Mike Rose

Interviewer: If we can have your name, date of birth and how you spell your name.

Mike: Okay, yes, are you recording?

Interviewer: Yes, I am.

Mike: Fine. Yes, Mike Rose…I was born in 1946 so I am currently 70. What was the rest of the question?

Interviewer: Oh, just how do you spell your name? Actually, it’s perfectly straightforward with you, isn’t it?

Mike: Yeah, I don’t think you’ve really got a problem there.

Interviewer: R-O-S-E. Sometimes it gets confusing.

Mike: I can image.

Interviewer: Mike, I know that obviously you’re involved now with the Jazz Archive along with myself, but born when you were, what was it got you into jazz in the first place?

Mike: That’s very easy. I had an elder brother, who was a lot older than me. He was 17, 18 when I was born in 1946 so he grew into a teenager in the early ‘40s and his interest at that time was very much jazz. He was a regular at the Cleveland Jazz Club, which was a club held in a pub over in Edmonton. That featured…the main band that was featured there was the Freddy Randall Band, who were very big at that particular time, but they also have lots of other visiting bands. He was also, spinning off from that, he was very much into swing music but obviously, being jazz orientated, it was Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman and Basie and Ellington rather than Glenn Miller, shall we say. He had this record collection which covered those sorts of musicians, which, at the age of around five or six, I managed to purloin. Now, I can’t confess that when I was listening to these records – which I did hour after hour after hour – I knew what they were as I would do now, or even 40 years ago, but I knew what I liked and I knew that this was fantastic. And inevitably, being an elder brother, when he saw that I got this interest, he encouraged me by buying me, by that time, vinyls. I can remember him buying me the Jelly Roll Morton album and various other similar things until one day he bought me – it was a Christmas – he bought me a compilation album of jazz trumpet players and I discovered Bix Beiderbecke and I have then spent the rest of my days trying, and attempting, and succeeding in collecting every single recording that Bix was ever known to make. But along the way, I started to move forward and picked up on, obviously associate musicians and then my first job found me in the West End of London in the music business and I was working in a store 120 yards from Ronnie Scott’s old place, which meant that my jazz education and interest suddenly took about a 30 year leap [laughter] because there I was mixing with Tubby Hayes and Ronnie and Dick Morrissey and Bobby Wellins and of course the Americans that Ronnie was bringing over. [00:04:08]

Interviewer: Well maybe if we can leap backwards a bit because one of the big bands you didn’t mention, of course, was Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. Now given your interest in --

Mike: --Well, yes. Oh no, no, no. Yes, well I mean, I never associate Whiteman in the same sort of way that I would include with what became the swing bands, but no, I love them. I mean, I used to play particularly the Bing Crosby Rhythm Boys recordings - I mean I used to love those. I never got upset about Whiteman, which I know a lot of jazz fans did. I think it was because he was given this appalling moniker of being the ‘King of Jazz’ but, I think you’ll agree, it was purely a marketing exercise and it never bothered me because I felt that the thing that Whiteman did, is that not only did he employ these fantastic jazz musicians and he gave them work and encouraged them and so much really fantastic music - alright, particularly in the white Chicago era – but I think the guy did a great job and a great service to jazz in a roundabout way almost. [00:05:25]

Interviewer: And of course, from the musicians that you’ve mentioned there, I’m taking it that of course this is a period before the traditional jazz boom, it’s more rooted in the ‘40s swing…

Mike: Well, yes, but equally, you see, I also had a slightly older sister, who, interestingly, I was out with last night at a Chris Barber concert, which we both thoroughly enjoyed. I mean lovely – great stuff. Of course, she was listening, by then, to all the traditional jazz bands and, in fact, I brought a piece of memorabilia in with me today, which is the flyers from the National Jazz Federation’s annual trip down to Margate and back, which I attended twice, which featured just about every traditional band that was known to man at the time. I mean, this was before, you know, the rise of Kenny Ball and Acker Bilk so you’ve got people like Mick Mulligan with George Melly, you’ve got the Merseysippi, you’ve got the Yorkshire Jazz Band, you’ve got Alex Welsh Chris, Ken Colyer and so that became another strand as well, you know? And I’ve found that, inevitably, you’ve got your choices and the people that you respond to and the people you like and I often say to people who’ve got at least a little jazz knowledge that I’ll quite happily play two tracks, one after the other, the first one will be a Ken Colyer track and the second will be a Thelonious Monk track because I love them both and I don’t care! [laughter] And I can even remember when you had the Dirty Boppers and Mouldy Figs, when you had this conflict between the traditional fans and the modern fans and I used to laugh and think it’s all good jazz. [00:07:27]

