Keith Nichols

How old are you Keith?

 

I’m 68 but I don’t look it.

 

You don’t look it – you look 88 (laughs). What got you interested in playing an instrument in the first place?

 

Well I‘d always from an early age, maybe 3 or 4, picked out notes on the piano in this very room and we had an accordion in the house which was not my choice of instrument, but had it been Mukkinese Battle Horn I’d have played it. I started very young – took my first lessons at age 5. I’ve always had the ability to improvise but I didn’t know about Jazz until I came upon it when I was about 14. I spent many years of my child hood playing the piano accordion in classical things, contests and the like. I got to be a champion accordion player before I gave it up – the devils music got me in the end at the age of 14. I think it was a record of Chris Barber that finally did it and the row with my parents as they wanted me to continue playing the accordion. I took up trombone and had a band at school – this is like 1959 and of course it was the height of the Trad craze, but once I started going when I left school, the Trad boom - the bubble had burst then - there was lots of clubs round here in the 50's in this area – they all closed down so it was a bit of a vacuum when I first started to play in bands. I always liked the earlier type of Jazz, it really appealed to me. I played the piano and I heard Rag Time and I heard stride piano - Fats Waller - and it was a style that people didn’t play anymore and that’s what really fascinated me, and so I formed a band at school. My first drummer was Mitch Mitchell (who went on to play with Hendrix) – a good jazz drummer and then left and I formed my own band for a while. We started playing music of the 1920’s - sort of King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and all the sort of the repertoire of the twenties.

 

Was this strictly New Orleans?

 

Ah no, we played up to swing sort of stuff but basically it was anything that didn’t exist anymore that I was interested in - of course this was before The Sting, so I was interested in Ragtime but there was no way of finding the music because most of the Scott Joplin stuff had been in print but was no longer in print. I was running my band after I left school then I went to work in a department store first of all then for Chappell’s music and I was 2 or 3 years at Chappell’s – very interesting there because I had access to the great catalogues. I used to go round to the other music publishers and find sheet music, rare sheet music. It was my job actually – I worked in the sheet music department and so I did that for a couple of years and found a lot of experience about music then I realised that I’d got to have a musical education because I’d had lessons throughout my childhood so I went to the Guildhall School of Music and did a teaching degree and left there when I was 21. During that time I joined a band called Mike Daniels Delta Jazz Men which were I think one of the only bands that did the repertoire of the early twenties. ie. Oliver, Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and I was very lucky to get into that band.

 

Where were they based?

 

 

In central London really but they’d been very successful for about 10 or 12 years, Mike Daniels is in fact still alive – he lives in Brandon just over the border in Suffolk and he’s 80-something and he’s still playing very, very well. So I got my experience really. I had my own band.

 

What was your band called?

 

It was called the Sedalia Jazz band.

 

Did you form that at school?

 

Yes – had no name at school and then we used to back a lot of the bands – used to play a lot of the colleges with the Sedalia Band. I remember we were the warm up band for all people like Terry Lightfoot, Ken Colyer – all the Trad Bands – even people like Johnny Dankworth orchestra we started the evening and that was nice before I went to Mike Daniels and I really got professional standard experience with Mike Daniels.

 

What venues were left then in those days to play Jazz in?

 

Well all the local ones round here – you had the Ilford Palais that put on Trad Bands and you had on the Redbridge Roundabout here before they had the roundabout, you had a branch road - there was a Ballroom actually, which would be in the middle of the roundabout now but it was where I did my first paid job in 1961 and I got paid a pound and I when got outside it wasn’t in my pocket so I didn’t get my first money. I think someone picked my pocket, but I was on trombone in those days you see although I’d played piano and accordion, but when I took up band leading I thought I couldn’t lead a band from the piano, I had to be in front line, so I took up trombone and still play as a second instrument, so anyway with Mike Daniels at the same time as studying, graduated in ‘67 and I went a joined a comedy band which was bit like Bob Kerr’s Whoopee band – that sort of things – based on 1920’s music but comedy. We did a lot of Music Hall material and we did a lot of travelling – the Far East, great long, long tours and these abominable clubs all over the country. I think I spent the worst week of my life in Sunderland in Working Men’s clubs.

