Kathy Stobart

When you come into the house mind the dog, 
don't fall over the kids, and don't let the cats 
into the kitchen. I'll be practising the flute in 
the spare room. 
Kathy Stobart, saxophonist

My birthplace was South Shields, Co. Durham; so I’m a Tynesider. My late husband Bert Courtley was also from the North, from Manchester. But we met in London, our children were all born here, and my sons consider themselves Londoners. I don’t think they have any accent; I know I’m always shocked when I hear my recorded voice. People up North tell me I talk quite South Country now, when, in actual fact, when I hear it I realise I still speak rather broad. 

The grounding in music I had covered classical, light and dance music, but there was no jazz at all. My brothers used to listen to the current big name bands of the time people like Harry Roy and Ambrose. I certainly didn’t hear anything about jazz in those days. 

All level

The jazz interest really started at a point where I joined a palais band in Newcastle, called Peter Fielding. I then met other musicians who were jazz fans, and collected the records. Before that I didn’t really think about it very much. I was playing tenor, but, funnily enough, I gave no thought to becoming a jazz player. And the idea of making some kind of a success nation-wide never really entered my head. The plan originally was just to become a good player locally. 

I’d been playing alto saxophone since I was about twelve; my first job was with a ladies' band, touring, but I had to get a tenor for that. After working with them a year, I came back home, and that’s when I got this job in the all-male band. I never did join a girls' band after that. I did several guest appearances with them a couple with Ivy Benson, and a couple of deps for females who were ill. Other than that, I never worked for a woman; I was in male bands all the time. 

As for prejudice I didn’t encounter any up in Newcastle, because I think we were all fairly level. There were one or two very talented people in the band, but generally speaking, it wasn’t competitive enough for there to be any anti-women feelings, or anything like that. I think they were all fairly fond of me, and we all got along fine. We rehearsed, did the job and that was it. 

When I came down to London, it was almost entirely due to two people (Keith Bird and Derek Neville) that I swung round completely on to jazz playing. If it’s possible, they taught me to play jazz. I suppose it would be more true to say that they were the ones who found a way of bringing the jazz out of me. Mainly Keith Bird, actually. He gave me my first job in London; he was leaving the job, and he wrote and told me: “It’s here if you want it”. That was for a quartet he was the saxophone player out front, and I took over from him. So I was thrown in at the deep end, as you might say, and within a few weeks I was playing jazz. 

Well, of course, by that time I had amassed a certain collection of jazz records recommended by various people. But, you see, it’s difficult to know how to play it. Sometimes you can have a great jazz feeling inside, but actually you need a good push to do it, you know. The only true way of doing it is for somebody to give you that push off your seat, and say: “Get up and blow.” And you have to do whatever comes into your head as long as you know the tune and you have a fairly good ear. Which was always a strong point in my case - I had a fairly well developed ear. Then you automatically pick things from what you hear. Of course, that combined with a certain rhythmic sense gives the end-product of some kind of jazz chorus. And if you’re good at it, and if you have a natural flair, then obviously you develop very quickly, to organise these thoughts. 

Also, Keith Bird used to play things on the piano and ask me to play something to it. He’d play chords and say: “What do you hear to that? Play something to that” or “What kind of notes do you hear there?” And I’d play something; then: “Right. Now try this one.”

You see, all the time finding out exactly what it was that I did hear. Then he gradually introduced me to the simpler tunes, like “I Got Rhythm”, “Lady Be Good”, “Honeysuckle Rose”, which are the basis of half the jazz tunes that ever were. I played what I heard; he’d alter the chords then, and I’d hear something out of that. And he gradually got it together so that he could play a given tune on the piano, and I would start to implant another melody on the chord sequence. 

Finally, when he gave me this job of his, there was only the one frontline; so you had to get up and play. Within about a month I was working with Dennis Rose at the Jamboree Club, and Jim Skidmore, Reggie Dare, Kenny Graham all the people who were about at that time. 

Oh, that was a tremendous era. The war was still on, and we had yet to be really introduced to bebop. I mean, I was absolutely hooked on Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Benny Carter, Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, the Casa Loma all the saxophone players and all the popular big bands of the day. When bebop did come and we got switched on to it, then, of course, the Club Eleven started. And Dennis Rose, the one I had worked for he was almost a father of Club Eleven. Because he already had the harmonic knowledge before it arrived here; he was so talented, it was unbelievable. Ronnie Scott and all of them would be only too ready to give him credit; they learned an awful lot from Dennis. 

