The Hidden Musicians. Ruth Finnegan
and piano, for example, played jazz or pop together and performed in school assemblies and the end-of-term concert, while the highly educated all-female Slack Elastic Band played ‘big band’ and popular jazz of the thirties on trumpet, saxophone and string bass as a rehearsal rather than performing band, and the newer Jack and the Lads with trumpet, saxophone, guitar, bass guitar and drums were initially performing just for enjoyment on the Open University campus. There were doubtless other groups playing privately – an opportunity more open to them than to the larger and louder brass bands, operatic groups or amplified rock bands.
The administration of jazz bands differed from classical, operatic and brass band groups in that they seldom adopted the formal voluntary organisation framework. The numbers were smaller, for one thing: with a couple of exceptions like the short-lived MK Big Band, there were usually five or six players so that jazz groups were run on personal, not bureaucratic lines, geared to individual achievement rather than the hierarchical musical direction characteristic of larger groups. This also fitted their open-ended form, for though there were certain common groupings of instruments, the actual instrumental composition of jazz groups was more variable than in most other musical worlds.
This fluidity was also evident in the music-making itself. Jazz musicians were tied neither to written forms nor to exact memorisation, but rather engaged in a form of composition-in-performance following accepted stylistic and thematic patterns. This, of course, is a well-known characteristic of jazz more generally – not that anyone has ever managed to define ‘jazz’ too precisely – so it was no surprise to find it at the local level in the views and behaviour of those classifying themselves as jazz players. Local musicians often commented on the freedom they felt in jazz as compared to either classical music or rock. One commented that with rock ‘it’s all happened already’ (i.e., already developed in prior rehearsals), whereas in jazz the performance itself was creative; another player explained his enthusiasm for jazz through the fact that ‘it allows a lot of expression for the individual’. Similarly a local jazz drummer talked about how in classical playing, unlike jazz, he had had ‘no real chance to create in a number, no choice about what to do’ and so ultimately preferred playing jazz to classical music.
This aspect was also very apparent in the performance of local jazz players. Far more than other musicians they would break into smiles of recognition or admiration as one after another player took up the solo spot, and looked at each other in pleasure after the end of a number, as if having experienced something newly created as well as familiar. As one local jazz player put it, ‘we improvise, with the tunes used as vehicles, so everything the group does is original’. Local jazz musicians often belonged to several jazz bands, moving easily between different groups. A musician who played both jazz and rock explained this in the following terms: with a rock band you are dependent on joint practising since the whole performance is very tight, whereas with jazz, providing you have learnt the basic conventions, ‘I can play traditional jazz with a line-up I’ve not met before.’ Jazz groups were thus less likely to have regular rehearsals than the other small bands: when they did play together it was often based on their general jazz skills rather than specific rehearsals of particular pieces. This open nature in performance also explained the high proportion of jazz ‘residencies’ by which the same band was booked to appear at the same venue once every fortnight or so. Audiences were likely to get tired of the same music time after time (a problem for rock and country and western bands), but were not bored by the more fluid jazz performances: ‘numbers are practically made up on the spot’.
When jazz enthusiasts spoke of local jazz they often described it in terms of the venues where one could regularly hear jazz bands performing. Jazz was less prominent locally than other kinds of music and apparently did not have the historical roots found among local brass bands, operatic groups or choirs. But by the early 1980s there was a series of jazz clubs and pubs in and around Milton Keynes which could be visited in rotation by an enthusiast over any given week, chief among them being the Cock and the Bull Hotels in Stony Stratford, the Bull (Newport Pagnell), the Galleon (Wolverton), the Holt Hotel in Aspley Guise, and the Cock Inn in North Crawley. Other venues included the Swan at Fenny Stratford, the Coffee Pot at Yardley Gobion, Levi’s bar at Woughton House Hotel, the Bedford Arms, Ridg-mount, the Magpie Hotel, Woburn, the foyer bar at the Woughton Centre, the Swan in Woburn Sands, the regular ‘Jazz at the Stables’ evenings at WAP, Muzaks at the New Inn, and, for a few weeks in mid 1981, the Eight Belles in Bletchley. Some pubs organised weekly or fortnightly ‘jazz clubs’: for example the Bull in Newport Pagnell at one point ran a jazz club every Wednesday alternating the Mahogany Hall Jazzmen and the Alan Fraser Band, while the Holt Hotel Jazz Club functioned every Thursday. Other pubs put on either occasional jazz groups or, more often, arranged weekly, fortnightly or monthly jazz performances on a regular basis.
