BIRKS' EARLY WORKS

Vic Grayson of the Bournemouth Jazz Club recently asked me to do a piece for their own website series “My first record”. I was delighted to be asked and ready to oblige. Because the memory is still vivid.

I had my appetite for swing and trad jazz whetted at Canterbury Cathedral choir school. I asked the organist to make my Christmas present a Glenn Miller LP and I was also drawn to Louis Armstrong’s 1930’s Tiger rag.

But I was in for a life-altering shock as a 13 year-old in senior school when another boy (it might even have been Marc Charig but I’m not sure) sat me down and made me listen to a Dizzy Gillespie EP from the early 50s .

The B side had Tin Tin Deo and Birks’ works on it, while the whole of the A side was taken up with a double length version of The champ.

Tin tin deo, a lengthy Latin theme with a short swing middle, is a very catchy tune which we sometimes play with the Simon Spillett quartet.

Birks’ works is a minor blues which Bobby Wellins was fond of. When Bobby announced it on the bandstand, his thick Glasgow accent made it come out with two distinct vowel sounds: “Berrks’ Wurrks”

But, although the B side is of historical interest because the line-up includes a very young John Coltrane, I distinctly recall that I was much more taken with Side A for several reasons.

Firstly, the faster tempo of The champ showed off Dizzy’s mercurial technique and unique phrasing to better effect.

Secondly, this track had the thunderously exciting Art Blakey on drums. His playing blew me away. On the front head of the bass drum in my very first kit (acquired at age 15), I laboriously stuck black lettering announcing myself as “Spike Wells alias Art Blakey or Max Roach”. The very thought of it makes me cringe with embarrassment.

Thirdly, the tenor saxophonist on The champ is not Coltrane but the veteran Budd Johnson who straddled the mainstream and modern traditions. I’ve always had a soft spot for his straight-ahead Texan style. (I particularly like his subsequent Riverside album “Budd Johnson and the four brass giants”.)

But the thing about The Champ is that his solo, which starts grittily but conventionally enough, quickly takes off into a stratosphere of shrieking and squealing, the like of which outdoes anything I have subsequently heard from anybody from Illinois Jacquet up to Albert Ayler.

My beloved late father, himself briefly a semi-pro dance band musician, always felt more comfortable with music in 2/4 rather than 4/4 and he had misgivings about my burgeoning interest in the aggressive aspects of modern jazz. Budd Johnson’s solo had him running upstairs to my bedroom and demanding that I turn this ghastly noise off because it sounded like an animal in pain. I suppose he had a point.

But I fondly recall him years later coming to hear me play with Roland Kirk at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon, being reluctantly impressed that his son was performing in front of all these other people streaming in through the doors and taking Roland’s eccentricities (orange boiler suit, manzello, stritch, nose flute, whistle, hand bells, gong and all) in good part.

In the end though, what really reconciled him to my first choice of career was a night at the Festival Hall when I appeared with snare drum, hi-hat and a pair of brushes, along with dear old Alan Clare on piano, to accompany  STEPHANE  GRAPELLI.

Grapelli was my dad’s own musical idol and he spent a blissful time backstage enjoying the unthreatening Gallic violin music from the wings and chatting to his hero in the dressing room.

Next time I write about Dizzy, I’d like to stay in the early 50s and talk about his time in Paris

……………………. À BIENTÔT!