Incredible 

At the time I worked with Dennis, he was a trumpet/bandleader. One of the most unhappy things for him, I think, was the fact that he could never seem to get out on trumpet what he wanted to play. For what reason, I don’t know. Yet he would sit down in the interval, or at the end of the evening, and play piano and what came out then was absolutely incredible. He was playing bebop then before I had even heard of it. He was amazing; I learned so much from him. I still admire him very much. He plays piano occasionally at places, but I don’t often get to see him now. 

Yes, eventually I was running my own group. There were really two up-and-coming young small jazz bands in the late forties that was Johnny Dankworth and myself. We ran concurrently. I just didn’t have the money to carry on; we were really losing quite a bit. 

Oh, the book was pretty advanced. I started out with a lot of Lennie Tristano kind of things. Then I moved into a more swingy type of thing; we had trumpet and five saxophones then. I’d met Bert, and he was on trumpet. We had some very good players. At various times, Dill Jones and Tommy Watt were on piano. Derek Humble was our lead alto player; Pete King the one who now runs Ronnie Scott's was on tenor with the band, too. It was a real good band; we had a lot of fun. But you need money for arrangements, coach bills and everything else, and I couldn’t afford it; so I just had to pack up after a year.

 Recognisable 

I didn’t have the right direction, in the first place. It was an unwise choice to go out playing Lennie Tristano things, because, unfortunately, I was sent out into the ballrooms with this kind of music. That was a mistake; of course you needed something more straight down the middle. But by the time I charmed. I think it was a bit too late to recover. You had to do an audition for broadcasting then, and although I passed first time, nobody ever bothered to give me any broadcasts, which I needed. 

I went back to the Vic Lewis band, where I’d been previously. So did Bert, Derek Humble and Lennie Harrison, the bass player. The others went to various other bands. About a year or so later, I married Bert, and a year after that we had the first boy. Since then, of course while the children were still young, there’s no doubt about it, my musical activities were limited. I could only really take jobs from which I could get back overnight. In fact, the longest stint I ever did was the three months when I first went with Humphrey Lyttleton, and that was to deputise for me old pal Jim Skidmore, who was very ill for a while. 

Though I might have been thought of as a modernist, I didn’t really belong to the bebop movement. My playing has always been, as I say, down the middle somewhere; it fitted in very well with the Lyttleton band. Anyway, Humphrey’s very broadminded: he likes to surround himself with people of varying styles. He’s always looked forwards, rather than backwards. I mean, he’s had some tremendously modern people sometimes a very unlikely crew altogether, you know. He likes it that way, although he’s basically Humphrey, and very recognisably so thank goodness; people want to hear him as he is. But he would admit, too, that because of his exposure to all these ahead-looking people, he’s become better and better over the years himself. He still has a glorious feeling for jazz, but he is a better player now. 

People may say: “Oh, it’s not the same” they forget that musicians, if they keep on playing long enough, in spite of everything they become better. And it’s no good beginning to admire them when they weren’t as good as they are now. I’m not saying that Humphrey went into study or anything; he just has got progressively better. You’re bound to, if you play millions of notes all the time; you’re able to do them faster, co-ordinate quicker and so on. There are very few people I know who don’t steadily improve and that include the out-and-out traditionalists. Well, the Alex Welsh band, with whom I had the great pleasure of sharing my very enjoyable Ronnie Scott’s engagement, is a perfect example of that. He has some really excellent players there.

My big band experience goes way back. I did a lot of concerts with Ted Heath in the old days, and some with Geraldo. I used to do the Sid Gross concerts, before Sid went to the States. And there was all my work for Vic Lewis. I did one or two other jobs for various people around, but generally speaking, it was mostly those I’ve already mentioned. Oh, of course, my first husband, Art Thompson had a band; in the war days, he had a very good Swing band at the Embassy Club. He went back to California; he’s been very successful there, they tell me. But apart from that, it was all really guesting, playing jazz clubs and jazz broadcasts all the time, really. 

Yes, Bert was a member of Woody Herman’s Anglo-American band. That was a lovely band; Nat Adderley, Bill Harris and Charlie Byrd were in it, too. As a matter of fact, I was asked to do the job. I was working at the Hundred Club, Oxford Street with Kenny Baker and Woody came down to see me I suppose with the idea of looking me over and listening a bit, to see if he’d made the right choice. Anyway, he told me he was pleased with the idea, and it was going to be great. But when it really came down to the crunch you see, I had already done three months with Humphrey, and my children were all very small. I had three boys under five at the time or just five, the eldest one.

So, I mean, it meant more and more strain on my mum, and I really couldn’t go off for about four weeks’ heavy touring leaving her with all of them. It was really the dilemma of being a mother as well as a jazz musician and I knew what was the right thing to do. Don Rendell went in, finally, didn’t he? I was a bit disappointed, in a way, but never mind; I didn’t worry about it at all.

