Jenny Potts

So you were saying that Tom first started playing in the Boys Brigade did you say?

 

That’s right, playing bugle.

 

What got Tom interested in Jazz, do you know?

 

I don’t really know because obviously when he was in the RAF he didn’t play Jazz at all, but I don’t know whether people got to know him playing the trumpet and when someone was away, he said he would step in and play but it just went from there. I don’t think he had a particular interest in Jazz in those early days, I think that sort of came later.

 

Was he in the band in the RAF?

 

Yes he was in the band, “A nice skive” I think were his words.

 

So it would have been more kind of Souza marches rather than?

 

That’s right, rather than graft.

 

So when you first met Tom I think you said you were about 20?

 

Yes 19 to 20.

 

And had you already heard of Tom Collins at that point?

 

No, but I was already going to the Jazz club so that was where we met first.

 

Which Jazz club was it?

 

I first saw him I think at the Corn Exchange. He was sitting in there.

 

Corn Exchange where?

 

Colchester, it’s all gone now. Behind The Cups, yes because later on they played in The Cups, upstairs in a room there.

 

Was that quite an established Jazz club at the Corn Exchange?

 

Yes, it was. It wasn’t the first place that Jazz was at.

 

Oh yes, the Colchester Jazz Club itself you were talking about? And what kind of year are we talking about here?

 

It would be about ’59.

 

What other Jazz clubs do you remember going on around the time, because you were obviously a Jazz fan yourself?

 

I used to go to the Ipswich one, and apart from that I used to go up to London.

 

Did you?

 

I don’t recall at that time other than Ipswich and here, not local ones.

 

Nothing at Clacton at that point?

 

Oh yes, Clacton of course. Clacton was going. Clacton might have been a little bit later that that I think.

 

I know Don Nevard played in the Station Hotel in the about ‘54/’55 so there must have been something happening then, around that time.

 

That wasn’t the Jazz Club then because I was only about 15, and the Colchester Jazz Club didn’t start until quite a bit after that. Tom certainly wasn’t involved in anything at that stage.

 

Yes, but was the Station Hotel, the Jazz Club at Clacton, was that weekly?

 

Yes, it was. There was a sort of milk bar place they played for. There was Skiffle in there, Skiffle and a bit of Jazz there too. And then it went to the Station Hotel.

 

Oh OK. When you first met Tom, had the Tom Collins Band already started?

 

No it wasn’t under his name then, because as I said he was just sitting in. I can’t remember what they called themselves. I’m trying to think when, probably not much before the Albert, I don’t really recall. By that time it really was Tom Collins Jazz Band, it certainly wasn’t in the early days. I can’t recall what they called themselves to be honest.

 

So Tom was just a member of the band at that point?

 

Yes. I think that was when they were making more money and they had to sort of do it officially and someone had to be in charge and sort the books and the things like that, and Tom took it all on. That’s when it really became the Tom Collins Jazz Band. 

 

So when Tom was first playing with his band was he playing exclusively for the Colchester Jazz Club, because that was then weekly?

 

Yes, he did.

 

Because I read somewhere that his first public appearance, as it were, outside of that was in 1965 which seems quite a long time after. He must have been playing around outside of there would he?

 

I can’t think he did a lot, no. It was only in his later life that he played in other bands.

 

So it was just a weekly thing?

 

Yes.

 

So did he have a day job as well?

 

Oh yes, he was a carpenter. Later on in life he was an instructor at the Spastics Centre, Drummonds. That’s how he finished, that was his last job.

 

Did Tom build up a reputation quite quickly in this area?

 

Oh yes he did. The Jazz Club was absolutely bursting at the seams, it was fantastic those days.

 

He had quite an incredible line up in his band as well, of fine musicians?

 

Um. I think we had the Langenhoe Lion, didn’t we?

 

Yes.

 

Now that was THE place really I think. Because they were before the Albert weren’t they?

 

Yes.

 

Yeah it was the Tom Collins Jazz Band then so it was under his name then. But it was really going then. We used to get visiting bands, Acker Bilk’s been down there and all sorts. Yes it was really good.

 

Was that before Acker Bilk had his major hits?

 

No he was still going, no he was very well known. He was a great character, I loved him, we used to get on very well. Last time I met him was when I came back from Africa, and I wondered why I was sitting by the door and he wasn’t speaking to me. I said “Don’t you recognise me?” and he said “Oh Jenny, I’m sorry I haven’t got my glasses on, I can’t see”. Ha ha. He said “Come round the back and we’ll have a drink”. So we did. Oh we used to get on great, I loved him. Good company he was, a bit crude sometimes but he was a nice man.

 

And that was all from those days, in the late 50’s?

 

That particular time was much later, that was sort of in the 80’s.

