Currently listening to.... (2018)

I've a vague recollection. Never went in the 2is. I can remember walking past it one night and meeting someone I knew who was just coming out of it. He said the singer they'd got there was rubbish and was finishing that week and that Joe Brown would be there next week, who we agreed was much better. The "rubbish" singer to whom he was referring, was Cliff Richard.

I do remember the The Heaven and Hell and the Macabre, but our favourite haunt was The Chapingo.

We sometimes went to a basement coffee bar after work, which was behind Oxford Circus, called The Martinique, it had a West Indian decor. Then it was taken over by a new owner, a short fat bald man wearing glasses. It became more like a Wimpy Bar with mirrors on the wall and Formica tables. He had a very attractive teenage girl, who we think was his daughter, acting as a waitress.
I can still hear him saying on one occasion, "Loretta you've brought back two coffee cups and only one spoon!"

The common crockery in most coffee bars were those clear glass cups and saucers made by Arcoroc. They shattered if you dropped them. We used to pinch these at lunchtime sometimes until we'd all got one for our morning and afternoon breaks. Most of us went to lunch at the same time, (in my office the young women outnumbered the young men by five to one).
The girls used have those circular flat straw baskets with two handles which were very popular.
They could drop a set into the basket without being detected.
One of the girls told me that her boss asked "why don't you bring me my morning coffee in one of those nice glass cups and saucers?"
She said, she replied. "I would but you'll have to pinch it from a coffee bar first."

There was a luncheon voucher fiddle. We were all poorly paid at first, but we got 3/- luncheon vouchers. Some companies used Luncheon Vouchers Ltd. So used vouchers would be sent to their clearing house. But my firm printed and issued their own. Each month the various restaurants had to attach them all to an invoice and send them in for payment. One of the girl's jobs was to check the number of vouchers matched the total on the invoice and then destroy the vouchers. One or two restaurants couldn't be bothered to stamp the vouchers, so a few each month could be "recycled."

Happy days!

 

Acker Bilk, was one of a number of traditional jazz bands that did the London circuit of jazz clubs, in the fifties and sixties. We saw him at The Eel Pie Island Hotel several times.
"The Dress Code" was longish hair, baggy sweaters, ex army KD trousers, or later the ones Lee Cooper made that looked a smarter version and suede shoes with the white stitching connecting the upper to the sole.
We saw him again about ten or more years ago when his band, plus that of Kenny Ball and Chris Barber made up the bill at the Lowry Theatre. As we'd not seen him since our teens, as my wife and I made our way to our seats, my wife said, "It's all old people in here!" Which made me smile.

I saw Louis Armstrong at the Empress Hall when I was still at school and later, Chris Barber at The Royal Festival Hall, when Lonnie Donegan still played banjo in his band.

Then I discovered Miles Davis and became a "modernist."

"The dress code," was Italian style jackets (mine was shadow stripes of grey and black) "tab" shirts, straight knitted ties, slim-line black trousers and Italian shoes.

For girls it was white blouses and black tapered skirts. My future wife had some yellow pearlised leather Italian stilettos that cost her two weeks wages in some fancy shoe shop in the West-End. Many times in later life she's tried to get another pair but has never found quite the right ones.

A good read of those days is George Melley's first auto-biography, "Owning Up." About his time as the singer with Mick Mulligan's jazz band. Who I saw for the first time at The White Rock Pavilion in Hastings, when on holiday with my mum and dad.
That book went out of print, but then decades later, was combined with his two subsequent biographies and may still be available.


Those skin-head "erberts" in parkas who road around with a Lambretta somewhere under a collection of rear-view mirrors and called themselves, "Mods," came later.

 

Completely at random I came across this. Its worth a look.



G.

 

Oi! What's up with punk!


The Sex Pistols were a massive influence to future greats, the great Joy Division included............

Nothing up with mods either..............


Sixties mods influenced Paul Weller in his younger days who is now one of the greats of British music.............


Anyway, back to old people music New year, new thread, so now it is time for me to sing the praises of Ruth Copeland again. Hailing from the North East she had world at her feet when she went out to the States and ended up becoming part of George Clintons Parliament/Funkadelic (PFunk). For various reasons it wasn't to be but this woman was so talented..........


Another member of PFunk who only reall got their due recognition later was the late great Eddie Hazel. Forget Hendrix and the rest, Eddie was the real deal on a guitar.................

 

Oi! What's up with punk!

Oh please .....it`s one of the reasons I was glad when no 1 son left home.
When one is fortunate enough to have been born in the 40`s, and experienced the best .....there is no need to suffer that kind of noise ....

 

We really only went to local coffee bars when we lived in Soho other than those nearest where we worked. The Chapingo was I think in a street off Old Compton Street. It was a bit more upmarket and was at ground floor level, the one in Hopper's "Nighthawks," reminded me of it a bit, as it had that sort of location, on a corner. The "girls" in their fur coats often use to sit quietly in a corner when they weren't working.





The office where I worked was in upper Regent Street. I used to be able to park my 1936 Austin 7 Ruby convertible I bought for £35 when I was seventeen at the top end, if I used it to come to work when I was still living at home. But only for a few months until the office relocated to a new building in Knightsbridge. There I was given his parking space by the managing director, as he came to work on the train and said "You park there to stop other buggers from parking in my space!"

Edmundo Ros's club was in the basement when we were in Regent Street. It had a separate entrance to the right of the building's main entrance, but it shared the lift. Sometimes, coming back from lunch, we'd call for the lift and he'd be in it coming up from the basement. We got to know him quite well over the three years we were there. He was always very friendly. He would sometimes be accompanied by a tall exotic looking Latin American girl, a different one each time. I guess they were dancers. He was probably taking them up to his office which was on an upper floor for an interview....or whatever.

 

You're never too old for punk

There is a flip side................ I had the misfortunate experience of being the son of parents who were born in the forties - do you have any idea of the racket that us kids had to listen to About the only thing that we agreed on was Roy Orbison. That said my Mum prefers Cliff Richard () and me Dad reckons that Cilla was better than Marianne Faithful ()

 

All parents are different.

I was born in the early forties, my introduction to music was the old 78s my mother and an aunt had. These were of the big band era.

This my aunt's favourite, I still like the tune.
.


My Mother's from the fifties. I uploaded this to YouTube. I like it too, I know it's "of it's time." It's had over thirty four thousand hits.

Steve Conway : My Foolish Heart

I was into mostly American Pop, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, The Coasters, etc.,
I had no time for Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde and the rest of that crew, who just copied the American artists, Cilla Black just copied Dionne Warwick's hits to start. Even when the Beatles came along, they started by copying recordings of American artists which I'd already heard so didn't go a bundle on them either.
A lot of young people of any era tend to "pigeonhole" themselves as far as music tastes.

I'll listen to anything with a good tune, played or sung well.

I'll listen too anything from, The Boswell Sisters, in the thirties, big bands, the vocalists from them who left and started their own careers, like, Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, etc.
So many of them with great voices, unknown to younger generations.





To Trad Jazz, Modern Jazz, the novelty acts like

Louis Prima & Keely Smith.



The Four Freshmen, how many singing groups have copied them?



It's the modern jazz of the fifties and sixties that appeals most to me most.

Bill Evans. Miles Davis, Chet Baker. John Coltrane. etc.,

"The Birth of the Cool."



They could play anything. Coltrane with an underrated singer Johnny Hartman. One of my favourite tunes.



"So much to hear, so little time."

 

Please pass on my sincere condolences to your long suffering mum and dad

 

That despite their worst efforts musically he came out the other side undamaged

There is a lot of music from the "olden days" that I like............