by Dave Haslam
The association between the Sex Pistols and the 100 Club culminated in September 1976 when Ron Watts promoted a two-day punk festival featuring the Pistols, the Clash, Buzzcocks and the Damned. ‘When punk came along in 1976 the club got a whole new lease of life,’ says Jeff. ‘I think the punk festival in ’76 was probably the moment where the club changed forever because it’s still the single most important occasion, the thing the club’s most associated with, above all the other brilliant things that we’ve done.’
On the second night of the festival, when the Damned were playing, Sid Vicious lobbed a beer glass at the stage and it broke against one of the pillars and inflicted a severe injury on a young woman in the audience. The police were called and Vicious ended up in Ashford Remand Centre, though he was released after some spurious alibis were offered in his defence. Despite this sorry incident, punk’s champions in the press – although few in number at this point – judged the festival a huge success. Caroline Coon wrote a two-page spread for Melody Maker declaring: ‘The 600-strong line that stretched across two blocks was indisputable evidence that a new decade in rock is about to begin.’
It wasn’t all about punk. In the late 1970s reggae also became a feature of the programming at the 100 Club. There was a Saturday soul night hosted by Capital Radio’s Greg Edwards. DJ Ady Croasdell’s 6T’s Northern Soul night made its 100 Club debut in May 1980, and through the 1980s African musicians Fela Kuti, Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela, and Youssou N’Dour all appeared at the club. Looking back to the 1980s Jeff Horton also picks out the jazz DJs who used to fill the club on a Friday night, people like Gilles Peterson and Paul Murphy. ‘You’d have people coming in every single Friday night, even if they didn’t know the band because they knew it was going to be completely packed. It was the DJs who were really, really important. The band would bring in so many people but the DJ would make sure it was completely sold out.’
Another DJ-led night, ‘Popcorn’ featuring DJs Paul Hallam and Dave Edwards, filled the venue every week in the late 1990s, by which time another wave of emerging bands had found a home at the 100 Club. This was kick-started when Chris York from SJM phoned Jeff and they came to an agreement over new band showcase nights. The first of these, in September 1992, featured a relatively unknown Suede, who were followed in the next few years by up-and-coming bands like Oasis, Cornershop, Catatonia and Travis. In July 2001, the White Stripes played their first-ever European show at the club.
Despite staging as many successful events as it ever had, the rising costs of running the venue, including a rates bill of £4,000 a month and year-on-year leaps in rent, had created a situation where it looked unlikely that the 100 Club could survive. In September 2010 the Evening Standard splashed the story of its imminent demise on its pages, as did the NME, and a hundred other magazines and websites. Jeff was inundated with support, including from Paul McCartney who offered to perform a lunchtime show. Just over 300 people attended, a sell-out as you’d expect, with all the £60 tickets sold. McCartney played for almost two hours. ‘People had flown in from Chicago, all over North America,’ remembers Jeff. ‘It was the most extraordinary show, just the best; and fantastic to get that kind of seal of approval from someone like that.’
The 100 Club is one of the longest-running live music venues in the world. There’s been no break since 1942, though there have been difficult times. The venue is still independently owned, just as it was in its first days when the Feldmans opened the venue. Their background was in the garment trade; in 1942 Joe Feldman was working as the manager of a clothing factory on Gerrard Street, and his sons Robert and Monty worked there too, as pattern cutters and designers. The boys were into jazz: Robert on clarinet and Monty on accordion played at parties, bar mitzvahs and youth club dances as the Feldman Trio with their young brother Victor as drummer. Victor was particularly talented and even when he was just eight years old he was already attracting attention as a rising star.
On a walk along Oxford Street after leaving work one evening in 1942, Robert passed 100 Oxford Street and wandered down into the basement, where he found Mac’s Restaurant and immediately planned setting up a jazz club on the premises. The pillars weren’t ideal, but he thought maybe a feature could be made of them, or he could hide them with some potted palm trees. He came to an arrangement to host a live jazz club on Sunday nights. At first Joe was sceptical about the project but, perhaps seeing it as a chance to showcase the talents of child prodigy Victor, he stepped in and added some financial backing. Robert and Monty began to make enough money to give up their work as pattern cutters, while Joe got more involved and headed the operation.