Interviewer: I mean obviously that was going on amongst the journalists; was it also being reflected in youth culture?--

Mike: --Oh yes, without a doubt. Definitely. I can vividly remember people who would be pointed out in the street because they were seen walking around carrying a Dave Brubeck album. Another great memory is that I was at school with another couple of guys – this was at secondary school – and we were all of us listening, I suppose, mostly to the American music in the main - so I’m talking now, again, the early ‘60s, late ‘50s, early ‘60s - so we decided what the school needed was a jazz club. I approached the headmaster and I can only describe, if you can think of the least likely person ever to be a jazz fan, that would sum up the persona of the headmaster. I said to him ‘we’d like to set up this jazz club’ and he said ‘well, what will that comprise?’ I said ‘well, we’ll have one lunch time a week, we’ll borrow the school record player’ – because I think that was all that was available – and I said ‘you know, we’ll get together and we’ll play records’…Those jazz groups, it was quite common and it was for many years, wasn’t it? And he agreed, eventually, although he kept a weather eye on us because obviously he didn’t want…about that time, do you remember the riots at Beaulieu? Do you remember those? [00:09:10]

Interviewer: I can’t say I do.

Mike: Oh yes, there was the Beaulieu Jazz Festival and there was a big punch up between the traditionalists and the modernists and I think he was a bit concerned about that but we never punched up. But the best thing of all was that we used to…there was a couple of the masters, there was the Woodwork master, who, in truth, wasn’t a great many years older than us, and he used to hang on every word that we said because by this time we’d gained some knowledge of bands and musicians and what to listen to and what was worth bothering with. But the one we always talk about – even now, even all these years later, one of my friends who was with me at the time – the one we always talk about, was the Science master. Now, this guy was a Muggsy Spanier fan; he started with Muggsy Spanier and he finished with Muggsy Spanier and he had the Big 16 - do you remember seeing that album?

Interviewer: No, I don’t.

Mike: The Big 16 was the Muggsy Spanier album and he would always turn up at every session with his Muggsy Spanier album under his arm! [laughs] We used to let him play one track and say ‘that’s enough Muggsy Spanier for today’. So that was great. But I think the big leap forward, as I say, was when I started working in the West End and I hadn’t listened to anything that would be vaguely described as modern up to that point.

Interviewer: And this was on 45s, presumably. Sorry, not 45s, on LPs--

Mike: --Oh yeah, it’s all vinyl--

Interviewer: Not the old Shellac or whatever.

Mike: Well no. I’ve still got all my brother’s 78s, I’ve still got them all. I would never part with them. I am in the process trying to get my – somebody kindly in their will left me a wind up gramophone, which I’ve been trying to get serviced because I would like to play the 78s. But having said this, one of the little projects – you know we all have our little projects that we set ourselves? – one of the little projects - which I’ve been quite successful at - is finding those 78 recordings on CD. And it can get tricky at times but I have found those records that I’d listened to at, you know, five, six, seven, eight…I can think of Benny Goodman’s ‘Bach Goes to Town’, I can think of the Harry James ‘Get Happy’, you know…I know them inside-out and upside-down and I’ve now managed to find a lot of them on CD, which gives me so much joy, I can’t tell you! [00:11:49]

Interviewer: Were they easy to find at the time? Or did you have to go to specialist shops?

Mike: Well, no, no. Well, I think the big turnaround came with CDs. There was so much that suddenly, it seemed, became available. At the time that I was at school and one particular friend, who I’m still in regular contact with despite the fact that he lives 5,000 miles away. At the time, we were doing the typical schoolboy jobs – paper rounds, washing cars etc. – to raise pocket money. But then what we would do, every couple of months or so we’d take our pocket money to places like Dobells’ and Azman’s, you know, the recognised jazz record stores in the city and the West End, and we would take our pocket money and we would spend half a day raking through their second hand jazz albums…we’d get so much fun out of that and, in fact, I never failed to thoroughly enjoy even jumble sales, I’d go to a jumble sale. I’d go through the Des O’Connors and the Shani Wallis’s and the Mrs. Mills because somewhere buried there, there would be something that was worth really bothering with. And I used to love this and, of course, as I’ve said, becoming this complete devotee to Bix, it was Bix, in particular, I was looking for. And then at the time there was a jazz magazine which was published locally - which is all in the archive - and I got to know the guy who wrote and edited it and – Storyville, is the name of the magazine, they’re all on the archive’s website – and Laurie Wright--

