Blue Remembered Drums

Elsewhere I recently commented that 2015 had been an outstanding year for me professionally. It was a year full of achievement; memorable live performances with great people in interesting locations both at home and overseas. I’m not going to regale you with a string of self-congratulatory credits as all of this has, I believe, been adequately documented already,

These life events are a big part of how we chart our progress in the industry as well as giving us all kinds of fond memories to reflect upon with the passing of the years. Significant milestones and achievements which continue to burn brightly through our entire lives (and occasionally beyond), and a means by which we retain a record of where we were, what we were doing and with whom. That does rather beg the question of how the last twelve months will be remembered, and those Facebook memories are all going to start looking a bit similar for the next little while.

For me it’s been a year consisting of a big band session that resulted in a very good album, a number of releases for a talented singer/songwriter, a gig in Eastbourne and a gig at Ronnie Scott’s. Other than that the remaining 360 days have pretty much consisted of online activity and taking books, DVDs and CDs to the post office. So irrespective of what happens subsequently, future recollection of this time from a professional standpoint is going to amount to very little as there have been an absence of life events in the last twelve months of life, which gives a whole new meaning to the word uneventful.

Thankfully, life away from the hustle and bustle of the industry, in state funded temporary partial retirement, has been peaceful and pleasant, with the exception of one very sad recent turn of events. As one or two of you will have seen elsewhere I sadly lost my Mum at the end of January. She lived a long, healthy, happy, and contented life and it was really only in the last few months of her 91 and a half years on this earth that the frailty of advancing age caught up with her, and in spite of the current restrictions we gave her the send-off she would have wished for, fondly remembered in the presence of thirty people all of whom meant a great deal to her.

So now my brother and I have many jobs to do in the months ahead, chief among which is to clear and sell the house that became our family home in March 1967. Understandably this house is full of memories, we all bestow a special degree of significance upon inanimate objects when the people with whom we associate them are no longer there, and for me a great many of those memories are wrapped up in the two sets of drums on which I began my career. The story of the Ludwig Super Classic has been told before and can be found here but my Dad’s silver Rogers Starlighter (1973) was just as significant, and in some ways perhaps more so.

To mark the bringing of those two sets of drums to their new home I shared a couple of videos, one of which has featured on this blog before, but in case you’ve managed to avoid it all this time it can be seen here. So, why, on my first proper television appearance was I using my Dad’s drums and not my Ludwig Super Classic? The answer is that aged 16 I was in the pit band for an international circus at the NEC and my drums were there at that time, so fortunately I was able to use Dad’s drums for the telly gig, but I digress.

Every time I share this video or any of the others from the same period people always make similar sounding, complimentary observations saying things along the lines of “Were you never not great?” which may be a bit of an overstatement but is nonetheless welcome, flattering, and I’ll take it. If you know me even slightly you will be acutely aware that I am not unduly troubled by modesty, but as my friend and major influence the late great Martin Drew used to say (albeit in a slightly different context), “The difference is I know it”. Whether I was great or average at that age was largely dependent upon the musical circumstances in which I found myself, something that is probably still the case to this day, albeit to a hopefully lesser extent. What I will say with absolute confidence is that I don’t sound like a typical teenage drummer of the 1970s. I’m playing more like a forty something on this clip, for which there is a very good reason.

I started going to Midland Youth Jazz Orchestra rehearsals at the end of 1977 after the band had played a gig at my school. They had played there the previous year and I hadn’t found out until after the event which has always struck me as a bit of a ‘What If’ moment. Anyway, idle conjecture aside I hung around until the drum chair came up for grabs which it did in early 1979, so at the time of the television recording I had probably been in the band about ten months. As great an experience as it was, it was by no means the first step in pursuit of my professional ambitions, in fact almost exactly three years previously that journey was already under weigh; a journey that began in a lost era of the music industry which I was fortunate enough to experience at first hand, the like of which none of us will see again.

The sixties and seventies were a golden era for gigging musicians in the UK, and through those early years of my life Dad worked constantly. Four or five gigs a week was perfectly the norm, quite how he found the energy to hold down a five day a week office job alongside all the musical activity is a bit of a mystery. As well as the elite professional music class centred in the major cities (London was always the hub of the profession in the UK, whether it still will be in post pandemic times is another matter entirely) all the smaller cities and larger towns seemed to have their own ‘scene’. Theatres, ballrooms, hotels, night clubs, town halls, civic halls, not to mention countless clubs affiliated to political parties, trade organisations etc. not forgetting pubs of course, all provided paid work for musicians. Also in the Midlands where I grew up, all those big factories had their own venues on site, so gigs were plentiful. Big clubs and hotels all had resident bands, sometimes more than one, and there were freelance, casual gigs in abundance. For a capable player in those days it was perfectly possible to play a lot, hold down a ‘proper’ job, and stay close to your family.

