Jazz Clubs come and go. Sometimes, like old soldiers they just fade away.
In this modern world, with so many alternatives to going out in all weather to listen to live music, it is quite an achievement for a club to survive for quarter of a century.
That Blaydon Jazz Club has managed it says much, not just for the excellence of the music, but also for the dedication of those behind it.
Lance Liddle.
The Pauline Years.
It would be around July 1984 - Marion and I, along with our son Stephen, are on our way home from a visit to the dentist. We meet Pauline Haley, a friend from my schooldays. Pauline has taken over as landlady of an old pub, The Black Bull in Blaydon and is trying to revive its fortunes – a folk night, a quiz night – would I be interested in a jazz night? I look at the place, express my reservations but agree to give it a try. I think: 'a few weeks at the most'.
Now, 25 years later …
At the time I’d been considering forming a jazz group with tenor sax player Bill Smith who I knew from Peter Gascoigne’s Saratoga Jazz sessions at The Corner House, Heaton, and greatly admired his beautiful playing and gorgeous tone. Our desire was to play in the Mainstream/Swing idiom based on nice American Songbook repertoire. At that time most local bands were either traditional or modern in style, with little happening in between. It was this niche that we hoped to fill and The Black Bull offered us a chance to test the water. Bill and I put a quartet together with Clem Avery on double bass and Marshall Walker on drums. Our first ‘nervy’ session was 13th September 1984. It was okay for a couple of weeks then a problem – no music licence! To keep the music going we played as a duo (a licence was needed for three or more musicians) fortunately, Pauline discovered we could get round this by forming a club. Membership cards were hastily organized, and we resumed as a quartet.
Within a year the pub was jumping. A lot of good things all seemed to come together to make it a magical time. A supportive landlady, perfectly kept ale that won Camra awards, an ideal, intimate, room, lots of activities in the pub which all stimulated interest, word of mouth recommendation. The jazz became an integral part of it and a period of about seven years ensued during which time the jazz night was regularly played to a full house.
There were a lot of guest players, including many surprise visitors as well as some fine local jazz musicians who would drop by for ‘a blow’; all in all it was a memorable time.
One regular guest was the legendary George Evans. That's George with Pauline in the b/w picture above. He was a wonderful, inspirational person - stylish and elegant as a player and as a person. George had played sax as a teenager at The BBC (when the great Benny Carter came over from America to lead the BBC Dance Orchestra in the mid ‘30s). He was later featured as saxophonist, vocalist and arranger with the Geraldo Orchestra, then led his own band in London before moving north to run the band at Newcastle’s Oxford Galleries. George was known worldwide as a big band leader and arranger. What a privilege it was to have him sitting in at Blaydon.
Bill Smith told me about a guitarist, Jim Birkett, who had moved north to head up the music diploma course at Newcastle College where Bill did some teaching. I suggested he invited him down and thus started a close friendship and musical association. Jim, of course, is still a regular guest.
I remember Kenny Baker, not to be confused with the trumpet player, the American balladeer or the politician of the same name but the midget in the Morton Frazer Harmonica Gang, arriving in his adapted Mercedes and sitting in on harmonica. He was doing a season in panto at The Theatre Royal.
Eric & Grace Booth brought their son Paul to sit in. Even at 12/13 years of age it was obvious he had a rare talent. He is now, surely, one of the UK’s finest jazz saxophonists and plays all over the world.
Other local players would sit in or guest with the band – too many names to mention but most of Tyneside’s jazz players came along at one time or another. Sometimes we’d have several joining the band on the same evening. Great times. Sometime during the first year, we had the idea of bringing in an occasional ‘name’ guest. We ran raffles to enable us to be able to afford to do this. So on 26/27 Sep 1985 we brought Digby Fairweather in for two nights, admission £1.90. Both gigs were played to a packed house – memorable. The success of this encouraged us to do more and so started a club policy of bringing guest players, usually from the mainstream of the music, in keeping with our own style. Some of these guests have become very good friends and have played at the club many times.
Gordon/Mary Era – The bebop phase.
Around 1991 two sad things happened. Pauline left the pub trade and Bill Smith left to meet his pre-existing commitments with The River City Jazzmen. It marked the end of a golden period. A new management team, Gordon and his wife Mary, took on the pub. To their credit they regarded the jazz night (and other pub activities) as very important and did all they could to support it. A young Charlie Parker disciple, Mark Toomey, joined on sax and, aided by the great Billy Harper on piano, the group expanded to a quintet playing in a boppish vein. The club continued to thrive and, with frequent guests, the momentum was not lost. However, in 1998, another new manager came to the pub. I can’t recall his name but from the start he made it obvious that he was not keen on jazz and within a couple of weeks he cancelled the jazz night. I don’t think that to this day he realized that he had ended what had become, not just a jazz, but a local institution.
