Open Writing

The Jazz Aunties – sounds like a good name for an all-women jazz band (not all-girl, you notice. It’s a very long time since I was a girl.) There’d be Auntie Bebop on vocals (ooh-bop sh’bam, kluga-mop), Auntie Toot-toot (look – I’ve warned you lot at the back – one more word out of you and OUT YOU GO!) on trumpet, warning people between solos not to mess with the aforementioned object. And how about Auntie Clinkscale on piano? (There is a music writer of this name who, aptly enough, writes about piano music.) Or even Auntie Plunk on banj……..no, we won’t go there. Not lampooning women-only bands, by the way. Just imagining Aunties, all done up in Auntie gear (cardies, chunky costume jewellery, Evening in Paris perfume), getting down and dirty to a greasy bass riff.

My jazz aunties weren’t band members. They were honorary aunties who, in the case of Auntie Iris, got me into jazz in the first place, and in the case of my godmother, Auntie Floss, stumped up for a little record player and bought me quite a few records over the years. Working class kids in my day usually called their parents’ friends “Auntie” and “Uncle” as surnames were considered too starchy and formal, and first names altogether too cheeky. Suited me - God bless ‘em!

Auntie Iris worked with my Mum on the belt at Brymar, an electronics component factory, and she and her husband (Uncle Sid) often used to visit. I grew to love them very much, especially Uncle Sid, a soft-hearted man with the look of an amiable bloodhound. He and Auntie Iris couldn’t have kids of their own, and sort of adopted me.

Auntie Iris was a real jazz buff, with a vast record collection on 78s and LPs, and she played piano. Sadly, I never heard her, but Mum told me. Uncle Sid was less enamoured, but went along with it, as he did with most things in life. The quintessence of laid-back, was Uncle Sid. My brother was quite interested and Auntie Iris taped some records for him – mostly big band stuff from the likes of Count Basie, Artie Shaw and Harry James. He was only QUITE interested – but wow, I was in love!

My first clear memory was Count Basie’s “One O’Clock Jump” and Harry James’s “King Porter Stomp”. I have the latter on my player as I type. Before too long I could hum the solos (annoying little crab that I was), and as Dave Frishberg wrote much later, I wanted to be a sideman. Fat chance. I was a little working class girl from a family where the theme tune could have been “No money, no money, no money, no money”, sung to the melody of “Perdido”. Didn’t stop me singing, though. Nothing could.

When Auntie Iris realised I was another jazz buff in the making, she was delighted, and fed me a diet of tapes and records for my birthday and at Christmas – or just any old time. Just felt a song coming on there……..jazz geeks please write in with which song, performed by whom with whom, and the first correct reply will win a dinner for two as the personal guests of Bernard Manning.

So over the years I got into Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Seven, Muggsy Spanier, Eddie Condon, Jelly Roll Morton, my dear Jack Teagarden (big T)……..the list is endless. Not to mention lots of early Basie – oh, that solo on “Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie”! Started me off on adoring Lester Young, which has never stopped and never will.

In my early teens Auntie Iris got some tickets to see Woody Herman in our local town – but I had a hot date with the pimply youth of the day, so didn’t go. One of the stupider decisions of my life – I can’t even bring his name or face to mind now (except the pimples, of course).

When I went to art college in Birmingham I at long last plucked up courage to get up on the bandstand and sing – and promptly wrote to Auntie Iris to tell her and Uncle Sid. They were delighted, but both died before they could ever come to hear me. To this day, every time I hear Glenn Miller’s “Sunrise Serenade”, I think of them – it was a favourite of Uncle Sid’s. (I am listening now with the tears stinging my eyes – how stupid is that?) I owe Auntie Iris a lot – and Uncle Sid, just for being himself.

How I got into modern jazz later is another story.

Now – Auntie Floss, or just “Auntie”. That was what I called her right from when I could lisp out a few words – Mummy, Daddy, Pussycat, Jazz………(slight exaggeration; I was seven when I got into jazz by which time I had ceased to lisp, thank God.)