 

No, I meant when he first guested at the Colchester Jazz Club?

 

Oh that would have been late 50’s, I’d have been 20, no probably a bit later than that. I’ll have to work out how old I was. Yes a bit later, yes I suppose it was in the 60’s. Oh, Maldon Jazz that was another one that Tom used to do.

 

Oh did he?

 

Yes, because Acker came over there too. Yes, there was a Maldon Jazz Club. There used to be a big hall, I don’t know whether you call it Heybridge or Maldon, but you come into the built up area, and a sort of bridge you come over and there used to be a big hall there and they played in there.

 

Was that early 60’s as well?

 

Yes, I suppose it would have been. Dates all run into each other I’m afraid.

 

I didn’t know about that Maldon Jazz Club. Did it have a particular name, the hall there, as you remember?

 

I cannot remember that but we used to play there regularly.

So were you involved yourself in any of the Jazz clubs?

 

No I’ve never been on committees or anything like that. As I said I used to manage the band money, pay them all out and that sort of thing.

 

Is it something that, because obviously Tom and his band were rated everywhere ‘as good as you are going to get’. There must have been demand for Tom to go professional?

 

Yeah, Tom could have done it but he was one of these people he was so much of a country boy and he fought shy of anything like that. But he’d got the ability, you’ve heard him play?

 

Yeah.

 

He was fantastic really, but he just wouldn’t push it that bit further. I wish he had.

 

Was he much of a Jazz player when you first met him? Was he already fully formed as an amazing player?

 

No, no, he was just starting really. No, I don’t think he played much Jazz before that at all. I think he was quite a good trumpet player, it was all new to him. He couldn’t read music or anything like that. He did go for lessons a few times but he gave up because they said “You’re not reading the music but your just playing it because you know the tune”. In the end he gave up so he never learned to read music. He’d just got that natural thing.

 

Yes, he must have done a hell of a lot of listening and practising?

 

He did. He had a fantastic record collection. He liked brass band music, any sort of music really.

 

And that was the funny thing from what Mac Cox was telling me. He said that that Colchester Jazz Club itself was very purist New Orleans.

 

That’s where they fell out in the end.

 

Oh did they?

 

Well, I remember George Allen who used to run it, I mean he was very much the old thump thump Jazz, you know, he liked that and the marching bands and that sort of thing. The band went gradually away from that, if you’ve hear some of their later records, they’re not really Traditional Jazz as such and I think that’s what went wrong. Tom never got on with George anyway and the committee wanted the old Traditional sort of Jazz and I think that was why in the end they all sort of, well, fell out a bit really.

 

Did they?

 

Yeah, I think so from what, I know they did. They then started getting in the other bands and bringing in a different band each week.

 

That’s right because he went from weekly to monthly.

 

Yes, that’s right. But then they were doing a lot of other stuff really so they didn’t really worry that much. But I was a bit sad because that was the Jazz club and it was fantastic in those days. It never went to the same sort of heights again.

No, no, that’s right, because they wouldn’t accept anything other than the New Orleans, would they?

 

No, that’s what they wanted.

 

I remember Mac saying that the Tom Collins Band were actually much more open minded than that.

 

Yes, they were. I was playing one of his CD’s yesterday and it is totally different to the old Jazz.

 

I didn’t know he’d fallen out with them.

 

I said fallen out, I know there was a lot of bad feeling there. Yeah. I suppose that forced, not forced, gave him the opportunity to spread his wings a bit more. Yes.

 

I was told recently that it was quite hard to get round to these Jazz clubs around North Essex in the early days because obviously people didn’t drive like they do now, do they?

 

Oh no. I remember one day we were going up, I don’t know, up to Great Yarmouth or somewhere all in this great big old wagon they’d got and it broke down at Ipswich. Ha ha ha.

 

You didn’t get very far then? 10 miles!

 

I got chucked out and I had to catch a bus home, ha ha. Yes, it was a problem.

 

And probably for the punters at the clubs as well because, all these places like Wickham Bishops.

 

That’s right, I mean when Don Nevard was with them of course they had to take the piano.

 

Did they?

 

Oh yes. I remember one day they’d got this piano on the back and it was down at North Station, roundabout and sharp bend, and they went round this bend and this old piano went straight up the top, all over everywhere, smashed completely, all over the road.

 

Oh it went all over the road?

 

Oh yes, it fell off the back of the lorry and smashed everywhere. That’s one of the reasons in the end, well Don stopped playing with them because carting the piano round everywhere was not much joy and you can go to a place and the piano is duff, you’ve got no instrument to play on, so they really had to take the piano with them.

 

And obviously keep on lugging a piano around it’s going to keep on getting knocked out of tune isn’t it?

 

Well of course it is, I know that’s not good either.

