Issue 12 Summer 2004

NewsLETTeR Editor: David Nathan ISSUE 12 SEPTEMBER 2004 We Got Him! Well, we hope you’ll excuse the over-familiar play as I please’ in June 1954 - set new headline, but here at the National Jazz Archive we and desirable standards of literacy and couldn’t resist it! Because after very many years of intelligence, from an old Etonian with a wishing and hoping our special guest at the National new vocation.And a series of later Jazz Archive Celebrity Interview 2004 will be volumes - both autobiography or HUMPHREY LYTTELTON! critique - continued to confirm that Finding an available date in Humph’s calendar is still a their author was a man of impeccable challenge. For after fifty-six uninterrupted years of judgment, intelligence, humour and wit. bandleading - a record which easily surpasses Louis Humph’s broadcasting - which in more Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and, at an recent years has tended to deflect him intelligent guess, probably every other prominent jazz from the writing-desk - has, of course, bandleader, British or American - Humph continues turned him into the unchallenged ‘voice to forge ahead musically with undiminished of British jazz’; since l967 on BBC Radio enthusiasm, creativity and trumpetary power.This is, 2’s ‘Best of Jazz’ his old-friend tones in itself, an extraordinary achievement. But it have - like W.C. Handy’s Deacon Spliven becomes more so when you consider that he has of ‘Aunt Hagar’s Blues’ - gently pointed his listeners somehow managed to combine this fulltime vocation towards ‘the way of living (or, at least, listening) right!’. with a comparably distinguished career as radio Lyttelton’s jazz broadcasting is quietly extraordinary Editors Note: Tickets at £10 presenter, busy record producer (his ‘Calligraph’ label and one of his most noticeably American qualities - can be obtained from me at consistently to appreciate, celebrate (and therefore is one of the longest-established and widely respected the Archive but please check ‘indies’) and for many years before that, more publicize) what’s new in jazz, as well as the best of unflagging activities as author, journalist, and even what’s past - renders him the most valuable of our first for availability in view of cartoonist too.And somehow - while keeping all radio jazz commentators. What was less predictable the limited accommodation. these separate skills in (or on) the air over the years - at least until l972 - was that he would become - he has somehow managed to make the whole thing ringmaster (and, in his radio publicist’s words ‘relucant In any event cheques should look suspiciously like fun, rather than the fulltime Chairman’) for undoubtedly the funniest panel game be made payable to Essex unrelenting vocation which, according to the simple in British radio history;‘I’m sorry I haven’t a clue’, which won the Sony Gold Award for being just that County Council. NATIONAL JAZZ ARCHIVE JAZZ NATIONAL limitations of twenty-four hours in a day, must occupy his head, hands and heart every day of every week of in l995 and 2002 (and may well have done so again in every year. 2004).To all of these artistic challenges Humph has brought unfailing courage, gifts, constant flair and - For all right-thinking jazzlovers in Britain Humphrey dare we say it - that most elusive element of ‘style’! Lyttelton is acknowledged as the kingpin - the central focus - of our music.And that’s been the case for All of this and much more from a man who refuses many years now, as his gifts to jazz have spanned well to aggrandize himself (he may even have refused a over five decades in a whole variety of different ways. knighthood, but that’s another story!) and who Most impressive of all - and rightly so - is his continues to be Britain’s greatest longterm jazz discography which has comprehensively recorded his Ambassador. During his career he has been called on artistic progression from early burning Revivalist days record (by his close friend,Ambassador Satch no through to the swing-out 1950s years of mainstream, less!) ‘the top trumpet man in Britain today!’ and to the ever-entertaining - and often creatively received most of the other accolades which, as an surprising - CDs of today (by the time you read this acknowledged true star of the music, he deserves. he will have another one ready for issue featuring But it will be fascinating to hear Humph, for once, new Lyttelton family members including the talented talking about himself. It’s not a thing he’s in the habit young tenorist Karen Sharp).