Certainly, I would have liked to play with Woody. He’s always had great bands, and he’s a marvellous, admirable person. He consistently gets the best out of musicians; he’s a great man. they tell me, in rehearsal and everything. He really knows what he wants, and he’s gained the respect of everybody. That would have been very nice.

Actually, my late husband, trumpeter Bert Courtley, and I didn’t work together all that much, strangely enough. He used to play a lot with Don Rendell, Ronnie Ross, Harry South, Phil Seamen, Ed Harvey - they had various groups. You see, I still had the family at home. I used to go down and play quite a lot at the Flamingo, guesting with people. For quite some time, I was part of the Tony Kinsey group; Les Condon and I made up the front-line. Which was lovely very enjoyable. At that time, that was the only regular group I belonged to. 

After all, Bert was the main bread-winner; he was always out doing things. He went with Cyril Stapleton, Ken Mackintosh and so on all the time getting better jobs, as far as bread-and-butter work. Still he was filling in with his jazz thing, while I went ahead and did my limited amount. 

Retiring 

The thing was, during the first years of our marriage, within thirteen months I’d had one child, and within another two-and-a-half years I’d had another, with the third one following a year and nine months after that. So it was a case of retiring from the profession three times. Although that’s a bit of a joke, really, because I never put the saxophone away with the idea of letting it stay in the case for long. It was there, and I always knew I’d play it again. When Bert unhappily died, a lot of people helped me by putting work on to me making me get out to work, you know. Tonv Coe, who’s a very great friend of mine, and Humphrey Lyttelton again they rang me all the time. I can’t say I didn’t want to go; it was just that, in the early days, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. But I got more and more help from people, and more and more work.

 Then I started going to the Guildhall for flute and clarinet lessons. And I started giving saxophone classes mvself at a big night school. Now it’s four years since Bert died and I think I work harder than I’ve ever done, music-wise, since before I was married... I have to work, anyway, to keep the home together. The boys are still there only they’re very big now, of course. My eldest son’s twenty-one; the other two are eighteen-and-a-half and seventeen. And we’ve got a marvellous relationship all together. We all pursue our own particular hobbies, jobs, or whatever it is, and nobody takes too many liberties. My middle son plays the guitar, the younger one the piano. 

They both seem to be doing nicely at it. I wouldn’t be so big-headed as to say they’re tremendously talented, but I’m very pleased to find that they really know what’s good and I don’t think they’re going to settle for anything less than that. Their musical tastes are broad, but now that they’re maturing, and they’ve gone through all the basic likes and dislikes, I’m glad to find that what’s coming out at the end is rather nice. It’s just as I would have it. They both have a great leaning towards jazz and the more musical pop music not so much the singers. Of course, they have a tremendous record selection, as most young people do these days, but there are an awful lot of very adventurous things there. They’re not hung up by four-four all the time; there’s a lot of freedom. So I’m very pleased with the way it’s going. I don’t know whether they’ll turn professional, but I hope they get pleasure out of it. 

Adventurous 

Some of the recent songs are highly adaptable for jazz. Funnily enough, I find that through listening to all the modern music, you can approach some of the older things in a much more flexible way. They say there’s nothing new, really, and it’s the same thing permutated in a slightly different form, but I do know that hearing the modern groups has done me good, because it makes me want to play with more adventurous rhythms, and everything. Although I must keep it in mind all the time that there are certain fields that I know I cannot enter. It’s no good me ever joining in any kind of free form, because I don’t think I could have my heart in it, somehow. By now, I know me, and what I do best.

 Admittedly, the setting is changing. I like nicer rhythms, with noises and knockings going on, and I do feel that there are much greater liberties to be taken with things. But I will always remain a fairly uncomplicated jazz player. Also I have a very melodic mind tuneful, you could say. To coin a modern phrase that I don’t usually use: I know where I’m at. I know my position but I don’t want any of the old-time rhythm sections; I want the now thing. And even as I get the instrument out to play, I think a lot differently about what I’m going to play, compared to what I did six years ago. 

A lot of things have contributed to this; going to the Guildhall; even teaching other players has helped. And I run a student band as well, which is becoming tremendously successful. The boys are very good, very receptive, all try very hard. This is the City Literary Institute’s young rehearsal band. Alan Cohen runs a big, more professional one on a Saturday, but I pressed to have somewhere for the younger ones to go. Not young in age, that is, but young in experience. Because students become better players, but there’s still this business of the inability to interpret written dance music or jazz music in a modern fashion.