 

So getting back to the Clacton area, which I guess is about 15-20 miles from here, did, as far as you know, did Clacton, other than the Station Hotel once it was established, was there much else going on around there?

 

I don’t think so. In the early days there was Skiffle, because I think one of them used to play in a Skiffle group, the banjo player at that time.

 

What before Mac?

 

Yes. I can’t think of his Christian name. His mother was a bit of a crazy one, because on Bank Holiday Mondays they all used to go down to the beach and the Monks Head and they’d have this session at the Monks Head at lunch time. A lot of drinking went down on the beach and his mother, every year, wanted a sing. She always had to get up and have a sing, a terrible voice. You’d have to hear it, it was hilarious. That was a regular thing on the Bank Holiday Monday and everybody cheered.

 

Yes, I heard about that.

 

Oh you heard about that? That was his mother.

 

When did those sessions at the Monks Head start? Because they became a yearly tradition, was it August Bank Holiday?

 

Yes, it must have been quite early because I think I was still at college when they were going.

 

And does this still continue now?

 

Oh no.

 

When would that have finished do you think?

 

Quite a long while ago I think, because a lot of them got married and dropped out and of course I dropped out as well, but I think it had finished before then. I think it was more in our younger days, when we were quite young, because there was a chap at the Jazz club, his father had a greengrocery place in town and he had this big lorry and we all used to pile in the back of that and go off after the Jazz club down to the beach at Mersea and things like that.

 

Did you?

 

Oh yeah, the good old days.

 

Was that when you were still going out with Tom before you got married, all that was going on?

 

Probably some of that was before I went out with Tom but it went on after I was going out with Tom.

 

Jumping in the greengrocer’s van I mean?

 

Yes, that was the early days.

 

Was that after a Tom Collins gig at the club?

 

Well even before it was officially Tom’s band, that was going on before that.

 

Oh was it? Oh so you were going to the Colchester Jazz Club before you met Tom?

 

Before I met Tom yes, not long before, but I was.

 

You mentioned Harwich, was there much going on around there in those days?

 

No, not the early days there wasn’t. That was later. Oh that would have been in the 60’s more.

 

And where was that, the Harwich Jazz Club?

 

I’m trying to think of the name of that, it was a club and it was upstairs. I honestly can’t remember, I’m sorry.

 

That’s alright. Because now it’s at the cinema in Harwich, the Electric Palace, it’s been there for 30 years, a Jazz club since the 80’s.

 

I don’t know, to be honest I don’t go to the Jazz clubs now because on my own I don’t know people. I’ve been to the one up here a couple of times but I don’t know anyone anymore. It’s so changed.

 

So you said earlier on that you weren’t involved in the clubs other than paying the band out.

 

I used to pay the band out, in the early days I used to do the books but they had an accountant later on.

 

But you just said off tape that you were involved in one of the clubs later on. Where was it?

 

The Ferry Boat in Point Clear.

 

Where’s Point Clear then?

 

Do you know St Osyth? If you turn right at the crossroads in the centre there, go as far as you can there is a pub called the Ferry Boat Inn, it’s still there. Funnily enough I went a couple of weeks ago, I wondered if it’s still down there. And it is, it’s in the middle of a sort of caravan area now, but it’s still there.

 

But it’s all caravans, St Osyth? It’s one massive caravan site.

 

Well it wasn’t in those days. Well there were a few down there but not like it is now. That was the end of the world down there really. It was a good club that.

 

Was it? Was that a weekly club?

 

Yes, every Friday night.

 

And was that residency for Tom or was it just somewhere he played occasionally?

 

He was the only band. I say it was a club but it was just there every Friday night that we were there, there was no sort of committee, probably the Landlord. He was an East London chap and his wife, they ran the pub and we were there every Friday night for, I don’t know, years I suppose. It was like a club but not an official sort of club.

 

And you used to run the door there?

 

Yes.

How many years do you reckon it ran for?

 

Do you know I really can’t remember, I really can’t.

 

What kind of year would it have started, this at Point Clear? Are we talking late 60’s or later?

 

It would be late 60’s I should think.

 

Do you remember why it sopped there at Point Clear.

 

No I can’t really. I know in the end the landlord was at Mersea. Whether that was because he moved I can’t remember.

 

Oh the Landlord went to Mersea?

 

Yes.

 

Oh I see. It’s always the same. You hear this story time and time again, there’s a successful night going on, then a new Landlord comes in with new ideas and then changes it.

 

Yes, changes it.

 

I mean, you know there’s that American expression “If it ain't broke, don’t fix it”.

 

Of course then they were down towards the end of Stockwell Street weren’t they? I expect you’ve got that one already.

 

Which one was this?

 

Next to the Town Hall, down there. Youth club there. Have you got that one?

 

No, no.