Some of these arrangements lasted longer than others, but at any one time there was live jazz being played in the area at least once or twice in the week, often more. For example June 1982 saw the following: the Original Grand Union Syncopators on alternate Thursday nights at the Woughton House Hotel, with the Cock Inn in North Crawley continuing its fortnightly jazz nights (already going for five years) on the other Thursdays; Momentum on alternate Fridays at the Cock Hotel, Stony Stratford; the Fenny Stompers on the last Saturday of every month at the Coffee Pot, Yardley Gobion; Tuesday jazz evenings at the Woughton Centre, alternating between the Alan Fraser Band and the Original Grand Union Syncopators; and the Mahogany Hall Jazzmen on the first and third Wednesday of every month at the Bull in Newport Pagnell. Most of these performances were in local pubs, and thus in a sense financed through market mechanisms and private enterprise. Unlike classical music and to some extent brass bands, jazz groups and performances, with the possible exception of the Original Grand Union Syncopators, had relatively little patronage from public bodies.
The regular jazz evenings in local pubs and clubs were the most visible performances. But bands were also asked to perform at private occasions like parties or weddings, or to entertain at local clubs (above all the working men’s clubs), at special evenings for, say, the Angling Club, Bletchley Town Cricket Club, a local Conservative Club or Women’s Institute, or at fêtes out of doors. Groups also played free for such causes as a local scouts jamboree appeal, Christian Aid, the Jimmy Savile Stoke Mandeville Appeal and Woburn Sands Brownies. Enthusiasts, of course, were also listening to broadcasts (including jazz on local radio stations, some not far away) and the occasional professional appearances in the area, like the successful concerts organised at WAP or the ambitious but sparsely attended Jazz Festival at the local Linford Arts Centre in mid 1982. In addition, music with a jazz flavour could be heard at other local events, notably at the Bletchley Middle School Festivals, when the specially composed pieces sometimes included jazz, and in events otherwise mainly devoted to folk, brass band or classical music modes. The main jazz world, however, insofar as it existed as something separate in Milton Keynes, was primarily represented by the players in the established jazz groups and their followers in the area.
Who were these local jazz players in Milton Keynes? Practically all fell towards the amateur end of the ‘amateur/professional’ continuum in the sense both of relying on other means than jazz for their income and in their view of their musical activity as basically enjoyment rather than job.2 The question is an interesting one, however, because of the conflicting general views about this. For some, jazz is ‘the people’s music’ (Finkelstein 1975), whereas others suggest that it is now an intellectual rather than truly popular form (see Collier 1978, pp. 3–4; Lloyd 1974). This ambiguity actually fitted quite well with the heterogeneous membership of local groups. On the one hand there were many highly educated jazz players, including teachers, administrators and community workers, and several who had developed their jazz enthusiasm at art school. But as demonstrated by the Fenny Stompers among others, there were also players who had left school early, were in skilled or semi-skilled manual work rather than professional jobs, or were unemployed; some were still at school. The one clear pattern was that they were overwhelmingly male (apart from the one explicitly female band) and predominantly in their thirties or forties. There were a few younger players like the primary school group, but essentially jazz playing seemed not to be a teens or twenties pursuit.
This lack of any single set of social characteristics also came out in the different channels through which local players were recruited into jazz. Some began through