 

What was the band called?

 

It was called the Levity Lancers. You wouldn’t have known them but they were very high standard band, and there were a few bands around that time like the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band and from the Temperance Seven, it was these other bands that came along. There’s a whole dynasty of 1960’s Twenties bands and we were one of them. I was with them for 7 years and really learnt how to judge an audience because I was very shy before that time. Didn’t even announce or sing or anything so had a bit of training there and there are a few places we played in Essex. We had a residency at the Waterman’s Arms on the Isle of Dogs. Have you ever heard of that?

 

Oh yeah.

 

Dan Farson’s pub. In those days it was packed to the doors 7 nights a week and we did that for a while and then we played at the pub that was in the film 'Alfie' – The Ironbridge Tavern at Canning Town, Queenie Watts’ pub. So we were a year there. They could foot bands. We did 4–5 nights a week in those days. No admission charge, very different to now. There was a thriving pub scene.

 

Was that The Levity Lancers playing?

 

Yes that was the Levity Lancers. We only made one record. We made millions of recordings but only onecommercial record which was a shame. We had a guy who’d been with the Temperance Seven – very great clarinet player called Mac White, still living, and some very good players. What we used to do.....it wasn’t a comedy where the people couldn’t play their instruments, we used to do Jazz very seriously, 20’s style Jazz and do proper arrangements whereas other bands would muck around all night, we saved the comedy for the comedy spot and was very serious about Jazz. I started writing arrangements then for the small band when there was only 5 of us so I used to play the tuba as well so I devised way of making the band sound bigger by playing the tuba and piano at the same time – it can be done – or a sousaphone, in fact you could sit there with the tuba on your knee and then play the left hand of the piano to beef out the sound of the band. It worked quite well. Seven years with the Levity Lancers and then what happened was they got the chance of going to South Africa for a year in a big hotel in Durban and I’d just bought this house and was about to get married so it was just one of those situations where I couldn’t go away for a whole year. So I left and they went away and my replacement, whose name I can’t divulge, he used to like a pint of lotion now and again and he caused such trouble in South Africa that they were back in 3 months. They never made the year. He destroyed it for them. I stayed out of it. I was doing a lot of Ragtime by this time. Still before The Sting the music was still not available, so I used to listen to records – Ragtime pianists like Wally Rose from San Francisco. I learned a lot of Rags from him and Stride piano and I started to play piano solos and I tried to specialise in Stride and Ragtime. Learned to sing and then in the early 70’s, about ’74, I left the Levity Lancers and I formed a Ragtime Orchestra which had a violin, a clarinet and trumpet. We started to do concerts at the South Bank. The popularity of The Sting meant that Ragtime was quite desirable and that went on for quite a few years.

 

What was the Orchestra called?

 

It was the Keith Nichols Ragtime Orchestra. At the time it was the only one. There were others that did form but this was about the first one in England. There was a great orchestra that we patterned ourselves on called the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra - made lots of records – very fine stuff, so we patterned ourselves on them and that’s how I got the concerts at the South Bank. I met this guy called Richard Sudhalter – does that name mean anything to you? He wrote the biography of Bix Beiderbecke, he was a cornet player and we did with him, he got access to all Paul Whiteman’s music and he formed a band called the New Paul Whiteman Orchestra where we did all the Bix Beiderbecke arrangements of the late 20’s and we did concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Fairfield Hall. 1974 that was. Loads of fine people in that band – mainly session players, you know. There was Duncan Campbell, who’s been with Ted Heath, there was Johnny McClevey, a lovely Jazz player, I was on trombone and the other three trombonists were all great session stalwarts, one of them had played for Glen Miller and there was seven saxophones, and Harry Gold was one of them. Most of them dated back to even the 20’s. Harry Gold was playing in 1926 and met Adrian Mollinihe told me. There was Al Baum who played in the 1930’s, well known session player, but he was like Frankie Trumbauer, that’s why Sudhalter picked him, and the other people almost as old as them if you added up their ages they would be hundreds of years. Pat Dodd, pianist who played for Benny Carter’s English band, Jock Cummings played for the Squadronaires and the singer was Chris Ellis who produced many albums. He’s still living . It was a great collectors band – so many people – John Arthy on bass, one of the biggest collections of 78’s. We did two albums and loads of broadcasts so I’m very proud of being in that. Name dropping next - ’76 I went to America to play with the Sudhalter band. He’d gone home and the first gig was a Carnegie Hall, you can only go down after that. If you look over there, just a few months later I did an album with Bing Crosby.

