A record contract in 1968 was irresistible and studying had to go but three years later I planned not only to study (art & design) but to give up music entirely. It was not long after the end of my beloved Rosemary when our scheduled single release was pulled and we rather lost heart. One day the man who produced that record rang me to say his drummer pal Cozy Powell was putting a band together with a well-known guitarist and he could arrange for me to audition as the singer. It was a considerable compliment but this time I stuck to my plan to study, thanked him and declined.
But what might have happened if I had chosen the other path? Who knows? I doubt I was good enough for that gig, although that wasn't the point - it was that I made a decision, stuck with it and had a pretty happy career (although I was soon back playing).
All this came to mind today because the guitarist was one of the most inventive and original of those who emerged from the mid-1960s British R&B scene - Jeff Beck. I learned today of his death and there I was, back 50+ years and wondering just briefly ....
RIP Jeff - sorry we never met.
Dave Allen 20/1/2023
I've been singing live for more than 50 years and while it took a while to learn how to do it in front of an audience I think I can do it OK now.
Except I can't sing harmony to save my life. If I try (not often) I just get dragged back to the melody. I have however sung over the years with a couple of guys who can harmonise really well - the first was John Lytle in both Harlem Speakeasy and even more Rosemary - then since 1975 in a number of bands my pal Denis (Reet, Petite & Gone, Scarlet Town etc). We even sing a harmony or two in the Skiffle gigs. I'm sure it helped that they are both very fine musicians.
I'm writing this because I've just heard of the death of David Crosby, a man who sang lots of harmonies with the Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash etc. I saw them some years back at Brighton and they were terrific but because of my fondness for Black American music - and often solo blues and soul singers - I wasn't drawn to their stuff immediately, it became an acquired taste. But I'm glad I got it eventually.
So now, because I don't know really what's going on, I'm wondering where is harmony in the contemporary world of popular music? Is it still out there? Who's singing great harmonies?
RIP David
Dave Allen 26/3/2023
OK the Boat Race is over, the footballers are winning and the Yanks are still worrying about David's willy so time for me to stop being controversial on this bright evening and note a rather special local 60th anniversary this week:
On Friday 29 March 1963, the Evening News carried a few column inches under the heading Swinging Evening revealing that American rock singers Chris Montez and Tommy Roe would star in two shows the next night at the Guildhall along with Britain s newest and most exciting group, the Beatles .
The Beatles played in the city for the first time on the night that the clocks changed for British Summer Time (30 March). There were two shows and while they were promoted to top the bill on some gigs on the tour, in Pompey the Beatles closed the first half with the Americans playing after the break. The paper carried a report of the gig headed Britain Wins Pop Tussle at Guildhall , suggesting the evening was an opportunity to judge the state of pop singing on both sides of the Atlantic . The verdict was that the two Americans were overshadowed by the Beatles and even by the comic impersonations of the Viscounts. Chris Montez, a wild, energetic rock & roller looked far from happy although Tommy Roe was more polished . Our reporter suggested Liverpool was now Britain s second music capital .
The Beatles Diary lists their set on the tour as 'Love Me Do', 'Misery', 'A Taste of Honey', 'Do You Want to Know a Secret', 'Please, Please Me' and 'I Saw Her Standing There'.
I went. It was the first live gig of any significance I went to and I can't really remember a thing about it. Below, the poster and the Beatles backstage with Montez and Roe.
Dave Allen 7/4/2023
Today, 7 April, is the 60th anniversary of the second time the Beatles appeared in Pompey. Just eight days after they played two short sets at the Guildhall, they came on a Sunday evening to the Savoy Ballroom on Southsea seafront and played two full sets to a standing/dancing audience.
Also on the bill that night were one of our local favourites at the time, Mike Devon & the Diplomats. They were one of a number of local groups who took it in turn to play support to the main acts at the Savoy and for the Diplomats it was their lucky night. Interestingly they had bought the first Beatles album and learned some of the songs and the Beatles were apparently happy for them to play covers from their set.
