A restaurant serving lunch on what used to be called Mothering Sunday – not a promising venue for a jazz band, you might think; but this was a tasteful band: just a quartet – trumpet, clarinet, banjo and tuba – playing acoustically (i.e. no microphones, not even for vocals). Three of us have been together in a 6/7-piece band for over 21 years, and routinely read each other’s minds, while the fourth member has worked with us extensively. She handles her banjo with grace, rather than using it as an offensive weapon as so many males of the species do, and actually knows how to vary the volume according to the requirements of the moment.
So we played background, but not wallpaper, music. Applause was muted as it always is when the audience is eating, but it was an appreciative crowd in which, because of the nature of the occasion, at least three generations were mingled. At the end of the session we exchanged cards with a gentleman who worked for the BBC and who said he would pass on our details to a certain producer. I doubt whether anything will come of it.
We have had our moments of radio glory, including appearances on Charlie Chester’s Sunday afternoon programme, but – like dear old Charlie – those days are gone. The BBC pays lip-service to jazz, but gives little exposure to musicians like us, who have spent their lives trying to perfect their art in pubs and working mens’ clubs and holiday camps and hotel restaurants and supermarket car parks, and who sometimes manage to create – let’s not have any false modesty here – exquisite little masterpieces in miniature which almost always ‘lose their sweetness on the desert air’. But remember, you who read these words (if anyone ever does) that whatever frustrations and hardships we may endure can be wiped away in an instant by one kind word from you. Just ‘Brilliant’ will do.