Interviewer: --Laurie Wright, yeah-- [00:13:54]

Mike: --Nice guy, I got to know Laurie and he was selling a few records, one thing or another, and he would do reviews in Storyville. And the copy of Storyville came along this day and I was going through it and I discovered from a review written there that a small company – I think in San Francisco – had managed to get together all the known originals of every single track that Bix had ever appeared on – even if it was suggested he was in the canteen of the recording studio while a recording was going on, they got it! [laughter] It turned out, I think it was 12 vinyls, 12 vinyl albums. It was only available from a small importer down in Kingsbridge, Devon and I phoned the guy and said ‘I’ve got to have this’ and he said ‘well, you know, I’m only bringing them in one at a time.’ I think at the time he wanted something like the best part of 200 quid I think it was for this collection. And he said ‘but I’ll tell you what, I have got one set in stock.’ He said ‘but somebody put a deposit on but they’ve never been back.’ And he said ‘let me think about it.’ Anyway, he gave me a call a couple of days later and he said ‘if you’re prepared to give me the money for it, you can have it.’ And it arrived and I just opened this box and looked at these recordings. And, of course, they did a fabulous job - it’s all in strict chronological order. The research that they put into it and the quality of the recordings was remarkable. The punch line to this story is about six months later an Italian company, who might have been Joker - I don’t know if you’ve ever come across that label - in Italy virtually replicated it on CD for about 100 quid. And I thought to myself ‘well, what am I going to do?’ And I thought ‘from what little I know about the value of vinyl, if I play them, that’s it, the value’s gone.’ I thought ‘well, I’m only interested in the music really…’ so I bought the CDs as well, which is what now gets played. But then, there is a secondary punchline; I mean, as you know, Vic, we’ve got Rabbit records, who work very much for the archive buying people’s unwanted collections of CDs and vinyl and then selling them and giving the profit to the archive, which is a fabulous thing to do. So purely in social conversation, I said to him I’d got this set of vinyls. And I said ‘I’m not going to sell them, I’m not selling them, I wouldn’t sell them. I don’t know what I’m ever going to do with them but they’re not going anywhere.’ And I said ‘could you just get me a price? What would they be worth?’ and he came back to me and said 30 quid. [laughter] 30 quid! [00:17:13]

Interviewer: It is sad. I mean, as you know, from the archive’s point of view we get people quite often come in with what they believe to be incredibly valuable recordings. Although at least vinyl’s having a bit of a comeback.

Mike: Yeah, I mean, personally I’m not particularly bothered, I go back too long. I can remember when the transition from valve equipment to transistor equipment came in and there were people who said ‘no…transistor equipment will never sound the way that valve equipment does.’ And I think this also happened in the rock music business with Marshall amplifiers, didn’t it? I think Marshall brought out a range of amplifiers that were part valve, part transistor for the same reasons. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve always felt I’ve got this little switch in my head which works automatically. I’m not listening to the sound source, I’m listening to the music…The recordings you were playing today, for example, to me, that’s fine, I’m quite happy with that. If you had then been able to produce something of a similar example and it had been on crystal clear MP3, then I would have just accepted it in the same way. The switch goes on and off automatically. It’s the music that matters, the rest of it is not that important.

Interviewer: Was there a Bix Beiderbecke society or anything like that? Because some musicians they would--

Mike: --There is a very active Bix Beiderbecke society and they have an annual weekend in his hometown of Davenport.

Interviewer: Iowa.

Mike: Iowa. And in fact I was looking at their website the other day and thinking ‘hmm, I wonder. Is that somewhere I perhaps should be heading sometime? I don’t know.’ But yes it is a very active website…very active society, yeah, indeed. [00:19:28]

Interviewer: So you were about to say how your work experience then moved you from this kind of traditional jazz and swing jazz to…