George Webb, who’d launched his Dixielanders at the Red Barn, had connections to the 100 Club, which predated his work with Roger Horton at Jazzshows by a decade. In 1943 the Dixielanders also became the first revivalist jazz group to play at Feldman’s when the editor of Melody Maker, Ray Sonin, persuaded Robert Feldman to book them. The gig worked – the sound suited the intimate basement – and other revivalist and traditional jazz acts followed, including the Crane River Jazz Band formed by former merchant navy seaman Ken Colyer.
Colyer was of the opinion that mainstream jazz by the late 1940s was overly commercialised, controlled by an industry of compliant venue owners, record companies, and the BBC. He saw something political in the anti-commercial philosophy behind the sound, and he wasn’t the only one. A leftist political edge to revivalist jazz was clear at the time. George Webb, for example, was booked by the Young Communist League for various events in central London in the early 1950s. And when in 1958 the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament set off from Trafalgar Square on a protest march to Aldermaston – the designated centre of Britain’s nuclear weapons industry – the marchers were led by Ken Colyer’s band playing ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’.
Modern bebop fans and those in the other camp – the revivalists and traditionalists seeking to reproduce the authentic pre-commercial jazz – each had favoured venues. When the 100 Club was being run by Humphrey Lyttelton and his manager Lyn Dutton the music policy continued to be mostly traditional jazz, whereas modern jazz fans would gather at venues like Club Eleven. Club Eleven started in 1948, founded by musicians connected with bands Johnny Dankworth and Ronnie Scott had formed following their visit to hear Dizzy Gillespie in America. It was situated in Ham Yard, in the basement of the building that had housed the Hambone. In the late 1940s there was also a boxing gym on the first floor and, it was said, a strip club on the premises too (perhaps in the rooms where the Hambone had been).
Ham Yard already had a reputation for unregulated good times, and for venues operating a little distance from the letter or spirit of the law. Club Eleven fitted into this tradition. There were ten musicians involved including Ronnie Scott, Hank Shaw, Leon Calvert, Laurie Morgan and Tony Crombie. An eleventh member, Harry Morris, a non-musician, took care of the financial side. Fullado mainstay Denis Rose organised many of the jam sessions there. Occasionally he’d ask Don Rendell to fill a vacancy in the Eleven. ‘It was a rough place – a kind of old ramshackle sort of bare room with lightbulbs,’ Rendell later recalled. ‘There was no effort to beautify the place, none. The interest in jazz was growing, but the point was, it was the in place. It was the hip place.’
The trad jazz and modern jazz split was tribal in a way that became very familiar in later decades; young people were making choices about where they went out, and who they hung out with, the music they favoured and the clothes they wore. That you could define yourself in the world with your dress was nothing new; it was something urban gangs like the scuttlers and peaky blinders had understood. As did the flappers, causing a stir with their haircuts and hemlines.
Enamoured of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and the early Miles Davis, the bebop crowd studied the looks and style on album sleeves and developed a determination to live out a notion of cool. Music and fashion were at the heart of the lifestyle, and the club you frequented was where you demonstrated y
our attitudes and allegiances; the mythologies were strong, and would get stronger. You only had to read Jack Kerouac to get that, or take a look at the cover of one edition of his 1958 novel The Subterraneans which, in the words of the blurb, was an unabashed portrayal of ‘weird lives and wild loves in a jazz-haunted, desire-tormented world’.
There were cells of bebop fans – subterranean, underground (literally and culturally) – who’d escaped to venues where the music, look, language and behaviour wouldn’t be countenanced anywhere else. On occasions, Club Eleven would be enveloped in a haze of marijuana, and some of the musicians on the scene used heroin. If you visited Club Eleven you’d soon become aware the drug use had an effect on the performances. Bill Le Sage, who played with the Johnny Dankworth Seven, remembered: ‘The bands would play one number for forty minutes. Then take a ten-minute break while they tried to think of the next tune to play.’