What can I say about Auntie? (Have you got all night?) She was born in 1890 and so was a Victorian child. I was fascinated to hear about her childhood, the fashions of the day and her schooldays in the school her French father ran in their home. Auntie’s photographs were a constant source of wonder to me but I was dubious about the notion of bathing in what looked like a smock and tights, having emerged from a “bathing machine” drawn down to the water’s edge by two stalwart lads. How the heck the lady bathers didn’t drown under the weight of all that clobber is a mystery.

As a young woman, Auntie loved the music hall and could still sing a lot of the songs she heard there. Unsurprisingly I soon picked them up, to the astonishment of my Geordie nan, Nanny Grant (Eeh! Where did the bairn larn that ‘un? It’s got whiskers on it!). The song in question begins “on Sundays, I go out with a soldier” and dates from the First World War.

I was scared of the dark (still am), and Auntie used to sing me this song as she tucked me up:

“My mother said
Always look under the bed
Before you blow the candle out
To see if there’s a man about
So I did as she said
But to my regret
I’ve never had the luck to find
A MAN THERE YET!”

Appealed to my already-developing ribald sense of humour, and Auntie’s well-established one. I learned my first rude limericks from her – pretty mild but still unsuitable for a public forum. Later, she was cooking up a pot of green tomato chutney. I walked into her kitchen, sniffed the air and asked what she was making. She beckoned me over to the stove, where a mess of brown goo was sort of seething away, the odd bubble breaking the surface. She grinned and sang “Faarmer Brown’s cow went POOP against the waaall” in the ripest of Mummerset accents. Collapse of both of us into mild hysteria.

“My Old Man Said Follow the Van” was another favourite, and she explained that it was about a moonlight flit. The heroine had got lost because she got slightly merry in the pub (I dillied and dallied, dallied and I dillied). In the Sixties, Auntie loved to watch “The Good Old Days” on the telly. I thought it was crud but loved to watch her face as she enjoyed the songs of her youth (not to mention the clothes, as anyone who’s seen that show will remember).

And the jazz? Well, for ages the family had no means of playing music except the ancient radio and my brother’s old reel-to-reel tape recorder (no money, no money, no money, no money……..). Auntie on the other hand had an Ekco radiogram, smelling enticingly of varnish. She was more than happy for me to play my precious records on it, taking a great interest:

“What’s that he’s playing, duck?” She always called me that and for some reason I imagined it was spelt “Duc”. Well, Auntie was half-French.

So I replied: “A soprano sax, Auntie.” “What’s a soprano sax, duck?” “Well, sort of like a saxophone and like a clarinet, no curly bits in it….”

“Oh. Well, he’s certainly putting his heart and soul into it!” (It was Sidney Bechet.)

And the record player of my own? It arrived on my tenth birthday, a little box that could play 78s or vinyl (you turned the player head round to suit). Hours of fun in my freezing cold bedroom, wrapped up in several jumpers, gloves and all (no money, no money….all RIGHT Granty! You’ve made your point).

Just a couple more anecdote before I leave you. Nothing to do with jazz, but in the mid Sixties there was a craze for extraordinarily ugly little dolls called “Good Luck Trolls”. They had wrinkly faces, boot-button eyes and a mass of luridly-coloured hair. You could get them in various sizes, from small enough to fit on the end of a pencil, to large enough to scare the wits out of a small child. Soon, you were nobody unless you had a family of these oddities. Mum made me a Troll’s House out of an old cardboard box, complete with curtains and wallpaper, in which I made them do all kinds of things. (That’s it, you lot. OUT!)

Auntie decided to buy a troll for me, so went to Lane’s the Toyshop in the High Street. She arrived back home later giggling fit to bust. “Oh, I made such a fool of myself in Lane’s! I asked the man if he had any TRELLS! TRELLS, madam? Do you mean TROLLS? he said. I felt such a silly. Anyway, here it is, duck – it’s got blue hair.”

Nothing to the lummox of herself she made in Gentry’s and Bailey’s, the record shop, asking for a record by Jean-Paul Belmondo that she thought was called “Oui oui oui oui oui oui oui”. (The assistant directed her to the public conveniences in Star Hill – or so she said…….)

One of life’s enhancers, was Auntie. I am looking at her photo right now – she’s raising a little glass of tiddly to her lips. She was no drunk, but liked a little libation - odd for someone who signed The Pledge as a girl (I promise never to let an alcoholic drink pass my lips…..yeah, right).

Lucky old me to have known her.