Mike: Well, it didn’t move me away from it, it was just like suddenly a road opened up. When I say this, this sounds absolutely weird because I got to the age of 11…I know it sounds weird but this is true, and I wasn’t a freaky, weird kid but I got to the age of 11 and by that time I’d got this sort of small collection, a lot of compilations - I never knock compilations because I think with a compilation where you’ve got perhaps six or eight different tracks by different artists can often be very useful because, you know, you can - like I did, I love Louis and I love Harry James and lots of other trumpet players but, you know, I focused on Bix and I couldn’t have done that without the compilation because I wouldn’t have heard him otherwise. But I got to the age of 11 and I’ve got this collection of recordings and I thought ‘this is fine, this is wonderful’ but how do – like you were saying today – how do you get from here to here? And why’s that? And who’s that? And who’s the rest of it? And I thought ‘I don’t know.’ So what I’ve obviously got to do in my pocket money purchasing, I’ve got to go right back as far as I can, which, as you well know, is 1919, the ODJB [Original Dixieland Jazz Band] and I’ve got to start from there and gradually work forward. And that’s what I preceded to do. And I was buying…what little money I had - because we’re only talking about 10s of shillings, we’re not talking about a pound - I would look for particular recordings so of course I got through the Hot Five and the Hot Seven and then moved on from there, but on my own I never got much further than, I suppose, the late ‘30s, in other words, if we like to put it in those terms, pre-Parker almost – it’s an easy way, isn’t it? Shorthand. Then all of a sudden I found myself thrown into this wonderful situation, meeting all these musicians, getting a chance to, you know, after work, wander down to Ronnie Scott’s and just sit there having a coke, listening to some fantastic musician who was doing a sound check for the evening or whatever and got to meet them and talk to them and of course I was with people, I was around people who were very much in that area of jazz and then they start saying ‘have you listened to this? Have you listened to that?’ And that’s how it works, isn’t it? [00:22:25]

Interviewer: So before that time had you seen many live musicians?

Mike: Oh, yes.

Interviewer: So any visiting Americans?

Mike: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

Interviewer: So that was all part of the scene, was it?

Mike: I saw – well, because fortunately I had my brother - I saw Ellington - and this was when I was…subsequently I saw them as well - I saw Ellington, I saw Basie. I was talking earlier to someone about a concert at a local cinema, local to East London, where I saw J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding. So, yeah, I got to see that level of American visiting bands and that was prior to…I would have been 11, 12, 13, 14.

Interviewer: So when those kinds of bands came to this country did they play dances or did you seem them in theatres--

Mike: --No, concerts--

Interviewer: --It was more concerts, was it?--

Mike: --Yeah, concerts and theatres. You know, the big stuff they’d do, the big gigs would be at places like the Royal Festival Hall but then other venues would be the Odeon Hammersmith, which was a very popular music venue. We had a local cinema, as I say, in East London, which was in the music business in the sense that, although it was a seven-day a week cinema, it was also of a style, and design and layout which lent itself for live music. And again, I was saying to someone earlier, that Paul Kaufman, our chairman, had asked me to look into the back story of this cinema with regards to live music performances and I found a fabulous website and the guy who put this together – it’s incredible. I mean it was a history of the cinema itself, but then of course the community and then all the things, the films that had been shown there over the period, over the decades. And he made the briefest mention to Count Basie, one mention, I think one word and obviously the photograph he’d included on this website must have been something he’d trawled up from our archive because it was obviously a photograph of the band probably in the ‘30s – you could see it was an old photograph. But when it came to Rock and Roll, which obviously was this guy’s interest, there were pages of it and it transpired that everybody in Rock and Roll during the ‘60s and the ‘70s, from the Beatles downwards, had appeared in this cinema. So, you know, that wasn’t relevant to what we were saying in the sense that…yeah, those were the sorts of venues that were… [00:25:06]

Interviewer: But there is a possibility, there’s a kind of hidden history--

Mike: --There is. Because then, you see, I started to go through our website archive, using that as a keyword, and I found references to Coltrane having appeared there, and a number of the Norman Granz Jazz at the Phil concerts because I think the J and Kai [J. J. Johnson and Kai Winding] gig was probably a jazz at the Phil and there were lots of other references. But it got to the point and I thought ‘this could be quite a job and before I spend any more time doing this, I want to make sure we’re going to put it to some use.’ So it’s on hold at the moment. But it’s quite fascinating, absolutely fascinating. And you know about the blue plaque scheme that we did?