After a year in Ham Yard, Club Eleven moved to a venue on Carnaby Street. At the new premises, Club Eleven suffered a major drugs bust on 15 April 1950, when around forty police officers raided the place. They searched the 200 attendees, made ten arrests, and discovered an empty morphine ampoule, a small packet of cocaine, some prepared opium and a large number of cigarettes containing Indian hemp. The newspapers pounced on the goings-on, and ran stories of ‘drug-crazed beboppers’.
Denis Rose was one of the musicians questioned after the raid and he was turned over to the military police when it was discovered he had absconded from the army. Ronnie Scott was another of the arrested men and was charged at Marlborough Magistrates Court under the Raw Opium Regulations and Dangerous Drugs Act. At the court, the chief inspector was asked to present his evidence: ‘The Club is a bebop club run by musicians who recently moved from other premises,’ he began. The presiding magistrate interrupted: ‘What is bebop?’ The chief inspector didn’t go in for a particularly sophisticated explanation: ‘It’s a queer form of modern dancing; a Negro jive.’
It’s understandable perhaps that a magistrate wasn’t keeping abreast of music trends, but it was also the case that, with the exception of small pockets of interest, the general public was unaware or unimpressed by developments in jazz, the works of Miles Davis, or the use of recreational drugs by the ‘jazz-haunted’. The establishment was keen to keep a lid on everything, wary of weird thinking; a hangover from the wartime desire not to rock the boat. All kinds of activity were suspect: for example, in 1952 authorities in Newcastle, believing that jazz audiences brought trouble to venues, banned a concert featuring Nat King Cole and Johnny Dankworth.
The early 50s tendency to expect conformity would lessen in the following decades, but throughout the decade and beyond, whether out of naivety or ignorance, plenty of ordinary folk weren’t quite sure what to make of beatnik-type activity. As late as 1960 a journalist on a Sheffield paper was acknowledging that ‘the sight of a teenage figure walking the streets in an oversize sweater and faded blue jeans horrifies the average Sheffield citizen’.
Despite hostility from the authorities and wariness or incomprehension from the general populace, venue owners, musicians and mavericks continued pushing the boundaries of music and nightlife. In 1952 and 1953, for the lucky few, there were opportunities to attend all-night music venues. The lucky ones were those who knew where to look or who to follow: certain characters like Cy Laurie, George Melly and Mick Mulligan.
Visiting a modern jazz club was a cerebral or spiritual experience; the use of reefers and heroin was hardly conducive to banging out high-energy music. At the Red Barn, revivalist jazz audiences were discouraged even from foot-tapping and audiences at Feldman’s would nod their heads but remain seated. Cy Laurie’s was different to all these; at his venue you’d leap around to party music, dance music – they called it a ‘rave’.
Cy Laurie hosted his trad jazz raves in the basement space on Ham Yard vacated by Club Eleven when they moved to Carnaby Street. Cy was a clarinet player rumoured to have a proper job – as a gravedigger – and had previously run a weekly club at the Seven Stars on Bromley High Street. He did little to spruce up the space – it remained a dark, grubby basement – but even with a low-quality sound system and dilapidated sofas, the music had a much more direct dance appeal than strung-out modern jazz.
We were never told about our antecedents during the rave years at the end of the 1980s, at ‘Shoom’, ‘The Trip’ or the Haçienda, or raves near Blackburn or the M25. At the Haçienda we knew we hadn’t invented staying up all night – we knew about the Northern Soul all-nighters, Wigan Casino, and the speed and scooter scenes – but we didn’t know the word ‘rave’ was being used to describe an all-night dance party back in the early 1950s and that subsequently the word would be used again, when the Who played Brighton’s Florida Rooms during the height of mod, for example.