‘Family’ is one way of of doing - although a fascinating BBC Production putting it but ‘school’ might be another; Lyttelton’s issued a few years ago on a double cassette (ask him band has always welcomed new talent regardless of about it on the night!) provided a long-needed and generation and over the years has provided a updated insight - and he isn’t in the habit of either finishing-university for younger talents like Sharp and glorifying the past or even keeping scrapbooks.As Alan Barnes as well as offering musical hospitality to with all true progressives, for Humph the best days his greatest contemporaries. are to come. But on Wednesday 17 November though we have him to ourselves! And I suspect that N J A Creating a musical legacy is, of course, the principal his direct lines to jazz history, British and American, raison d’etre of most jazz musicians, but Humph has will supply an unforgettable an irreplaceable evening. Loughton Library, Traps Hill left - and continues to leave us - other favours.At a We do look forward to seeing you there! Loughton, Essex IG10 1HD time when much of jazz bibliography was drenched in Tel. 020 8502 0181 purple prose, his books - from a first autobiography ‘I Digby Fairweather (Founder/National Jazz Archive) Fax 020 8508 5041 e-mail: [email protected] MICHAEL PARKINSON – website: nationaljazzarchive.org See inside SUPPORTED BY ESSEX New Patron for NJA COUNTY COUNCIL, LIBRARIES Very early days by George Webb The story of how the Dixielanders happened has stage playing quite softly “Sleepy Time Down been very well documented over the past 50 South” when suddenly this coloured man burst years and so I would like to explain how I was on to the stage, played some very high notes that first introduced to jazz music. From a child I sounded like pistol shots and that was followed remember listening to my father playing and by him shouting,“Ladies and gentlemen, I am singing ragtime songs whilst rehearsing with his now going to play a little number”. He then brother Horace – they had a double act singing took off at a tremendous pace and I think he harmony plus patter and during the early played “Chinatown my Chinatown”. twenties (1922-1927) appeared on the working I can only imagine that the Palladium audience mens club circuit around London as semi contained about twenty five per cent who were professionals. jazz enthusiasts. The vast majority were used to They also appeared at masonic functions as they enjoying an evening of full Music Hall had a top London agent called Reeves and entertainment such as comics, tap dancers and Photo courtesy of John Root Lamport who wanted to put them on full ventriloquists etc. Goodness knows what they professional standing but although my father made of this but I watched and listened to Louis Armstrong, Oliver, Morton, Holiday and mainly George was keen, his brother had a very good fascinated by the endless supply of large white hot jazz music by coloured performers and job with promotion possibilities and a family and handkerchiefs with which he constantly mopped through them became aware of the fabulous would not be persuaded to take the chance of his brow and face during his announcing and world of jazz music on records. change. In the twenties a well paid job was singing. We decided to start a rhythm club,The security and that led to the act splitting up and That was in 1932, my introduction to real jazz Bexleyheath and District at the Red Barn in from 1927 they never sang together again, so I music. My friend Tom Davis had a wonderful Barnehurst just a couple of miles from where we imagine that although I was not aware of it, the evening and I left him outside the theatre to all lived and this eventually and accidently seeds of jazz music could have been sown. catch my tram home, whilst he went to the stage became the home of George Webb’s When I was fifteen I was employed by a firm door hopeful to get Louis’ autograph. (I cannot Dixielanders, the catalyst of the so called jazz called D M Bembaren in South Molton Street, remember if he was lucky!) revival that started during the early days of 1942. just behind Bond Street in the west end, who Later that year I left the firm as we had moved made very expensive handbags cut from Editors Note: Thanks to George for to Belevedere in Kent from Lewisham, south east crocodile, lizard and especially imported this fascinating insight into his jazz London and as seems to happen lost touch with brocades etc., for the “posh” as we knew them initiation and as you will see from the Tom, something I have always regretted but I at that time, and my job was to cut out the Ongar Jazz Night review still playing kept my interest in band music listening to the linings from silks and moire.Working alongside regularly.

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