 

That would be, I think it was there before it moved up to the Stanway Football Club. It was there for a long time. That was there after I left, when I was living in Africa it was there. There was a Youth Club past the Town Hall on the right, still there I think. It was there, a bar area and the dance floor. That was quite a busy time. I used to run the spirit bar there, ha ha.

 

A good profit to be made there?

 

Yeah, a lot of drink, and people wanting to buy me drinks. You never knew what you were having by the end of the evening. I remember one New Year’s Eve they all kept buying me drinks. I’d got this friend, she can’t add up, although I’d drunk too much I could hardly stand up, so I sat on a box and I was doing the adding up and she was handing out the drinks. Disgusting ha ha. Yeah we had some good laughs.

 

Ha ha.

 

You didn’t have one of those fancy tills in those days, you had to add it up in your head.

 

Did that last long there?

 

Yes, it was quite a while. It was there before I went to Africa, I came home a few times and it was still there then.

 

That was that the whole of the Colchester Jazz Club moved there did it?

 

Yes, Tom was playing there and that was there he sort of started off playing full time I think and then it fizzled out and he was only doing alternate things.

 

Did Tom ever have many people guest with the band, have guest musicians?

 

You mean, an odd one sitting with them?

 

Yeah.

 

No, he didn’t.

 

If he was that popular he wouldn’t have needed it anyway.

 

No he didn’t.

 

A lot of people only do that to bring in a bit of interest, don’t they? Did Tom try and keep the sets varied, to keep it changing all the time or did he feel he had to play the same stuff?

 

No he liked to bring new stuff in, they were always bringing in new stuff and learning new things. No he liked change, he just didn’t get on with the Jazz club. Ha ha. No I mean he was progressive and I mean they are still playing the same old stuff up there, when you go up there some of the bands are getting quite ropey but they like it.

 

Ha ha.

 

I mean, a few times I’ve been, I look round and they all look so dead serious. I don’t know we used to go as a big laugh and great fun but there doesn’t seem to be the fun element somehow, it’s all too serious.

 

You used to do a kind of a Jive to the music in the day.

 

Jive was fast in those days, kept me nice and slim. Ha ha.

 

Because that’s what they say, I suppose it’s the age of the musicians, but they said that when they listen to how fast they used to play in those days, Trad Jazz used to go at a real pace and it’s not that speed any more.

 

We used to dance that fast too.

 

Did you?

 

Oh God yeah, couldn’t do it now.

 

Was it a similar Jive to the Rock and Roll one, as you remember, or was it the same one?

 

In a way, yes but some of it was more fancy footwork with it. I had one chap in and gosh we used to do some really fancy stuff, jump off the floor, and arms and really lovely stuff. I don’t know what they do now, whether it’s the same sort of thing.

 

There’s a dance they call ‘stomping’.

 

Yeah, banging their feet a bit more, and stomping.

 

Is it still Jive with the stomping?

 

Yes, it’s a jive.

 

Of course, in those days the audience for Trad Jazz was all young.

 

It was young, yes.

 

Very student, which of course you were.

 

Yes I was a student. Drank the cider and beer, it was cheap you see. 8 pence a half pint, ha ha and that’s old pence.

 

There was a thing between the Trad Jazz and those into Modern Jazz. Didn’t they call them 'mouldy fygges' and 'dirty boppers' or something?

 

Oh yes they were a different breed altogether. We were the hairy ones and the beatnick ones.

 

Yeah the beatnicks. I had a feeling you might have been a beatnick when you were saying that you were all.......

 

Well yes I was, I was a beatnick before beatnicks if you know what I mean. Women wore black stockings then but I had a blue pair. I used to mix my own fingernail paint because you couldn’t get the coloured ones then. I used to get powder paint and mix it in with an ordinary one and make my nails all colours. This was why I was in the paper because what I did was unusual.

 

That’s great, because it’s good to be individual, and you should be at that age.

 

Yes, it was a bit different.

 

It’s funny isn’t it, because right in the middle you’ve got the Trad Jazz and the Modern Jazz and right in the middle of that you’ve got the Rock and Roll scene with the Teddy Boys, wasn’t it.

 

Yes, that was very early wasn’t it? I was 16 when Rock and Roll first came in, I remember Bill Haley was fantastic, never heard anything like it. But if you think about it, it’s all similar in a way, all the excitement in the music and of course that’s the same in the Jazz.

 

All played by the youth, everyone was young who was playing that.

 

You had to be!

 

And Skiffle was a do it your own thing wasn’t it?

 

The ol' tea chest bass......

 

Was there much of that going on around here?

 

It’s when I was at college, there was a lot of it in Clacton but I don’t know about here because I only came back at weekends for the Jazz club really.

 

Wild old time in little Clacton! That’s lovely.