Unlike the DJ-led raves of the late 1980s, back in 1952 and 1953 it would be a live band whipping up a frenzy. On occasions George Melly and his bandmate Mick Mulligan would throw allnight basement parties at their rehearsal room on Gerrard Street, Soho. Mick Mulligan was described in Melody Maker as ‘King of the Ravers’. His story is told in George Melly’s memoir Owning Up, a wonderfully evocative story of his early jazz years, including days and nights spent touring in Britain, suffering the nation’s B&Bs, confrontations with promoters and venue owners, and enjoying knee-tremblers with playful females. Melly was always gifted with the ability to extract fun out of the most unglamorous situations.
Despite George Melly’s story-telling prowess, you’d be hard-pressed to develop a mythology that playing live up and down the country in the 1950s was anything on a par with the intense subterranean life portrayed in a Kerouac novel. Singer Elaine Delmar was on the northern club circuit playing two or three gigs a night and then getting the milk train home. Her sets would come second in priority to the night’s bingo session and onstage she’d be faced with a restless audience, likely at any time to get up and wander off to go and buy a pie to have with their pint. She recalls: ‘There’d be lots of booze, lots of smoke and rowdiness – the chairman of the club would come onstage saying, “Come on, give a bit of support, give the poor cow a chance!” Dreadful.’
Cy Laurie’s weekly trad jazz raves were lively, full of dancing and popular with St Martin’s School of Art students. There was a certain look sported by the regulars. The lads tended towards corduroy trousers, short chunky sweaters, duffel coats and short, thoughtful-looking beards. The girls liked dirndl-style circular dresses, curtain-hoop earrings and black stockings. Black was the default colour for most outfits. There’d be some dancers in sandals, some barefooted. The goings-on at Cy’s appealed beyond the schisms; lured by bohemian, unrationed enjoyment, even young people who didn’t consider themselves ‘trad’ fans made their way to the venue.
As the decade progressed, the smaller scenes and activity away from the major dance halls were developing in cities all over Britain. In Newcastle, for example, despite the local council’s ban on Nat King Cole, the city was building a strong jazz scene. Back in the 1930s, the Newcastle Rhythm Club had hired or taken possession of a succession of venues and function rooms, including, in 1954, the Mahogany Hall in the Royal Arcade. The following year, George Pearson took the Central Labour Club on Melbourne Street and opened the New Orleans Club.
Many of the important and influential musicians who’d emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s were enjoying their formative years in clubs and venues in the 1950s. Bryan Ferry is just one example. A teenager, his visits to the New Orleans Jazz Club made an impression, and it wasn’t just the music, it was the whole experience. Later he recalled being inspired by the otherworldly atmosphere: ‘To me it was just like being in a movie set; people smoking and drinking and then this band were playing who were really good.’
The in-house band at the New Orleans Club was the Mighty Joe Young Jazzmen, who featured a trumpet player called John Walters, a former art student. Another young musician who was a regular performer at the club
was Nigel Stanger, who became more than proficient on the alto and tenor saxophones, piano and Hammond organ, and went on to play with the likes of Herbie Goins at the Flamingo, John Mayall and, in 1993, on Bryan Ferry’s album Taxi.
Eric Burdon was a local lad who also spent some of his formative years in the New Orleans Jazz Club, which is wonderfully apt given that a song about a house in New Orleans later made the reputation of his band, the Animals. In one interview Burdon later recalled his crowd hanging out in the cooler clubs in Newcastle, describing his bunch of friends as ‘like a motorcycle gang without the motorcycles. They were tough, hard-drinking and listened to American music.’
Burdon had met John Steel at Newcastle College of Art and Industrial Design. In early 1957 they were in a band together, the Pagan Jazzmen, with Burdon on vocals (and trombone) and Steel on trumpet. Among the other musicians was a banjo player; they were that kind of band. But they were also switched-on young men with their ears and minds open. Within a year they had a rhythm & blues band; they were no longer jazzmen. The banjo player bought an electric guitar, Steel swapped to playing drums and they became the Pagans. The Pagans added piano player Alan Price. The stuttering evolution of these various line-ups was replicated nationwide in 1956 and 1957 in other groups as the arrival of rhythm & blues and rock & roll made an impact.