Sometimes there’s nowhere for them to go; the gap between becoming fairly proficient on one’s instrument, and how to put it into practical use in a band can be quite big. Also, I believe it’s good that I am a practising musician. I don’t spend all the week teaching, admirable though that might be. I’m not yet built for that - I’m built to be out there doing it myself. But the fact remains, I love going down there just a couple of times a week. One night I spend taking two classes of saxophones; Monday - that’s my band night. We started from fairly simple arrangements- Jimmy Lally’s dance band copies. As we’ve gone along, I’ve brought in better ones, by people like Neal Hefti. And all the time carefully, but very positively drumming in the absolutely essential lessons to do with section work. Which takes time, because it’s difficult; they’ve got to learn to read all kinds of accidentals, to try and remember whether they’re louder than the others, to watch for the change of key, to observe very many things. 

But it’s really got through. Particularly some of the saxophone players, who are now in their third year with me. After being two years in the saxophone classes, they’ve gone into the big band now. Some of them had only just bought the saxophone when they first came to me. Now they’ve got beautiful, full sounds, they know when they’re in tune, they’re listening, and their observation of all the marks on the scores is excellent. Like everything else, sometimes we have a duff night, when it doesn’t go right. But it’s amazing - sometimes I go in and we’ll just do three or four arrangements, just straight through, without picking too many holes - we generally run them through, and then start taking them to pieces- and it suddenly dawns on me what a tremendous, healthy improvement there is. It really is very gratifying.

Recently we got some more brass, and now we’re up to full complement. I don’t limit it to one of any specific instrument; I have to double them up, otherwise it means you’re turning people away, and I don’t like to do that. I mean, in the brass, we have a couple of fellows who split lead; then we’ll have two third trumpet players, and two second - we sometimes end up with about six trumpets and three trombones. The trumpets’ll be doubling, you see. And there’ll be two lead altos, two second altos, two first tenors, two second tenors and a baritone - maybe even an alto doubling baritone with him. So with piano, bass and drums added, we have at least seventeen there on a Monday. 

Singing 

Some of the boys bring a little recording machine along. Well, that’s good - I don’t have to say anything; they can hear it, if it’s wrong. In any case, I often end up at the end of an evening with my voice a bit cracked, where I’ve been singing the phrases to them! Or I’ll get the saxophone out, and play it at them again and again. That’s why it was a bit of a problem, in the beginning stages of this band, to get a rhythm section, because it was so boring for them to have to wait and wait while the band went over and over certain things that I just was not happy with. If it’s not right, it’s no good letting them carry on. I hear about rehearsal bands where people actually go in, and they start, and plough through music, and nobody tells them they’re playing wrongly. In fact, I’ve heard of at least two rehearsal bands being run by people for money, where the leaders had been students of mine, and had dropped out, because, quite frankly, they just weren’t good enough. 

Now, that makes me very angry. And justifiably so, because I’m professional, and proud of it. I mean, I wouldn’t dare take that kind of a liberty. There are some very fine musicians in this business who have good student bands, and they’ve got a lot of knowledge to give away. But it’s no good when you get these people who actually are running bands, and taking money, and they’re learners themselves. 

The only thing I can hope is that as soon as possible the young people will get away from them, and go to a band where there’s a practising player out front. You need that - then you know that he’s imparting things to you that he’s putting into practice every day of his life. Even if you didn’t like his style, you would know that somebody’s employing him; so he must have something to share with you. 

Yes, we’ve had some girl players. There’s a girl alto player, who’s a classical clarinet player turned alto, and there was a classical pianist who wanted to swing to jazz, but she’s moved away now. Just two or three I’ve had; there aren’t many about, you know. It’s not really a very feminine thing. I wouldn’t say I’ve been handicapped myself by being a woman. I mean, I’m sure there’s prejudice there - there’s bound to be. But I’ve never had to suffer in any shape or form; I’ve always found everybody marvellous to me. 

Oh, I would advise any girl to try and make it - but I would just hope that she’d get the chances that I did. Because opportunity was on my side, really. It was wartime, and everybody was so hard up for players, they had to give me a job! Coupled with the fact that this was what I wanted to do.

I hope that perhaps a few of them will have a go at it, in the future. The colleges are full of female classical players; so I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a few more of the other kind. That is, provided people will start doing a bit more for live jazz, in the way of various radio stations. They tell me in New York there’s at least three hours’ live television jazz every day, and you can switch on radio programmes of live jazz any time of the day. And when I visited Germany with Humphrey, in all the stores you can hear jazz, and on the radio they’re playing jazz all round the clock.

So it’s no good anybody turning round and telling me it’s not a good listenable thing for the public. It’s very listenable. It’s also lovely to watch. I do think it’s becoming more fashionable now to go and watch it. But there are a lot of people who would be very pleasantly surprised if they just got away from that box, and went down and watched somebody playing jazz. I think they’d like it.

Copyright © 1974 Les Tomkins. All Rights Reserved