There was a problem that night in that Ringo's drums didn't arrive, so they had to arrange to borrow the kit from the Diplomats' drummer Terry Wiseman. Sadly four members of the band are no longer with us: the lead guitarist was Geoff McKeon who managed Minns Music Store in Palmerston Road, Keith Francis (Guitar) later wrote a book about the group called 'Seaside Rock' and singer Mike Devon (really MIke Beacon) worked in Handleys/Debenhams in later years and sang with the big bands around Southsea. As far as I know Terry Wiseman, who worked as a stage designer with Southsea Shakespeare Actors is still with us as is bass guitarist Colin Wilkinson who until recently I saw quite regularly at Southsea Skiffle Orchestra gigs. He was always happy to share memories of that special night.
It's said that the fee that night was just 50, negotiated some months before by the Savoy's manager George Turner and by that time not even half their normal fee - but the Beatles honoured the contract.
PS: On BBC Sounds there is a programme (Front Row) about a gig the Beatles did around that time at Stowe School which was recorded by a 15-year-old boy at the school and has just come to light. It indicates the kind of set they would have done at the Savoy, including early singles, album tracks and covers of American R&B (especially Chuck Berry).
MIke Devon (front) with left-right, Keith, Colin, Terry & Geoff:
Dave Allen 23/6/2023
The Windrush 75th anniversary yesterday was I guess less significant in a specific sense for Pompey than many other places in the UK. The cultural impact was broad of course but it often arrived here through visitors from other parts of the UK, rather than from the city's residents.
The first was perhaps footballer 'Lindy' Delapenha, a Jamaican who came to Pompey from Arsenal approaching his 21st birthday - he was perhaps unlucky to be fighting for a place in the greatest ever Pompey side and after a couple of years moved to Middlesborough in 1950, around the time that the first great West Indies cricket team docked just along the coast. They didn't play in Pompey but their historic first UK victory at Lord's was celebrated in Calypso by Lord Beginner ("Cricket, Lovely Cricket"). In 1959, Antiguan Danny Livingstone came to Hampshire as their first Black West Indian to be followed by Gordon Greenidge, Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall and many others who, through the next 40 years played in Pompey regularly.
But I think that for my generation at least it was the music that had the biggest impact, probably beginning with the UK-based Jamaican saxophonist Joe Harriott who came to Pompey a number of times, including a KIng's Theatre concert with Indo-Jazz Fusions.
That was in the late 1960s by which time all the Birdcage boys & girls at least were very familiar with the Jamaican sounds of Ska (aka 'Bluebeat') including a live appearance by the legendary Prince Buster. But my nomination for the biggest impact back then goes to Jimmy James & the Vagabonds. Jimmy was a well-known Jamaican singer who teamed up with the ska-based Vagabonds when they all moved to the UK and pursued more of a soul sound - including what I still believe to be a first album ('New Religion') as fine as anything by a UK soul act of those days.
Jimmy James & the Vagabonds played the Birdcage 29 times in two years from the summer of 1965, more than any other act, bringing the magic of the Caribbean (& USA) to Eastney. Wonderful days!
(Below Jimmy & Count Miller at the official Birdcage opening night in October 1965)
Dave Allen 22/7/2023
Two bits of news yesterday had me thinking about the different ways in which music is a part of our life at different ages - and I'm thinking here of popular music, excluding nursery rhymes, Sunday School singing, hymns & prayers in schools (back then).
I guess like many of my generation - the days before school discos for three-year-olds - it started at home, principally on the radio, and therefore fairly privately. Pop music didn't fill every shop, caf and public toilet back then so it was often a matter of listening to Children's Favourites, Skiffle/Saturday Club, Juke Box Jury etc. I shared my discoveries with my younger sister and we'd buy a few pop singles. The Southsea funfair's Waltzer helped considerably.
Then through my teenage 1960s I started going to gigs, especially the R&B/soul clubs like the Rendezvous and Birdcage, as well as youth clubs where we'd play records - and I'd generally make friends at school with people who shared my tastes and interests. Music became a social activity and in my case that was enhanced by playing and going to loads more gigs, feeding juke boxes etc. By the late 1960s I was a music snob, knowing what was cool and what was to be sneered at. I must have been unbearable at times.