Dad had numerous residencies over the years, and I have early memories of being taken to band rehearsals on Sundays at the George Hotel in Solihull and Penns Hall in Sutton Coldfield where the house band was led by Graham Dalley who was a bit of a legend on the Midland music scene of the time. I was only about six or seven years old at this time, but the power and impact of music being played live was profound. I was also fascinated by the grand piano and decided that I wanted one, but it was drums that we had in the house, so drums it turned out to be, and an early public appearance was a sit in at my cousin Katherina’s wedding reception at the Crown & Cushion, Perry Barr in late summer 1973.

Anyway, fast forward to 1976 and I’m thirteen years old. By now I’m the proud owner of my Dad’s old Ludwig Super Classic which is set up in my bedroom along with a stereo system and an eclectic collection of LPs covering rock, pop, and of course jazz. But that’s not the same as playing music with other people, and so it was that Dad suggested I go with him on a gig with a band he had recently begun to work with on occasion. So we loaded the Rogers drums into the Morris 2200 and off we went; destination Shard End British Legion.

The band in question went by the name of the Colin Phillips Combo, an appearance on ITV’s ‘New Faces’ show from the previous year can be found here. The instrumentation of the band on this occasion was identical as I recall although the personnel probably differed. I recall the trumpet player was Ralph Noakes who doesn’t appear on the TV clip, and that’s obviously not my Dad on drums unless he did it in disguise and never let on about it; neither of which is very likely to be frank.

The main difference was that Colin had added a female vocalist, and midway through the gig it was her task to introduce the individual band members. As it got close to my Dad’s turn he gestured to me to take his place at the drums. The vocalist was only momentarily wrong footed when she turned and saw me there, and I then proceeded to play her next two songs. One was a popular song of the moment entitled ‘The World I Wish For You’ and the other one wasn’t. Anyway, the good news is that everybody survived and we got to the end of the two numbers at pretty much the same tempo they had started in spite of the inexperienced thirteen year old on drums and all the musicians were highly encouraging. So I took a small step on the pathway to getting ‘experience’, that all-important quality that every young musician needed in order to progress to the point of being trusted to get the job done. The charts sitting on the floor tom case that often doubled as a music stand didn’t mean a great deal, so that was the next hurdle that needed to be dealt with, along with getting more precious ‘experience’.

It’s important to realise how different it was to be in a gig band back in those days. Rehearsals were rare, sound checks were virtually unheard of, and the deal was that you turned up and sight read what you were given. Arrive about 45 minutes before the nominated start time, load in, set up, and play. No set lists either. The leader would call out something along the lines of “34, 205, 151,” usually in sets of three, and you would dive in and pull out the nominated charts. Smaller bands would rarely use music at all, and everything pivoted upon hand signals to indicate key signatures. A lot of those old school players had huge, sometimes close to encyclopaedic knowledge of ‘standards’, either that or a sufficiently good ear to navigate one’s way through trickier chord sequences. The bigger, ‘reading’ bands could very often carry a library of two or three hundred charts some of which dated back several decades. The older drum charts for a lot of the popular dance music, as well as the dreaded ‘Old Time’, (about which more later) were not too demanding of drummers. It was mostly all about counting bars, catching dynamic changes and any stops and starts that occurred. There wasn’t much in the way of rhythmic figures or phrasing on the commercially available charts, and I do wonder if the publishing houses lacked faith in the ability of the thousands upon thousands of semi-professional and amateur players to read anything more challenging than a dotted crotchet (quarter for readers in the US) on the & of one. Many of those old arrangements were often a little on the dull side in terms of their harmonic and rhythmic content, and an unusually large percentage of them had printed in the top corner underneath or opposite the composer’s name, ‘Arranged by Jimmy Lally’. Lally was an extraordinarily prolific writer, and what his arrangements lacked in excitement for those charged with playing them they made up for in expanding the repertoires of countless working bands, albeit with the avoidance of mundanity not prioritised.

The more forward looking bands of the time sourced their stock arrangements of more contemporary material from three primary sources; London Orchestrations (aka ‘Random Orchestrations’) Pop Plan (aka ‘Plop Pan’) and John Farley. There were others, but these were the big three and musicians could go from band to band and frequently find themselves playing identical repertoire. Custom arrangements (or ‘specials’ as they were colloquially known) were largely the preserve of the professional bands, a great many of whom also relied on the stock arrangements. When I was on a nomadic odyssey of cruise ships, pantos, holiday camps, backing artists and assorted freelancing, these charts would come up time and again. I could name and shame one or two household name turns of the time who would arrive at band calls with the odd Pop Plan or London Orchs title in their set but good manners prohibits.

John Farley’s charts were in a different league however. Not only did he do utterly dependable take downs of a lot of big band repertoire (especially vocal titles) but would also do good arrangements of his own creation, and these charts with their instantly recognisable slightly italic hand copying, would be the means by which I learned to read.

Obviously there were certain of Dad’s gigs where tagging along was not really a possibility, but in one of those amazing ‘right place, right time’ bits of good fortune as I approached my fourteenth birthday the perfect opportunity came into view.