The club moved to a pub in Burnopfield but it didn’t work out – after struggling on for a year we moved back to good old Blaydon – this was in 1999. The new venue was the former Conservative Club (now Blaydon House Sports/Social Club) who allowed us to use their cocktail lounge for weekly sessions and the bigger concert room for name guests. The club stewards, Shirley and Trevor, gave great support. By now the old group had disbanded and a new quartet became resident, fronted by Billy Harper piano and with Billy Shield drums, Pete Stuart bass and myself on guitar and vocals. Mark Robertson played on drums for quite a while till Bill recovered from an eye op.
In 1999 a tragic event occured. Randolph (Randy) Heads died suddenly, in his sleep. It was one of those totally unexpected events that just shattered everyone. Randy had been a devoted supporter of jazz in general, NE jazz and Blaydon in particular. He was a keen drummer who just loved jazz, it's musicians, the whole thing. He would do anything to help - was a tireless worker for Jazz North East (the funded arts body) and at Blaydon he often fixed guests, provided accomodation and was an absolute a pillar of support. It's fair to say the local jazz scene lost one of it's main supporters and activists and to this day he is greatly missed. A while after his passing the club arranged a charity event (Roy Williams and John Barnes gave their services for free) and the proceeds were shared between two local charities (see photo). Partner Shirley has remained a devout supporter of the club and to this day looks after the door and finances etc.
Billy on song.
For a purple period of about five years, Billy Harper absolutely peaked with a constant flow of well known and more obscure American Songbook material. Sometimes he would play a set of all Strayhorn, another time all songs beginning with ‘I’ or maybe songs with ‘love’ in the title. Bill seemed to know every tune. Sometimes wife Anne (De Vere) would join the band with her own high class vocal interpretations of the great songs.
Also we would still often feature a local guest player and occasionally a top UK player would travel up to play.
Tall Ships & River Festival
In the autumn of 2005 the club was given the opportunity to organise a 'journey' themed event, part of this Tyneside Festival. The theme was 'a journey through jazz' and it was a great opportunity to bring different styles together.
The four concerts were - -
1920s New Orleans - Rae Brothers New Orleans Jazz Band
1930s Paris - Keith Stephen's Gypsy Jazz
1950s New York - Mick Shoulder's Blue Note Quintet.
'A journey through the American Songbook' - John Hallam + house rhythm section.
Jeremy hits town.
When Bill and Anne decided to retire to Brittany in France in 2005, another great pianist took Bill’s piano chair when Jeremy McMurray agreed to come up from Teesside to play. Bill was a hard act to follow but Jeremy has shown everyone what a great player he is too. Unfortunately it became unworkable to have weekly sessions so for the past three years or so the club has promoted a monthly concert usually with the resident quartet plus guest player and occasionally we feature some of the raft of wonderful young players now emerging on the NE jazz scene. So here we are in 2009, reaching our 25th anniversary in September, starting at our new venue (Blaydon House closed Dec 2008) and continuing to fly the flag for swing/mainstream style jazz based mostly on The Great American Songbook.
Below is a list of our guest players who travelled from beyond the north east, over the years (in alphabetical order).
Some have been to the club many times. (apologies if I’ve missed you out.)
Bruce Adams, Lennart Anderssen, Steve Andrews, Alan Barnes, John Barnes, Paul Booth, Asha Brewer, Frank Brooker,
Roy Cansdale, Janusz Carmello, Ben Castle, Dave Challis, George Chisholm (tpt), Kelvin Christian, Dave Cliff, Crazy Rhythm, John Crocker, Gordon Cruikshank, Fiona Duncan, Alan Elsdon, George Evans, Digby Fairweather, John Hallam, Paul Hares, Peter Jacobsen, Dick Lee, Phil Lee, Bob Ludlam, Pascal Michot, Mike Piggott, Gary Potter, Ronnie Rae, Geoff Simpkin, Jon Taylor, Bruce Turner, Tim Whitehead, Tommy Whittle, Roy Williams, Al Wood,
Vasilis Xenopoulos.
Plus many local guest players too numerous to list.
Acknowledgement - the more recent pics just above are all shown with kind permission of Eddie Carson and Lance Liddle.
For more on BlaydonJazz and a fantastic archive of the NE jazz scene do visit Lance's amazing Blog 'Bebop Spoken Here'
It's a must! See links.
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