November
has been an eventful month!
Our three weeks in Cyprus was most
enjoyable, as always. We spent two weeks in the Helios Apartment Hotel in Chlorakas and had some fun nights in Bar Costa Rica.
It’s also
been an expensive month!
Firstly I
had to buy a new mobile phone as my trusty Blackberry stopped working while in
Cyprus. Then, on my return, my laptop gave up the ghost so I had to buy a replacement.
Finally whilst walking across the garden of The Fox last week my glasses frame
snapped forcing me to crawl around the wet grass in the dark and pouring rain
to try and retrieve the lens.
Sadly, for
three stalwarts of the UK popular music scene, the month of November 2014 was
there last.
John Symon Asher "Jack" Bruce
was born in 1943 in Bishopbriggs, Lanarkshire. He began playing the jazz bass in his teens and won a
scholarship to study cello and musical
composition at the Royal
Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and in order to
support himself he played in Jim McHarg's Scotsville Jazzband. The academy
disapproved of its students playing jazz and Bruce was given an ultimatum –
stop playing in the band or leave the Academy. He left to seek his fortune in
the world of jazz and blues.
In 1962
Bruce became a member of the London-based band Blues Incorporated, led by
Alexis Korner, in which he played the upright bass. The band also included
organist Graham Bond, saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith and drummer Ginger
Baker. In 1963 the group broke up and Bruce went on to form the Graham Bond
Quartet with Bond, Baker and guitarist John McLaughlin. Soon Bruce switched to
electric bass and McLaughlin was replaced by Heckstall-Smith on saxophone and
the band became The Graham Bond Organisation.
During the
time that Bruce and Baker played with the Graham Bond Organisation, they were
known for their hostility towards each other. Relations grew so bad between the
two that Bruce left the group in August 1965.
For a brief
time Bruce played with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, which featured
guitarist Eric Clapton.
After the
Bluesbreakers, Bruce had his first commercial success as a member of Manfred
Mann in 1966, including "Pretty Flamingo" which reached number one in
the UK singles chart (one of two number one records of his career - the other
being an un-credited bass part on The Scaffold's "Lily the Pink").
In July 1966
Bruce reunited with Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker and founded the rock
trio Cream, which gained international recognition playing blues-rock and
jazz-inflected rock music. Bruce sang most of the lead vocals, with Clapton
backing him up and eventually assuming some leads himself.
With his
Gibson EB-3 electric bass, Bruce became one of the most famous and influential bassists
in rock, winning musicians' polls and influencing the next generation of
bassists. Bruce co-wrote most of Cream's single releases with lyricist Pete
Brown, including the hits "Sunshine of Your Love", "White
Room", "I Feel Free" and this track from the album Disraeli
Gears :
Cream broke
up in 1968 and Bruce continued playing until shortly before his death.
Bernard
William Jewry was born in 1942 in Muswell Hill, North London. In the early 60’s an
unknown teenage band called Shane Fenton and the Fentones recorded a demo tape
and mailed it in to the BBC with
the hope of being selected to appear on television. While awaiting a reply from
the BBC, the band's 17-year-old singer Shane Fenton (whose real name was Johnny
Theakston) died from rheumatic fever.
The band decided to break up, but after receiving a letter
from the BBC inviting them to come to London to audition in person for the
programme they were persuaded to stay together and keep their name by
Theakston’s mother, in honour of her son's memory.
Bernard William Jewry, who was a roadie with the group at the time, was asked
to join the band and take over the mantle Shane Fenton. The band went on to
have a few minor hits during the 1960’s including this one in the style of
Cliff Richard and the Shadows:
The band subsequently broke up and Jewry disappeared from the spotlight for a decade.
With the onset of the Glam Rock in the early 70’s Jewry took over the mantle of
Alvin Stardust from singer songwriter Peter Shelley and went to number two in
the charts with with “My Coo Ca Choo”.
Jewry was married three times. He met his second wife, actress
Liza Goddard, when both were involved in a This Is Your Life for Michael Aspel
and they married in 1981.
They divorced six years later with Goddard blaming
religion after “Bern”, as she always called him, discovered God on a train to London
Waterloo.
The Jewrys, Alvin, Shane and Bern,
Collectively, were quite a turn:
They never hit the dizzy heights,
But saw their various names in lights.
One married Liza, lucky sod,
Then, on a train, discovered God…
Now Bernard, Alvin, Bern and Shane
Are set to be reborn again!
(Evans 2014|)
In total, “Bern” amassed seven Top Ten entries, in a chart span lasting almost 25 years and had
just finished a new album weeks before he died.
Another Bernard, Bernard
Stanley "Acker" Bilk MBE was born in
Pensford, Somerset, in 1929. He earned the nickname "Acker" from the
Somerset slang for "friend" or "mate". His parents tried to
teach him the piano, but, as a boy, Bilk found it restricted his love of
outdoor activities, including football. He lost two front teeth in a school
fight and half a finger in a sledging accident, both of which he claimed
affected his eventual clarinet style.
While serving
national service with the Royal Engineers in the Suez Canal Zone, his sapper
friend, John A. Britten, gave him a clarinet he had bought at a bazaar for
which he had no use. The clarinet had no reed, so Britten fashioned a makeshift
one for the instrument out of some scrap wood. Bilk later borrowed a better
instrument from the British Army and kept it after he was demobbed.
Bilk played
with friends on the Bristol jazz circuit and in 1951 moved to London to play
with Ken Colyer's jazz band. Bilk disliked London, so returned west and formed
his own band in Pensford called the Chew Valley Jazzmen, which was renamed the
Bristol Paramount Jazz Band when he moved back to London. Their agent then
booked them for a six-month gig in Düsseldorf, Germany, playing in a beer bar
seven hours a night, seven nights a week. It was during this time that Bilk and
the band developed their distinctive style and appearance, complete with
striped-waistcoats and bowler hats.
After returning
from Germany, Bilk became based in Plaistow, London, and his band became part
of the boom in traditional jazz in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s. In
1960, their single "Summer Set" reached number five on the UK Singles
Chart, and began a run of 11 chart hit singles. In 1961 "Acker Bilk and
His Paramount Jazz Band" appeared at the Royal Variety Performance.
Bilk was not an
internationally known musician until 1962, when the experimental use of a
string ensemble on one of his albums and the inclusion of a composition of his
own as its keynote piece won him an audience outside the UK. He had composed a
melody, entitled "Jenny" after his daughter, but was asked to change
the title to "Stranger on the Shore" for use in a British television
series. He went on to record it as the title track of a new album in which his
deep and quavering clarinet was backed by the Leon Young String Chorale.
The single was
not only a big hit in the United Kingdom, where it reached no 2 and stayed in
the charts for 55 weeks, but also topped the American charts. As a result, Bilk was only the second British
artist to have a single in the number-one position on the Billboard Hot 100
singles chart - Vera Lynn being the first, with "Auf Wiedersein
Sweetheart" in 1952. "Stranger on the Shore" sold over one
million copies and was awarded a gold disc. It was later used
in the soundtrack to Sweet Dreams, the film biography of country music singer Patsy Cline.
Bilk continued
to tour with his Paramount Jazz Band, as well as performing concerts with his
two contemporaries, Chris Barber and Kenny Ball as the 3Bs.
In 2005 he was
awarded the BBC Jazz Awards' "Gold Award".
RIP
Jack, Alvin and Acker – thank you for the music.