Since the early 1970s however two things have happened - firstly I lost interest in a lot of mainstream pop/rock stuff and my particular fondness for blues and jazz reduced the circle of people with whom I shared discoveries. Gradually music became more like it was in the early days - a relatively solitary, domestic activity, shared with just a few pals - rather than part of a collective 'scene'. I think it's called getting old(er). (Gigging was different of course but over the past 50 years I've played mostly old, often obscure, stuff).
Sometimes I found something contemporary by chance but because I'm just finding and listening to it on my own it drifts away again unlike the formative stuff of the 1960s. One such is Durutti Column. I really liked them 20+ years ago and bought an album or two but until I read a piece about Vini Reilly (effectively DC) in yesterday's Guardian I'd forgotten all about him/them. The interview revealed Vini as a poorly and rather complicated man a couple of years younger than me but looking 30 years older so I dug out an album and it is (still) very fine stuff.
Then there was the news about the death of Tony Bennett. I liked instrumental jazz from a fairly young age but the uncool 'cool' singers of standards were not for me in my teenage years or early 20s. One of the pleasures of getting older is realising I was wrong and falling in love with his singing and that of Frank, Ella, Sarah Vaughan, Nat KC, Mel Torm and more recent singers (Kurt Elling, Cassandra Wilson etc). As a singer of sorts, that's been one of the great experiences of my later life and I'm very glad of it. RIP Tony B and thanks.
Dave Allen
By the autumn of 1964 I was clubbing regularly, mostly at the Rendezvous Club in Kingston Road or Kimbells in Southsea. It was a world that centred on the local Mod scene and the music was almost entirely Black American influenced, even though almost all the live acts were White/English. Within six months Rikki Farr had brought the Birdcage Club to Southsea (and later Eastney) and with it DJ Pete Boardman ('Brady').
The favourite live acts than included Jimmy James & the Vagabonds, the Action, Chris Farlowe, Georgie Fame (etc.) and the music began to shift from guitar/harmonica-led R&B to something called 'Soul' which covered a range of styles from the sweet 'pop' soul of early Motown, through the New York Atlantic and Chicago Chess label records down to the Deep South of Stax and others.
By 1968 I was playing in Harlem Speakeasy, an 8-piece 'pop-soul' group that won a record and agency deal and started touring clubs across the country. One Saturday we played an all-nighter at Manchester's legendary Twisted Wheel Club and I was reminded of that when last night's BBC News reported an event this weekend to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the opening of Wigan Casino - a venue central to the spread of so-called 'Northern Soul'.
In fact the gig we did in 1968 has always seemed to me like my first encounter with Northern Soul - five years before Wigan. For starters the kids showed little interest in us but once we finished, around midnight maybe, they got changed into comfortable dancing gear and the DJ started up, playing Black American dance tunes. It seemed slightly odd to me as by then the club scene in Pompey had mostly shifted from the Birdcage soul sound to (pyschedelic/ progressive/ blues) rock - it felt as though the 'north' was a couple of years behind and still catching up.
What I'd forgotten was the sheer importance of dancing to maybe 90% of young people out for fun on a Saturday night. The other 10%? Too stoned to get up off the floor man.
Dave Allen 15/9/2023
Last Night I dreamed I was back in the sixties again; I went to the Guildhall and the Portsmouth Music Experience exhibition which thanks to the efforts of Nigel & Audrie Grundy has a special section right now featuring the photos of the main Melody Maker photographer of the 60s & 70s Barrie Wentzell.
All the big stars are there starting with the front page of photo of Diana Ross which was his big break - after that came, Rod Stewart, Pete Townshend, David Bowie, Elton John, the Rolling Stones** and many more.
