Currently listening to.... (2018)

I don't play many CDs in my car. But when I'm in the mood, this is my "driving track." Not that I ever exceed speed limits of course!
I must had this CD about twenty years.

 

Luv LuV LUV

 

Cor Shiney, I bought Nut Rocker as soon as I could and played it until it was worn out - drove everyone mad......and `scuse me, what was wrong with the clothes we wore then? Today`s youngsters wouldn`t fit into them - my waist only measured 18 inches back then !

Could tell you a few stories about the jazz scene in those days - including holding up Acker Bernie Bilk in the bar before he fell off his stool :drunk:- he got back on stage and made a right old mess of 'Stranger on the Shore' - mind you he more than made up for that on other occasions.
I booked lots of great musicians for the club ....happy days

 

This is the very first single I bought ....

 

The senile dentures prevent me from remembering dates very often, but yes they were around the same time. I also remember that Nautilus was on the B side of nutrocker - pile of rubbish
Judith Durham started off singing Trad Jazz in Melbourne Oz before she joined the seekers.

 

I may have told this a few years ago.
I saw an advert in the Melody Maker for Ronnie Scott's first club before it opened. So I applied straight away for myself and my girlfriend. It was 7/6d to join. We were "shacked up together" in our late teens at the time in a flat in Soho. (We did eventually get married).
We got single figure membership numbers. When it opened he hadn't yet got a licence, so you brought your own booze. It was free admission during the week and warmer than our flat, so we were often in there. We used to talk to Stan Tracey the house pianist, quite a bit between sets.
One evening between sets Ronnie dragged a Dansette record player into the middle of the small dance floor saying "You must hear this!" He then played a couple of tracks. We had expected an imported USA jazz record, but it was Peter Sellers LP. "Songs for Swingin' Sellers."

I think it costs over £300 to join now.

We had a great time living in Soho for a year. We both worked in the West-End.
On occasions we would stay at Ronnies' until chucking out time, then walk round to Covent Garden Market, where the pubs would still be open for the workers. We would finish up at a working men's café, for a breakfast of door-step bacon sandwiches and tea in an enamel mug.

Then we'd go home, have a wash, tidy ourselves up and then go on to work. But we didn't do that too often. One Saturday night, we bumped into some work friends in old Compton Street around 9.00pm. They asked us where we were going. We said "The launderette," which amazed them. We rarely went out on a Saturday night. Soho was quite quiet after the tube stopped running at midnight any day of the week. It was then mostly just the locals.

We lived in a top floor flat. There were three flats above a milk bar.
Below us was the bass player in the "Fraser Hayes Four," he lived with his dancer girlfriend. She was handy at throwing pots and pans at him sometimes. He kept his double bass on the landing. Once we heard it bouncing down the stairs. She must have pushed it. It was always in a case so I guess that saved it.

We were friendly with an attractive divorcee in her thirties, who lived in the bottom flat. She was a nightclub hostess at various clubs, Edmundo Ros's, The Latin Quarter and Winston's.
She let us watch her TV on Saturday nights when she was working. She often took us to the Rice Bowl in South Kensington for lunch on Sundays. I think she was lonely.