 

That’s incredible.

 

You can live off that for the rest of your life. He was wonderful because he was exactly as he wished to sing with a band, not doing any overdubbing and it was an album of songs that he’d never sung before. That was whole idea of it. He’s never sung As Time Goes By, he’d never sung That Old Black Magic, various tunes that had escaped him over those years, and it was my job to go over with him to do the verses and it was great because he was so relaxed – exactly as you’d expect. Maybe he wasn’t like that all the time but on this occasion he was absolutely marvellous and the thing went by very quickly and it was enjoyable. He died the next year. It was ’77 when he died. I was ever so grateful to be on that.

 

Yes, that’s amazing isn’t it? Didn’t you have a bit of involvement with the Pasadena Roof Orchestra in those days?

 

I did yes. It started, John Arthy probably told you, with a previous band called the Creole Orchestra where they’d just got a couple of tunes and they started and then in 1969/1970 they became the Pasadena Roof Orchestra and when John Arthy got all the sheet music he bought about 1500 stock orchestrations - a lot of them rubbish but a lot of them absolutely amazing …and he rang me up and said “Come over and see these things” and there was piles of these things.

 

This was in the late-1960’s was it?

 

Yes,and the orchestra was playing by 1970, and I’d done about 75 arrangements over the years. Quite a lot of writing and whole albums for them and sometimes they wanted transcriptions of old 20’s things but often they wanted a fresh look in the 20’s style so often a lot of things I did were not copied off any record.

 

That was a challenge.

 

Yes, because you wouldn’t get away if I started to explain about transcription and listening to old records because when you transcribe, if it’s something from 1924, the acoustic method of recording - you might hear the top part, you might even hear the bottom part but you can’t hear everything.

 

You can’t get the detail.

 

So you have to do a “Sherlock Holmes” and use deduction as to what that middle part would have been you see. Of course, if this was from was old scratchy 78’s it would be very difficult to hear it. It’s become a passion of mine, it really is and still is. What am I working on right now? All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm by Duke Ellington from the film 'A Day At The Races'. After all these years I still haven’t progressed beyond 1937. I’d had a band in 60’s - a bigger band, this is history of me with big bands. I had a rehearsal band which John Arthy was in - we used to rehearse down his bakery because he was a family baker which was a perfect rehearsal room underneath the shop and that was in 1966/1967.

 

Did it have a name?

 

Not the band no. We had people like Dixon Wilson and the people I was playing with in that band but that was only rehearsal. We did a couple of concerts playing in pubs you know and then I joined the Comedy band so that had to stop. So anyway met up with John Arthy again and started writing. It was a semi professional band for some years for at least five years and then they turned professional in 1975 and then John decided to put some money into the music and they still played the old printed orchestrations that he bought originally, but he wisely invested in his repertoire – have special arrangements commissioned rather than just doing copies all the time. A long association.

 

Were you actually a member though?

  

I never joined no. I played tuba on one of their first EP’s and I played for the second Pasadena Roof Orchestra only a couple of times. When it was semi-professional I did dep on trombone but I have never played since the time they turned professional. I’ve never played a note with the actual Pasadena Roof Orchestra, although I’ve been connected with them all these years.

 

So we’re up to about 1977 now are we?