Interviewer: A little about it, but…

Mike: Well, it’s something I’m very…I mean, I have to be honest and say… it’s something that I picked up once I started working and supporting the archive. It was a project that Digby Fairweather, honoured founder, had started and what he knew was that within the London Borough of Waltham Forest - which is the borough which adjoins this borough that we’re in for the archive - which covers the areas of Leyton, Leytonstone, Walthamstow and Chingford, that two musicians who he’d known - that was John Dankworth and Dave Shepherd, the clarinet player – had both spent early parts of their lives living in the borough. And he contacted a guy who worked for the London borough and put to him the idea that why can’t we have a blue plaque put on the house where these musicians had lived. The first one that went up was John Dankworth who had lived over in a part of Chingford in his early days. But the family came down – obviously minus John because he was dead by then – but Cleo came, Alec came and several of the grandchildren came to the unveiling, you see. So it was a great success. It wasn’t national jazz in one sense but it was still, I thought, it was an important thing. So I saw this and I thought ‘well, I know, I happen to know,’ – I suppose, well obviously because of my interest in jazz – ‘that there are other jazz musicians who happen, for some mysterious reason, to have spent time, either in later life or in the early days living in the London Borough of Waltham Forest.’ I knew, for example, of Kenny Clare, the drummer, who played with Dankworth’s band, he played with Ted Heath’s band and played with a lot of other bands. I knew that he was a neighbour of a member of my family and I used to see him occasionally when I was very young. I knew that Freddy Randall, who I referred to earlier, spent some of his life living in the borough, and interestingly and weirdly enough, a school friend of my wife had…her and her husband had decided they were going to emigrate to Australia – new start sort of thing – and they put their house on the market and we saw them soon after and she said to me ‘oh, you’d be interested in this.’ I said ‘what’s that?’ She said ‘well, you know we’ve sold the house?’ And I said ‘yes.’ She said ‘well, we’ve sold it to a trumpet player.’ She said ‘he’s Canadian.’ And I’m thinking ‘trumpet player? Canadian?’ Well, there’s only one Canadian trumpet player I can think of, which was Kenny Wheeler. And it transpires, that’s who she’d sold the house to; Kenny Wheeler! So there was the third one. And then in the course of that, there was another guy - he’s still playing and supports the archive – and that’s Jackie Free, he’s a trombonist.

Interviewer: The Chicagoans. [00:29:37]

Mike: Yeah, the Chicagoans. And Jackie’s a great character and, of course, Jackie’s big claim to fame was that back in 1956, I think it was – I believe it was the first tour that Louis Armstrong did after the war, I’ll be corrected on that but I think that was the case – and Jackie was gigging around at the time and he got a phone call one day and said ‘what are you doing Sunday afternoon?’ And he said ‘well, nothing in particular.’ He said ‘well, turn up at this venue, there’s a gig for you.’ So he said ‘fine.’ So he turned up at this venue and he said we were warming up, one thing or another, all of a sudden the doors opened and in walked Louis Armstrong. And he preceded to play an hour or two set with Louis Armstrong, which I think I would’ve found, in my trumpet playing days long gone, I think I would’ve found very difficult. But nevertheless. And at the end of the event he presented Jackie with a beautifully autographed photograph with a message on it. What we did with Jackie’s blue plaque, we put Louis’s message on his blue plaque, which I thought was a very nice touch. So we did those six and I still think it’s amazing that you’ve got six…jazz musicians of high regard all living in such a short, you know, a relatively small space. But you know…you may or may not have seen, this week, finally, they’ve got round to putting a blue plaque up on Tubby Hayes’ family home.

Interviewer: Oh, have they? Right.

Mike: How many years has that taken? [00:31:41]

Interviewer: As you say, there seem to be sort of concentrations of musicians in certain places and I just wonder…I didn’t actually realise until now that you played the trumpet yourself--

Mike: [laughs] --Very loosely!

Interviewer: Was there some sort of educational network or was it just a loose association? How did people get to--

Mike: I just think knowing all those people, knowing of them. I mean, Dave Shepherd is still…Dave has done gigs for the archive so I’ve had a chance to spend time, talk to Dave and Jackie but I don’t think…there is no link, the only link, I suppose, is that it may just be…the transport network and the fact that, you know, Waltham Forest, Leyton, Leytonstone etc. is easy to travel into the centre of London where obviously with a lot of musicians that may well have been the centre of their world…There’s no conspiracy theory here at all! [laughter] And certainly nothing that involves me! I think it’s just pure coincidence, but it’s just interesting. What I would really like to do, I’d really like to do - I don’t know quite what to do – but to try and get some sort of national thing going and say to jazz fans across the country ‘do you know of musicians who’ve lived in your vicinity for any period of time? Contact the local authority and see…’ I don’t know, perhaps that’s stretching the point a bit far, I don’t know. But it was good fun to do and I felt like I’d achieved something that got these people recognised. The fact is that somebody walking down Richmond Road seeing this blue plaque is going to say ‘Kenny Clare? Who’s he?’ I don’t know. [00:33:45]

Interviewer: Of course, we were beginning to talk about Ronnie Scott’s and other clubs. That’s obviously part of the thing; if you’ve got the clubs, you’ve also got the musicians. What was Ronnie Scott’s place like back in those days?