Barrie Wentzell was there last night, talking about those days, accompanied by one of the Melody Maker's regular writers Chris Welch and the audience included a number of Pompey's finest from back then including Rod Taylor (Sons of Man, Aubrey Small), two Coconut Mushrooms, Terry Threadingham & Graham Barnes, ace chronicler and keyboard wizard Mick Cooper (Heaven) and DJ/Angel Radio celeb Pete Cross. It was a fine evening.
**This week is incidentally around the 60th anniversary of the first time the Rolling Stones played in Pompey - 20 September 1963 at the (seafront) Savoy.
Dave Allen 23/9/2923
By the autumn of 1964 I was clubbing regularly, mostly at the Rendezvous Club in Kingston Road or Kimbells in Southsea. It was a world that centred on the local Mod scene and the music was almost entirely Black American influenced, even though almost all the live acts were White/English. Within six months Rikki Farr had brought the Birdcage Club to Southsea (and later Eastney) and with it DJ Pete Boardman ('Brady').
The favourite live acts than included Jimmy James & the Vagabonds, the Action, Chris Farlowe, Georgie Fame (etc.) and the music began to shift from guitar/harmonica-led R&B to something called 'Soul' which covered a range of styles from the sweet 'pop' soul of early Motown, through the New York Atlantic and Chicago Chess label records down to the Deep South of Stax and others.
By 1968 I was playing in Harlem Speakeasy, an 8-piece 'pop-soul' group that won a record and agency deal and started touring clubs across the country. One Saturday we played an all-nighter at Manchester's legendary Twisted Wheel Club and I was reminded of that when last night's BBC News reported an event this weekend to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the opening of Wigan Casino - a venue central to the spread of so-called 'Northern Soul'.
In fact the gig we did in 1968 has always seemed to me like my first encounter with Northern Soul - five years before Wigan. For starters the kids showed little interest in us but once we finished, around midnight maybe, they got changed into comfortable dancing gear and the DJ started up, playing Black American dance tunes. It seemed slightly odd to me as by then the club scene in Pompey had mostly shifted from the Birdcage soul sound to (pyschedelic/ progressive/ blues) rock - it felt as though the 'north' was a couple of years behind and still catching up.
What I'd forgotten was the sheer importance of dancing to maybe 90% of young people out for fun on a Saturday night. The other 10%? Too stoned to get up off the floor man.
Dave Allen
2/10/2023
Age 18 in 1968, my first employment was as a professional musician in Harlem Speakeasy (8 piece), followed by Rosemary (6 piece). Through my adult life I've almost always been involved in loads of different 'groups', from teaching in schools and university, to more bands, playing in football and cricket teams, more bands, odd projects at the Arts Council, British Film Institute and lately the HotWalls' Fire Monkeys artists collective plus more bands.
Always then a life surrounded by people. I don't know whether it is simply that nothing compares with making music with other people or whether I feel that because music matters to me more than those other things but it is the case that over the best part of 60 years, starting in a duet with a guy called Pete Gurd musical relationships have always had the edge, generally outlasting all the other projects.br>
One of those very special ones has been with my buddy Denis who celebrated his 70th birthday last Friday at the Irish Club, playing some music and meeting up with many people he has played with since the 1960s, including Phil and Mick from his schooldays in Lewes, through the early 1980s Mooks with Jim, up to his latest enterprises Scarlet and Harbour Town and the Skiffle guys. They came to wish him Happy Birthday and we had all great fun. We have been playing together since 1975 and here (courtesy of Mick) are the pair of us playing Slim Harpo's "Shake Your Hips" - and here's to the next ten years.
Talking of Joe Jackson - which I'm doing quite a lot aren't I? about ten years ago he made an album 'Duke' on which Joe and his band played their versions of some of Ellington's great tunes and songs such as 'Caravan', 'Mood Indigo', I Got It Bad', 'Black & Tan Fantasy', 'Perdido', 'Satin Doll', 'It Don't Mean a Thing' etc. It's very good. I'm very pleased to have my original Ellington recordings but Joe's album also very much warrants a listen or four.
Today I bought the new edition of the magazine 'Jazzwise' and discovered a special feature on Ellington, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Ellington Orchestra.