 

Yes, now quite an important year for me because in 1976 with all this Carnegie Hall business I got a commission with a chap that I’d worked with called Alan Cohen, who is an arranger. We were both asked by The Newport Jazz Festival to submit Ellington Transcriptions from the 1920’ and 1930’s for Bob Wilbur and the New York Jazz Repertory Company which was all the Old Gang doing three concerts. One of the 20’s, one of the 30’s and one of the 40’s of Ellington. So we did this and were well paid for them – proper things, and when we’d done it I said to Cohen “I’d love to get a band together again to actually play these things”. We didn’t so, the following year I met him again and said “You know we ought to really do this” so I got all our Ellington stuff together and then I got some other bits and pieces, so we started a band which became The Midnight Follies Orchestra which I ran with Alan Cohen from ’77 to about ’85 and we had quite a lot of success with that. We did TV and 2 albums and we had a good singer called Johnny M who was a bit of a Cab Calloway and he used to dance around a bit, and quite a lot of good soloists from the Jazz scene – we had Digby Fairweather in it, Pete Strange, Campbell Burnap was a founder member, we had Will Hastie from the Temperance Seven – Clarinet & Saxophone, John Barnes, wonderful player. Later on we had Randy Colville, the late Randy Colville, great clarinet player, and Laurie Chescoe on drums. Laurie Chescoe is still playing and doing very well. Oh and Alan Elsdon – he was one of our great soloists, but sadly a few of them passed on because it's 35 years ago now. Still one or two of us still playing. That meant lots of arranging, unpaid, if you run a band. Cohen and I we did about 120 arrangements for the band, but the thing is, if a band folds you’ve still got the arrangements and could still get them out or adapt them and this is what I’ve done. From the Midnight Follies Orchestra we downsized to a ten-piece and formed a band called the Cotton Club Orchestra  - that eventually became the Blue Devils, which is the current ten-piece band that I’ve got now. So that’s been my adventures with big bands. Still do a lot of festivals around the country. I teach at the Royal Academy of Music on the Jazz Course.

 

Do you?

 

I’ve done it for 25 years and its marvellous because most kids, they’re about 19 to 22, they don’t have any experience of listening to older Jazz at all so most of the stuff that they are used to is from the 60’s onwards. John Coltrane is old fashioned, as for Charlie Parker...... back in the Stone Age – so, faced with Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton and things like that they’ve never heard anything like that. Its great because when I first started there the students would be very laid back - “Oh yeah, this old Trad rubbish”, you know and then we’ d do practical classes where we’d actually play all the arrangements and they’re sweating their socks off. At the end of it it's “I didn’t realise it was like this. It’s really, really hard” and we’ve done some very good concerts with the Royal Academy Band. It’s lovely, nobody older than 22. Two years ago we did powerhouse arrangements from the 30’s and 40’s, Tommy Dorsey and Cab Calloway and Ellington. Last year it was Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra we did the Rhapsody In Blue, all the hot arrangements of the 20’s and this year we did a 1930’s Radio Broadcast complete with the announcer and girl vocal trio and we read the news and did everything and it all worked very well.

 

That’s amazing. Did you put that project together?

 

Yes, we called it Coast to Coast. Radio broadcasts in those days, it wasn’t just bands. You had to have people being featured all the time so there was three girls there that were studying musical theatre at the Royal Academy of Music. They weren’t in the Jazz course and they were willing to be the Boswell Sisters so I gave them some stuff of the Boswell Sisters and they went away and they came back as The Boswell Sisters. They did very, very well. We had a guy also from musical theatre who did the announcements and he did a very good American accent and I wrote the script - everything he said, he read the news , then we advertised instruments - we advertised Buescher Saxophones and brass instruments and he said (mimics an American accent) “And here is the sound, the creamy sound, of Buescher saxophone and the screaming brass of Buescher trumpets. Buescher, Elkhart, Indiana. Buy one now”.

 

Oh yes, that’s great.

 

And we did a commercial, you know how shows were always sponsored in America? Well we invented a product that would sponsor the show and it was Super Beeswax Furniture polish – “Cleans as it shines” - and I wrote a jingle for it as well, so it was all very authentic. Labour of love really.

 

That’s incredible. Amazing.

 

That was in March of this year, so not old history.

 

Throughout all these interviews that I’ve been doing – tons of them – your name keeps coming up all the time so you’re obviously guesting all the time with other Trad Jazz groups.