Mike: The old place? What should I say? It was a dump! It’s down a very narrow, stone staircase because it was in the basement, obviously, underneath the shops. I can’t remember what the shops were at that time because I’m talking early ‘60s but of course as we all know, Gerrard Street is now China Town so of course they’re all Chinese. And, in fact, the company that I worked for, our offices were in a building which is now HSBC bank, being that HSBC is a Hong Kong company. So, Ronnie Scott’s, okay. So there was this flight of stone steps down off the pavement with a metal handrail. And it was like, I suppose, if you say to people, a jazz club, then that’s what it was, it’s what people - even non-jazz people - would imagine as a jazz club. You know, you sort of entered into this complete gloom, you couldn’t see a great deal.

Interviewer: Presumably a haze of tobacco smoke.

Mike: Yes, of course. And other things I suspect, but I, of course, at 16, I wouldn’t have known about those things. It was very dark, very dingy, very poor facilities and of course…He must have had a license at some point, I’m sure he did. Because I was used to going into clubs at that time in the West End…and none of them had licenses. Our favourite haunt at those times used to be the Flamingo which was in Wardour Street, particularly on the Saturday all-nighter because we got a good dose of music because on the Saturday night all-nighters in the Flamingo when we were going, the first set was Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, and the second set was Ronnie Ross and Bill Le Sage. So, you know, you got all this high quality music but no alcohol. [00:36:13]

Interviewer: So they made their money just on the ticket price?

Mike: Well on the ticket and their sales of coke. But what we used to do, as I suppose the average 16, 17 year old, we would catch the last tube train back into town at the end of Saturday night. So you may go out in a group, you may go out with a girl, whatever it may be, but you all knew wherever you were, you got the last train back up to Tottenham Court Road. We would assemble in a rather seedy café in Wardour Street and someone previously would have gone into an off license and picked up half a bottle of scotch. So then what we would do, we would go into the club, into the Flamingo, and then we would all buy a coke, all take a couple of mouthfuls and then take it in turns by going into the gents and topping our tin of coke up with the scotch. Which I don’t suppose was anything really, desperately exotic or exciting and probably 16 year olds have been doing it forever, but that’s what we used to do. But they were great nights. But as far as Ronnie’s was concerned, yes, it was pretty rough and in fact when they moved eventually to the new place, I mean, that was like moving into Buckingham Palace in comparison. I mean, it’s still very cramped – as you know – and it’s still a bit gloomy but I mean compared to the old place…I know they painted all the walls and the ceiling black, I can vividly remember that, and I’m pretty certain there wasn’t two chairs or two tables the same throughout the club but it was the atmosphere. [00:38:02]

Interviewer: I was going to say, was that part of the appeal though? The fact that--

Mike: --Well of course! It’s a jazz club! Listen, I was talking to somebody recently, a woman who - and if you met this woman, you would never imagine - born and bred in Liverpool and we were talking about days…given that she was my age as well so I said ‘were you aware of the Beatles?’ And she said ‘of course.’ She said ‘and we were at the Cavern Club, all the girls used to go down to the Cavern Club,’ and I said ‘are those stories true? Was Cilla Black really the hat-check girl?’ She said ‘yeah, oh yeah.’ Well, she wasn’t Cilla Black, she was Priscilla White but she was the hatcheck girl. But no, that wasn’t the point I was getting to. What she was saying is that in later years or later decades, when anybody talks about the Cavern Club in Liverpool where it all started for the Beatles and, you know, what went on subsequently, she said they talk about it in these warm, cuddly, glowing terms. She said, ‘but it had an earth floor - it was a cellar, it had an earth floor!’ And she said that after about ten minutes, because the walls and the ceiling were all tiled, she said the condensation used to run down like a river, you see. But of course now everybody goes ‘ooh, the Cavern Club! It must have been…,’ - but it wasn’t, it was a dump, and I think Ronnie’s was similar to that. I think Ronnie had a floor, but it’s interesting. Good fun. [00:39:54]

Interviewer: Do you know how he got hold of his musicians? Because presumably inviting folks to this dump… [laughs]

Mike: Are you talking about the Americans? Or the British?

Interviewer: Well, both I guess.