Although within easy reach of Birmingham, Coventry had its own autonomous music scene. For a medium sized city there was an incredible amount going on and all kinds of good players were based there. Dad had long standing connections to a number of players on the Coventry scene, and as a result got asked to take over the drum chair with the Barrie Phelps Orchestra at the beginning of 1977. This band was the resident ‘dance band’ at the Leofric Hotel in Coventry City Centre, but was a regular fixture at several other hotels in the city as well as clubs, civic halls and even the Coventry Police Ballroom (stop sniggering at the back). The Leofric would offer its house bands to all prospective clients (they had a resident group too, the somewhat curiously named Russell Sprout) as well as a quartet in the hotel’s French restaurant, imaginatively named ‘The French Restaurant’. As mentioned earlier there were gigs to be had in factory venues including Jaguar, Standard Triumph and Matrix. Matrix would become significant later in 1977 but that’s another story.

Although the band bore his name Barrie Phelps had moved on. He was a successful estate agent, very active in local civic society, and had previously promoted jazz events at the Leofric featuring national names. He was a clarinettist and used to play the lead trumpet parts along with alto sax, two tenors and a rhythm section. The band’s charismatic vocalist and front man also played baritone sax so that made for a pretty big sound. After Phelps’s replacement on clarinet moved on the band did the right thing and replaced him with a trumpet player, the hugely resourceful Roy Addinell from Wolverhampton, who also happened to be one of the most nice natured people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting in the industry.

So with no de facto leader the band became a cooperative, largely guided by Ron (lead alto, greeny-yellow N-reg Morris Marina estate) and the aforementioned vocalist/front man Bill (P-reg Austin Maxi, plum coloured).

So the day came and off I went with Dad to the Benn Hall, Rugby. With no trepidation whatsoever I sat in on a couple of buskers, reading ability still not at a level where I could hope to contend with this really rather sophisticated environment. Once again everyone was friendly, encouraging, and hugely supportive. Through much of 1977 I spent most weekends and quite a few weeknights sitting just slightly behind the drums so I could read the charts as Dad played them. This was an extraordinary, hands on, real world learning experience and a great deal of my early vocabulary on the drums was inspired and influenced by listening to what Dad played. These were my drum lessons, this was my music college. As the weeks and months passed I was able to sit in and play the written drum parts accurately. This was due to improving reading skills but probably more to do with memorising the arrangements. I’ve always had a naturally strong capacity for recall and have retained entire structures of many long and complicated big band charts that I haven’t played in thirty five years or so.

The band rarely rehearsed and really only did so a handful of times each year when new material got added. Changing fashion in pop music made this a necessity, but the musicians of this age group considered pop music to be a chore. John Farley to the rescue once again, as his instrumental pop medleys made modern music more palatable. I can remember a selection of Carole King tunes and could probably play the drum part from end to end without so much as looking at it all these years later.  Pop music was played slightly grudgingly and usually a little bit too fast, but you must bear in mind that these musicians were of the big band and jazz era. Their musical tastes were forged at 78 rpm listening to Stan Kenton, Charlie Parker, Woody Herman, home grown British bebop, the Ted Heath Orchestra et al. These were grown men in their early thirties with young families and mortgages when the Beatles exploded on the scene and they remained loyal to the music and musicians who had inspired them when they too were taking their first steps in the industry.

More than just a band, this was the first musician community of which I was a part, and I took a great deal from these players which I believe explains the point at the beginning of this piece. I sounded like someone of their era, an old head on young shoulders, and had no problem with that whatsoever.

Anyhow, on one of those rare occasions when the band rehearsed, a new chart was put up and Dad told me to play it. To my astonishment I sight read it from end to end without error, the studies at the osmosis academy of drumming were bearing fruit; not for the first time and definitely not the last.

1977 continued. The summer was not the scorcher of the previous year and school holidays found me largely indoors with the recently discovered Stick Control book. Sitting in had developed from a couple of tunes to sometimes an entire set (three or four sets a night was commonplace back then). I would often get lumbered with the Old Time set; the joys of The Valeta, St Bernard’s Waltz and The Barn Dance while Dad retired to the band room for a cigarette. Yes kids, people used to smoke indoors!

Then on August 6^th it happened. The band had a quartet gig at the Manor Hotel in Meriden and Dad was already booked to do one of his regular deps at the Allesley Hotel. The drummer for whom Dad was depping used to leave his drums in situ, and as the two venues are a very short distance from one another along the A45 (my personal road to Damascus), I was deposited with the Rogers drums while Dad continued on to Coventry. Resplendent in newly acquired velvet jacket and huge bow tie I did my first proper, grown up gig. It was one of those public dinner/dance events that nice hotels used to do all the time. Local musician and writer Don Mather was actually in the audience that night and referred to it in a review of my ‘Upswing’ album over twenty years later.

Success was complete, I was £15 to the good and thus began my career as a working musician. Youth Jazz Orchestras, actually working with musicians my own age, being on local telly, radio and in the papers was still a way off in the future, a future which arguably began when in October that same year I attended a big band competition organised annually by the Coventry branch of the Musicians’ Union. The die was already well and truly cast, and the mix of inspiration and experience that I gathered in the early months of 77 was the fork in the road, the recalibration of the course and the primary reason for everything that has happened in the intervening 44 years.

For more details of recordings, drum book, DVD, Patreon membership, tuition and (soon hopefully) live appearances visit my website.