Sway ... it is how we now walk ...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

in Soho yesterday memories memories




did you know El Senor that the Flamingo is now an Irish Theme Pub .... and a posh one at that .... tables/menus/waitresses ....

check the sax section

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

in Soho yesterday memories memories




did you know El Senor that the Flamingo is now an Irish Theme Pub .... and a posh one at that .... tables/menus/waitresses ....

check the sax section

Its now an O'neils isn't it?

But back in the daze...



"Fame describes the Flamingo as "a
great breeding ground". The lauded
British jazz musician Tubby Hayes
and the Johnny Birch Quartet,
which included Ginger Baker and
Jack Bruce, who later launched
Cream with Eric Clapton, often
performed at the club. Members of
Duke Ellington's orchestra and
Count Basie's group, when touring
England, were also drawn to it.
Fame remembers one face in the
crowd: "Cassius Clay, as he was
then, came down when he first
fought Henry Cooper. Cassius would
come into town and say, `Where do
the brothers hang out?' He'd be
told they all go down The
Flamingo."


During these years, Georgie Fame
and the Blue Flames completed a
forbidding but exhilarating
schedule. As well as performing at
Klook's Kleek, Ricky Tick's and The
Scene during the week, they would
often appear in two non- adjacent
counties on Saturday night. "We'd
be coming in from playing an
American air force base somewhere
in Suffolk and we'd throw the gear
back in the wagon and drive back
to London and get back to the all-
nighter in time for our set. We did
the one o'clock and the 4.30am set.
The guys would open the way
through the crowd for us and help
us carry the shit on to the stage." A
stabbing at the Flamingo prompted
the American air force authorities
to ban servicemen from the
nightclub, which would soon throng
with mods."

BN.



Now where is my tonic mohair and bus pass........

[Serial_Apologist]

Where's the awning covering the way down to the old Ronnie's in the pic? There used to be a small speaker relaying the sounds within to attract punters on the street, but I think it must've been sabotaged by the time it became The Old Place. Further up Gerrard St on the other side was a barber's where I had my hair cut in a College Cut style, 5/-, very mod ca. 1965. "Would Sir be needing anything for the weekend?" would be asked on leaving, indicating a display of what were referred to as johnnies.

Working as I was most nights I only attended the Flamingo once - Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger's Trinity: cheaper than Ronnie's but much more boisterous despite, from memory, there being no alchohol served there. Don Rendell, fine saxophone player well-known on the scene as a Jehovah's Witness, played there more often than at Ronnie's. Here's a little ditty to him:

"Rendell to God what is God's
Rendell to the Gunnell Brothers what is the Gunnell brothers'".

Amen.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Always liked Ian Carr's story of Rendell standing at the stairs of the Flamingo muttering, "It's Sodom, Sodom!"

BN.

Well it was one of Christine Keeler's hang outs...but unfortunately not on my nights.

[Serial_Apologist]

Always liked Ian Carr's story of Rendell standing at the stairs of the Flamingo muttering, "It's Sodom, Sodom!"

BN.

Well it was one of Christine Keeler's hang outs...but unfortunately not on my nights.

We called her friend Randy Rice Crispie, at our school.

Here's GF being interviewed by Jamie Colander

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGD00tEqz1k

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

my he was good ... i think he showed me bebop's delights when i was too young to have many lps etc ... just hearing him with whoever ... [preferably Tubby Hayes]

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

my he was good ... i think he showed me bebop's delights when i was too young to have many lps etc ... just hearing him with whoever ... [preferably Tubby Hayes]

"What helped me to
understand the intricacies
and the intelligence of jazz,
which I think is one of the
highest artistic forms, was
listening to great vocalese
singers like King Pleasure
and Jon Hendricks and Eddie
Jefferson.

Listening to those
guys singing Charlie Parker
solos or Clifford Brown
solos. When I first heard
Charlie Parker, it went
straight over my head. When
I heard King Pleasure and Jon
Hendricks singing a Charlie
Parker solo with lyrics, it
helped me to understand the
musicality of it. Then I could
go back to what Bird played
in the first place -- and then it
made sense.".....Mr Fame.



Anyone remember The Scene Club off Ham Lane where (remarkable) London office et shop girls danced round their handbags every lunchtime? Just a bare concrete sub level cellar with a record deck playing Sue albums....Billy Stewart, Billy Preston, Jimmy Mcgriff et all. ....

BN.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Playing on and in the street we were shouted at and told off by the well off types who lived in the area between Notting Hill Gate and Kensington High Street. Running wild on the bomb sites of London in the late 1940s and early 1950s we knew no fear of such people. We knew anger though; they seemed so against our very life, not just the nuisance we made of ourselves, but against us.

The dull peace and quiet of post war Britain was their joy and delight; life was to be discouraged – at least in the open. That lot were up to mischief behind the curtains; their saloon bars were noisy, their cars wild as we were. For them we were a species of vermin to be shooed away, denied existence, excluded from meaning.

Roland Kirk was shortish, African American, blind and not slender. He played three saxophones at once; several more self constructed wonders adorned his neck. He played a flood of sound; he was the whole church wailing, the voice of an angel crying. You never heard such melodic inventiveness, such rhythmic élan, such punch. It was not that he stood against racism, that he argued the cause. In his magnificent presence he was the cause.

His implacable and irresistible stream of consciousness proclaimed his life, his spirit and the generosity of his heart. His was the ultimate answer to the dead hands of Kensington and Alabama. And all this in a basement on Gerrard Street.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Afraid of the Dark

and the ladies too

Hollywood Haters