Mike: Right, okay. I cannot speak for him and nobody ever could but I think the bottom line as far as the British musicians, no I think…it probably worked like this: as far as the British musicians were concerned most of them at the time were probably earning money either playing in pit bands or touring big bands because at that time you’re talking Ken Macintosh, you’re talking John Dankworth, Ted Heath you’re talking about these sort of bands who were touring the country and a lot of the jazz musicians would have been, you know, they needed to eat, they’ve got to pay the mortgage. And I think it was the case that suddenly there was this one location in the centre of town where they could go and they could play the way they wanted to. And I would say they probably didn’t even give it a second thought, they wasn’t interested in that, what they were interested in was going somewhere to be with like-minded people where they could play the music they wanted to play and to be listened to. And that’s the secret; I’ve found so often – you get this in my local jazz club here – that musicians like to come because the audience listens to what they’re playing, which, you know, I think it’s right. So I think that was the thing. And then as far as the Americans are concerned, I think, because it was not long after when the ban got lifted about the American musicians coming because in fact I think that Louis Armstrong concert I spoke about, the tour in ’56, was about the time--

Interviewer: --This was the union ban--

Mike: --the union thing, that they’d come to this agreement and there was more free movement. And I think, as far as the Americans were concerned, I think it was probably a lot to do with reputation; that all of a sudden they started to hear about this club in London – and let’s face it, you know, as we’ve always sort of romanticised about New York or New Orleans, depending on what bit of the jazz story you’re interested in, we’ve always found these cities to sound and be very sexy, so the Americans, they loved London; ‘ooh, wonderful,’ you see. So, honestly I think…they wouldn’t give a toss about the environment, or the environment in terms of the physical environment, it was more important, I think, that they could come to London and they could play. I mean, look at the musicians, the house band that Ronnie used; they could play with very high quality, competent jazz musicians. So I don’t think he had too much of a problem, I mean, I don’t know that there were lots of stories as I’m sure have been repeated, I mean particularly with certain characters who I suspect better remain nameless who could be rather awkward. Ronnie used to tell stories of those in any case, but that’s beside the point. I think that was probably it, I think it was the opportunity of playing somewhere where you could play your music and be appreciated and I think that was the most important thing. [00:43:38]

Interviewer: And the change at Ronnie’s came when? When did he change venue?

Mike: Oh, it must have been, I don’t know, late ‘70s, 80s.

Interviewer: So all through that sort of Beatles period and all the rest of it he’s still carrying on down in the old cellar.

Mike: I’d have to go back and look…but it didn’t come until some time after but I can’t be certain on dates.

Interviewer: I was just wondering about come the Beatles did that fundamentally change things for, not only Ronnie’s, but all the jazz clubs?

Mike: Well, I think that’s inevitable, isn’t it, because you see so often music depends on - that’s why I’m keen on supporting the archive - because I think it’s inevitable that music is so often dependent on young people to keep some sort of momentum going. I think the problem is, and the problem was, was that…what was available – because that’s the other consideration, isn’t it, it’s what’s made available whether it’s on the radio, whether it’s on the TV, it’s what gets pushed and what the young public are told is popular and what you should be listening to now. So, yeah, I think it probably had a major effect…and in any case, there was no work for the musicians. I mean, I laugh remembering on one of the, I think the ITV Saturday night Rock and Roll programmes, they had a band called Lord Rockingham’s XI, which was like a small big band but they were playing all sort of slightly hyped up stuff with Benny Green on baritone and dark glasses at the end of the sax section, which I used to think was hilarious. He was wearing dark glasses, I think, so that none of his jazz colleagues would recognise him. There wasn’t any work for these guys, you know, and you couldn’t fill a jazz club, necessarily. I think things have changed a great deal subsequently. I mean I have to admit, I got to the point – and I ought to put this into context - I’ve never got past Coltrane, I’m afraid. I don’t get upset about that because I’ve got so much, I’ve got a whole world and wealth of jazz that I can listen to and there are still people out there that I’m discovering, but I’m afraid, to put it in the simplest terms, I still like a melody you can whistle. And I’m quite happy for Paul Gonsalves to do 27 choruses at Newport but when it comes to it, I like to be able to recognise the tune just occasionally. So my interest, sadly, in what’s gone on in terms of modern jazz is very restricted and very limited. But that’s okay. [00:47:07]

Interviewer: Using, presumably, the term modern jazz there, the sort of Ornette Coleman, the free jazz?

Mike: Yes.

Interviewer: How did you feel about fusion when that came along?

