I LOVE THOSE CHRISTMAS CARDS................

Jazz friends and fans come in all shapes and sizes and sometimes with considerable hidden talents.

ALAN LUFF is the best watercolourist I’ve ever known who paints musicians from photographs and he is wont to send me an original Christmas card each year.

Here are two of them from past years.

But back to the beginning.

We met in the late 70s in London long before I knew of his artistic talents. I’m trying to think where we first bumped into each other. Most likely at the jazz bins in a record shop.

Anyway, by coincidence it turned out that we were both working for Lloyds Bank in the City. I was a lawyer in the executor and trustee department and he was in a larger set-up called (mysteriously to me) “operations”.

Accordingly, we were able to communicate over the internal telephone system and would regularly arrange to meet in the lunch break at one of those cellar vaults such as Balls Brothers where you could have a quiet pint or three and a ploughman’s. This was mercifully before such watering-holes were ruined by hordes of Thatcherite shrieking loads-a-money yuppies popping their champagne corks.

We would talk and talk about jazz, our favourite musicians and recent broadcasts. Alan was a regular in the select audience at the BBC studios in Delaware Road, Maida Vale for “BBC Jazz Club” recordings and was a close friend of compère PETER CLAYTON.

Alan commuted to the City from Shirley in South East London and he was a key member of a Jazz Record Society in Clockhouse, along with Brian Case (a journalist who wrote a rather breathless biography of Dexter Gordon) and other enthusiasts. They invited me on one occasion to give a recital/talk about (guess who?) Lester Young.

Alan is nearly twenty years older than me and retired from the Bank aged 60 in 1987. He and his wife Jean moved down to Greatstone, New Romney near the Marshes.

It was here, freed from the curse of commuting and with more leisure, that Alan really developed his extraordinary talents for painting. Not only his favourite jazz musicians but local landscapes as well. He became quite well known in watercolour circles and has been the subject of various exhibitions.

Time away from the easel was spent until recently chairing the Sandgate Jazz Record Society, writing a regular column for Jazz Journal International and coming to live gigs within his radius. I was pleased to be reunited with him for a drink and some reminiscences (sometimes also with Jimmy Parsons) whenever he was able to be in the audience for the jazz nights at the Hastings Angling Club.

By a happy coincidence, another friend of Alan’s is TONY BELL who now lives in Fulham but was a “character” on the Brighton jazz scene in the 70s and 80s. Tony was the heart and soul of the Saturday lunchtime and afternoon drinking sessions, often starting at a Gales pub, the Lord Napier in Southover St. (largely an opportunity for a post-mortem on the previous night’s gig at the Brighton Jazz Club) and ending who knows where………….. Gang members included altoist GEOFF SIMKINS – Tony was his leading fan – plus Tom McGuinness and the late lamented Paul Rose and Derek “Woody” Wood.

Ironically, while Alan and I were at Lloyds, Tony was also working in the City for the Moscow-Narotny bank.. Despite daily train and work stresses, Tony was happy to drive Geoff and sometimes me to gigs in London in his gangsterish Ford Granada saloon (think The Sweeney). An optimum route was settled on which took in as many Youngs pubs (good beer in those days) as possible and included a mandatory stop on the return journey at a take-away curry house by Clapham Common for what was known as a “green one” i.e. a Sag Gosht.

Unknown to me until he started posting them on Facebook recently, Tony commissions Alan Luff to paint musicians to order for him and these have naturally included Tony’s favourite tenor player CLIFFORD JORDAN. .

CLIFF JORDAN painted by Alan Luff for Tony Bell

STAN TRACEY painted by Alan Luff for Tony Bell

Alan. You are a great pal and the best possible sort of jazz enthusiast to keep our music alive and kicking.