My first serious encounter with Ellington was almost sixty years ago when my school buddy Martin Richman got the double album 'Ella Fitzgerald sings the Duke Ellington Songbook'. In those Stones/Beatles (Action/Who) days it wasn't love at first hearing but there was something, then, two or three years later, just a fortnight after Pink Floyd's bewildering debut at the Birdcage (Syd Barrett in Eastney?) and with the Summer of Love looming, I got to see the Duke Ellington Orchestra at Pompey Guildhall. I didn't know what to expect but it was astonishing, thrilling and in musical terms genuinely life-changing.
Happy anniversary!
Dave Allen 18/12/2023
Here we ar e then, 18 December, one week to go before Christmas Day. 70 years ago (1953), 18 December was a Friday and as was the way back then, it was the big night at the Savoy Ballroom opposite South Parade Pier.
In the 1950s Friday at the Savoy was often known as Radio Night because radio was the big medium back then (only one TV channel) and Friday nights at the Savoy would feature all the country's major Big Bands such as Joe Loss, Ronnie Scott and on this particular night, the Biggest of the lot, Ted Heath and his Music, featuring no fewer than three top vocalists: Denis Lotis, Lita Rosa and Dickie Valentine.
Now when it comes to Christmas songs, Dickie Valentine has a special place in the UK's popular music history as just a couple of years later his record "Christmas Alphabet" was the FIRST song ever with Christmas in the title to make number one in the last UK chart before Christmas. You know the one:
"C is for the candy trimmed around the Christmas tree
H is for the happiness with all the family (etc.)"
That was the chart for 24 December 1955 and the following year Dickie was at number 12 with his version of "Christmas Island", but on the whole there were relatively few Christmas hits back then. In the first year of the chart (1952) Mantovani was at number 6 with his version of "White Christmas" while Bing was there with "Silent Night" at number 8 - possibly the only Christmas Carol to make the UK Top 10(?)
1953 was weird - the Beverley Sisters were at number 7 with "I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Claus", then at number 8 was Jimmy Boyd (who?) with "I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Claus" and at number 11 another of the famous Big Bands, Billy Cotton with the Mill Girls and "I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Claus". The Good Old Days huh?
Merry Christmas
(Below: Dickie Valentine: Anita, Vilma & Pearl were Pompey's own version of the Beverley Sisters. Known as the Honeys, they toured or appeared with lots of famous acts including Dickie Valentine, Adam Faith, the Beatles, Helen Shapiro, Ken Dodd, Bobby Vee, Frankie Vaughan etc.)
Dave Allen 30-12-2023
There's a relevant story here but if you can't be bothered with all that, might I just mention that Shep Woolley's annual charity bash will occur as usual at the Barley Mow on Monday afternoon & evening - New Year's Day.
Almost as soon as Heavy Rock and Prog arrived in the early 1970s, I forsook amplifiers and drummers and retreated to my first and abiding love as a performing musician - the really old, acoustic, 'country' blues.
In 1975 with my musical partner guitarist Bob Cooper-Grundy I formed a group (not really a band) called Skys is Cryin'. Clearly the world was not waiting in anticipation of a bunch of students playing old-time stuff on dobro, mandolin, harmonica, violin, washboard, etc. but we did win £750 and a crate of beer as the UK's top student band (Hammersmith Odeon gig) and had some fun for a few years.
Fast forward to the 1990s and along with another refugee from the Skys days, my buddy Denis Reeve-Baker (notice how I attract geezers with posh names?) came Reet, Petite & Gone another acoustic old-timey/blues outfit somewhat like Skys is Cryin' Mk 2. Lots of fun was had with that outfit too - and my special best wishes to mandolin man Nick Evans currently in for a spell of hospital treatment.
Well Skys and RP&G are both as 'long gone as a turkey in the corn' but at Shep's 'do', three Skys, two of whom were also RP&Gs (and all three now skifflers) are re-assembling for a brief set of that old stuff calling ourselves Skys is Gone. Maybe we'll see you there?
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