Mike: Oh, that’s easy – I just didn’t bother! [laughter] No, no! It’s funny, isn’t it? I never try to bad mouth anything. I’ll tell you for why; because I think of the all the joy that – right, to put it in context - the jazz that I understand, the jazz that I know, the jazz that I listen to, I think of all the joy that that music has given me now for over 65 years and I think ‘okay, what you’re listening to doesn’t suit me, but if you get a fraction of the joy out of listening to it that I’ve got out of listening to the music I’ve listened to, then that’s great – enjoy it.

Interviewer: And bringing things up to date, are you still involved with jazz clubs? Do you still go and listen to jazz on a regularly basis?

Mike: Yes, as I said, I was at the Cadogan Hall last night – although perhaps that’s a little bit of a throwback to see the Chris Barber band but it was a great concert and as much as anything it was a treat for my sister, to take her out. She doesn’t get out that often and to get to the West End and to see, you know, one of her teenage favourites was a big treat. But I thoroughly enjoyed the gig. Yes, my local club I attend regularly but again, that is aimed, I suppose, at the – what part of the market? – well, my age group, in other words, people who started listening to jazz 50 years ago and probably they never got past…well, that’s perhaps a bit of an assumption. So we’re talking about post-bebop type of thing, so people like Alan Barnes and Simon Spillett and Gilad Atzmon and Liane Caroll, these are the sorts of people that we get. But equally, I’m fully aware that when these guys come down, I know for a fact, it’s obvious, that the repertoire that they play they’ve chosen and selected for the audience. Because I’ve heard some of the stuff that Gilad Atzmon has recorded and would think ‘no, I don’t think so,’ but when he comes to the club, it’s the Great American Songbook, which everybody laps up, including me because it’s a melody you can whistle. But, you know, it’s good jazz as well. So, no, I haven’t been tempted away. Perhaps I’m missing stuff, I don’t know. [00:50:12]

Interviewer: Well, I think we’ve all have a particular type of music that appeals to us--

Mike: --That’s right.

Interviewer: I think this is one of the things, of course, we’re doing with the archive at the moment, sort of recognising the role of the audience and the clubs--

Mike: --Of course.

Interviewer: Without that, the musicians have got…

Mike: I think that’s why I said earlier about, I can’t speak for other clubs – that’s not altogether true, I can speak for one other club and that is Swansea Jazzland because I have a very close friend who lives down in South Wales and he’s a regular member of the Swansea Jazzland club and when I’m down there I go to the club with him and I smile because it’s very similar in terms of attendance, audience, atmosphere to my own club locally, particularly in that they listen to the musicians and I just think that’s important. I know the musicians appreciate it. Simon Spillett told a lovely story; he was in the club a couple of weeks ago and he told this fantastic story. He said that he’d got this gig recently but it was a very small venue and he said the stage and where he would have to stand was - tables and chairs layout– was right up against the first table. And he said ‘we started playing’ and there were these two women sitting at this table, right in front of him. And he said ‘they never stopped talking throughout the whole performance.’ He said it got to the point he thought ‘well, I’m going to have to say something’. I assume he wouldn’t want to be offensive, who would be? But he - either at the interval or at the end of the gig - he said to these two women ‘excuse me ladies, have you enjoyed yourselves?’ ‘Ooh, yeah, we were looking forward to you coming because we like to hear you play.’ He said ‘oh, you actually did hear me play then!’ [laughter] He said ‘they never stopped talking!’ That never happens in our club! If anybody did that, the audience would throw them out. You know, I suppose you could say it’s a bit straight-laced but that’s not the point, you’re going to listen to the jazz and because you are listening, I think that’s where the enjoyment comes. [00:53:09]

Interviewer: Do you think these clubs have a future? Or do you think as these folks get older…

Mike: No, it’s very interesting in that because I go through a lot of the jazz listings and I don’t recognise most of the musicians that are listed and yet these clubs appear to advertise – alright, in listings magazines – but they’re appearing every week and every month. Now, forget jazz, purely from my business experience, if you’ve got an enterprise, if you’re opening the doors every day and every week and every month, well you must be doing something right and you must be making enough money to keep that happening. So if these clubs are still going using musicians who I’ve never heard of - that’s not a criticism, just stating a fact – that I don’t know and I don’t know their work - but I’m assuming that they’re not playing the Great American Songbook - then they must be dragging people in.

Interviewer: Well, on that optimistic note--

Mike: --I hope! [laughter] It’s the joy, remember it’s the joy.

Interviewer: It’s been great to talk to you, really very interesting. Thanks, mate.

Mike: Pleasure, pleasure.