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Episode 2 About this time also, the Light Programme on BBC radio started a programme called Saturday Skiffle Club - an hour-long programme celebrating the boom in skiffle, headed by Lonnie Donnegan, who had previously played with the Chris Barber Jazz Band. In 1960, the programme dropped the word "skiffle" and was extended to two hours, and became a secondary source of finding out about new and forthcoming records in the trad jazz boom. Make no mistake, trad jazz was everywhere for the best part of two years. Every weekly magazine for girls had portrait pictures of those all-important trad jazz purveyors. There was no doubt, the three "Bs", Barber, Ball and Bilk (Chris, Kenny and Acker respectively) were outstanding. There were others who tried to copy Acker Bilk, bands like Dick Charlesworth's City Gents, who also dressed snazzily, but they lacked something that Acker's band had, and that was Peter Leslie and the Bilk Marketing Board, not to mention the outstanding talent of Acker and his fellow band musicians. You'll find much more about Acker Bilk on my Acker Bilk Sleeve Notes page here... When Uncle George came to stay with us in the summer holidays, he calmly announced that Johnny Mortimer, Acker's trombonist, was a nephew of his, which means that I was related to one of the Paramount Jazz Band, if only by marriage! I was thrilled beyond belief at this news! And with Stranger On the Shore becoming the best-selling record of 1962, he and the Paramount Jazz Band left all the other trad jazz bands behind. Coincidentally, the Beatles were beginning to become known - LOVE ME DO and the issue of their first album, PLEASE PLEASE ME in early 1963 were indicators of something quite extraordinary, and the banter at school no longer included Cliff Richard, it was all about Elvis vs The Beatles, and no prizes for guessing who won! On the Acker Bilk page in this issue of Books Monthly you'll see a poster showing Acker Bilk and the Beatles. This would have been in 1962, when the Beatles played in Gloucester Odeon, a support act for Acker. I MEET THE BEATLES! In 1962, this would have been, and I frequently walked through the city after getting off the bus that took us from school on the way home. It was a two-bus journey, the first bus dropping us off in Westgate, and then a walk through to the bus station in King's Square; and I would spend a lot of time in Hickey's music shop, buying the occasional single, of which there was a box in the left hand side of the shop. I went into the shop looking for a copy of Ray Charles (and the Ray-lets) singing WHAT'D I SAY, which I'd heard on Radio Luxembourg, and found a cover version by Bobby Darin, who happened to be my favourite singer. I was aware of three older youths, all wearing long black overcoats, messing about in the right hand side of the shop, taking guitars down off the wall and playing them, much to the dismay and anger of Mr Hickey, who was an old-fashioned and rather intolerant shopkeeper. These youths could only mean one thing to him -trouble! I saw them coming towards me out of the corner of my eye, and one of them said "what record are you getting, then", in a deep, gruff Liverpool accent. I didn't want any trouble, so I handed him the single, and he grinned, and said: "Good choice, Kid", and handed it back. I paid for my record and left the shop, realising as I walked to King's Square in order to board the bus home, that it had been John, Paul and George in the music shop, the guys who had asked me what record I was buying! Ringo would have been out in the city with his camera, he was always taking photographs. I couldn't wait to tell the boys in my class the following day - I had been in Hickeys' music shop when the Beatles were there! Wow! Wow! Wow! I found out later that they were appearing at the Gloucester Odeon as the support band for Cliff Richard or Marty Wilde or someone like that. And I'd met them, and they'd spoken to me! Trad Jazz took a back seat when I bought my PLEASE PLEASE ME album. I played it over and over again, as loud as I dared, and Jean still complained, asking my Mum to make me "turn it down". For me, the world of music changed overnight with the Beatles as it did for so many other millions of people. From pooh-poohing rock and roll, preferring trad jazz (and a small number of select classical pieces), I was desperate for Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, but first and foremost, the Beatles... and then we moved from Gloucester in the summer of 1963, and within a couple of years, my musical horizons had widened... The small print: Books Monthly, now well into its 24th year on the web, is published on or slightly before the first day of each month by Paul Norman. You can contact me here. If you wish to submit something for publication in the magazine, let me remind you there is no payment as I don't make any money from this publication. If you want to send me something to review, contact me via email at paulenorman1@gmail.com and I'll let you know where to send it.
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