 

Yes I do solo concerts, and there are bands all around the country, I go an do guest spots, I play the soprano sax, I give good value and just join in with them. Three good gigs which I’ve never done before: I played in a whisky distillery in the Western Isles – I’ve never done that before, I played a birthday party in the secret Nuclear Bunker.

 

Oh in Brentwood?

 

In Brentwood. That was very interesting and on Sunday I’m playing the Naturist Jazz festival.

 

Oh I saw that advertised. Digby’s doing that isn’t he?

 

Yes he is, so three unusual gigs that you don’t get very often.

 

I’m sure John Arthy said there was another band that had a really funny name like Jay someone or other and the something or others – more of a comedy band. John said I should ask you about that.

 

Well there was loads of them - the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band, Bonzo’s did very well, and the New Vaudeville Band.

 

Were you in any of those bands?

 

No, but I know what he’s talking about. We had a pseudonym for our band, the Sedalia Jazz band and we called it – just for doing certain jobs and John was on these gigs and he’s never forgotten the name Arnold J Lovelace and his 1922 Jazzhounds.

 

That’s the one! (laughs)

 

That was just to play a couple of gigs in Woodford so we just did another name for that.

 

What was the difference between the groups or was it exactly the same?

 

It was the same except we had a different bass player – John Arthy (laughs). But it was my band, the Sedalia band. We thought “Let’s give it a bit of crazy name” and that was the craziest name I could think of.

 

Did it still have Mitch Mitchell on drums?

 

No, he went on to better things. We never met again after school.

 

What school was it by the way?

 

I went to a stage school.

 

Oh did you?

 

Mitch Mitchell – formerly John Mitchell, was a child actor – bit like Phil Collins. Phil Collins was a child actor. So he was sent to the stage school The Arts Educational – its was in those days, the 50’s there was only 3 stage schools in London - now there’s 300. That’s going back to mid 50’s. Mitch Mitchell, he was at the age of 11 he was a great drummer. I’m sorry that he’s no longer with us but that’s the toll of doing what he does.

 

So throughout your career, apart from guesting with many, many artists, acts, band, keeping a full diary, on the whole you tended to be with your own projects and for quite a long time.

 

You see if you’ve got ideas on how things ought to be, you end up by being the band leader, and I’ve played in quite a few people’s bands, very good bands, and they’ve made decisions over something in the band and I’ve thought “ Bloody Hell, he should have given that trumpet player more to do. He’s got a lot of talent. He’s not making full use ”, that sort of thing, so you end by doing things of your own. After all these years, like John Arthy, I’ve massed a big library and can still pull stuff out.

 

Are there any other groups that you play with regularly? The Blue Devils is yours.

 

Well regularly, I’m just trying to think, well really it’s just freelancing thing these days. I’ve made records with bands. There’s a recording band called Spatz & his Rhythm Boys, who’s guitar, banjo and vocals and we made about 6 CD’s with him. He was put on by a guy up in Newcastle so I’ve recorded with quite a few people but not joined other peoples bands. If you play more than one instrument – I do a lot of piano work on my own – and that’s fine – you’ve just got to keep the diary full.

 

Let’s talk about Digby Fairweather.

 

Digby, a great pal of mine. I first saw him playing in Southend in 1965 and he was just a teenager and I didn’t really get to play with him properly together until 10 years later, but I’ll never forget Digby because he helped us form the Midnight Follies Orchestra. He spoke to all the musicians that I didn’t know and succeeded in getting them in the band. I’ll always be grateful to Digby. He’s done so much for Jazz – not just in Essex but Jazz generally.

 

That’s right. Did you know any of the Southend crowd? Like Kenny Baxter, the more Modern Jazz people? Did you encounter any of those guys?

 

Not the Modernists really. You end up playing the older Jazz, so you don’t really.....er... I’m a bit of a 'Mouldy Fig' (laughs) although I like all sorts, but I specialise you see, and when you’re doing styles like the piano styles that are not done anymore you’re always trying to keep excellence going, you know. There’s a few people I’ve got to be very grateful to - Dick Sudhalter from America, very grateful to him, Digby. Wonderful friends.