It’s a sad thing to report but I have to tell you I had to wait until I was 80 years old before I at last got to play in a really good six-piece traditional jazz band.
Why was that? Partly because I left it late in life to take an interest in the music.
When I was eight years old, my parents forced me to have a few piano lessons. I hated the tedious business of practising scales night after night, as required by my teacher. I pleaded with my parents to let me give up and they eventually did so. But at least I had learned the rudiments of music.
Fast forward to when I was over fifty years old. I happened to attend a jazz concert given by Kenny Ball and his Band. I was so excited by it that I suddenly had the crazy ambition to play in a jazz band.
Over the following months, having bought a second-hand trumpet, I worked hard – with the help of books – at mastering the blowing and the fingering. Soon I was able to play a few easy tunes.
I bought several ‘Busker’s Books’ in order to obtain tunes and lead-sheets.
I advertised in the local paper to find other people who might care to join me. Soon we had a band of half a dozen players, four of whom were complete beginners. We got together once a week, practised a great deal and soon were able to play a few simple tunes. We must have sounded awful but the hobby gave us enormous pleasure. Eventually we had the courage to offer ourselves to play free of charge in local care homes and a pub.
One day I sat in for a couple of tunes with a good jazz band that was in town. I managed fairly well, and one of the musicians took my phone number. This led to invitations to deputize and eventually play in a couple of reasonably experienced bands.
At the time I was still working hard learning tunes. It also dawned on me that chord sequences were vitally important and needed studying.
I bought a lovely cornet and went on to discover that I preferred it to the trumpet. After that, I increasingly played the cornet.
Over the years, I gradually became known among band-leaders for miles around. With older players retiring or dying, by the time I was 65 years old, I was offered many opportunities with various bands. I continued to study the music, learn more tunes and to practise regularly. I visited New Orleans to learn from the playing of the bands there.
I played many gigs in pubs, at jazz clubs, at bandstand summer concerts, at weddings and private parties. Many of the groups in which I played were quite good, though not remotely in the same league as the best young bands (such as The Shotgun Jazz Band and Tuba Skinny) currently established in New Orleans.
When I reached the age of 80, I had met and played with many fine musicians based in the English Midlands, where I now live. One of these was a clarinet player whose music was both very tasteful and also grounded in excellent technique. One day he was asked at short notice to put together a band to play at a jazz club near Derby, because the regular band had suddenly become unavailable. He phoned round among his musician friends and kindly invited me to be the cornet player.
I turned up apprehensively at the gig because I did not know some of the other players and I had never even been to that jazz club. I need not have worried. The other five were superb musicians – three of them (the rhythm section) accurately providing that four-in-a-bar steady pulse that I consider so important, pumping the band along. The trombonist was perfect in every note, complementing what I was trying to do and moving the music along with understated power. Our leader, the clarinet player, offered exquisite decorations and the top-end excitement that our music needs.
My task was easier than I had expected: for much of the time I was able to concentrate on tone and to play a simple line for the clarinet and trombone to decorate.
The leader had sent us in advance a tune list – with keys – so the presentation of our programme on the night was smooth and impressive.
Here were six people who had never played or even rehearsed together as a band before. But, because they were fine musicians and great team players – all willing to listen and respond to what others in the band were doing – it was a great evening. At the end I was on a high. But good news was that the other players were all well pleased too: they felt the evening had been something special. Several members of the audience told us how much they had enjoyed it and they hoped we would return.
I was 80. But I had got there in the end!