Alan Cooper remembered - Recently Updated Pages

Junction 5

JamieEvans — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:40:12 CDT

Any attempts to record the band seemed jinxed by the giant Indian sign that loomed over the Plough.

Roger Limb, who played bass with us for a while before we devolved into a trio, made several recordings in the early days. I still have the cassettes at home and the music shines through quite vibrantly despite the appalling background noises - Bicycle Jim and Dave Smith (over from Eindhoven) shouting at the tops of their voices and the continual echoing crashes of pint glasses against tables.

Even my own attempt to record the trio was doomed. Ian and I hired a top-class sound bloke to tape the band and create some sort of record of our existence. Needless to say, Ian and I were still waiting to kick off at 9.15 when Coops rolled in totally legless. The results weren’t too bad as it happens and the sound man managed to cut out much of the background racket.

Because the Plough was one of my locals many of my friends and acquaintances made a point of coming to the sessions. The Beehive pub, run by Betty and Joe Trindle in those days, was the hub of the Clapham Junction “village” and Betty was a little miffed to see many of her customers disappearing down the road on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The Plough lasted a surprisingly long time and was the longest residency I have ever had and at my present age it is unlikely I would ever last through another. Some of those nights still remain vividly in my memory and I often think about the Alan Cooper Trio, especially as I am now the only survivor (see Eulogy for Ian below).

About a year after we started at the Plough in 1990, Mary and I moved house to Wandsworth. An unmissable business opportunity had arisen to let our old house as a hostel and we decided to buy a smaller and prettier house in a quiet and residential area of Wandsworth.

When I told him Coops looked at me in horror. “Dear boy, I spend my life finding you a job almost at your front door and instantly you move!”

In 1994 our four-year journey ended. Denis was taking over another pub in Cheltenham, Coops had re-married and was planning to retire and move out of London to Hay-on-Wye and, frankly, things had run their course. I played with Coops a few more times after that but when he moved out of London I rarely saw him, apart from those saddest of reunions, a funeral.

Coops died in August 2007, followed closely by Ian in December 2008. Miss you more than I can say, fellers.

Pictures: Above, the trio at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. Right, Jamie at the Plough.

Continued on Junction 6

A Long Way from Pasadena

JamieEvans — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:00:29 CDT

Brian Innes, a founder member and former percussionist with the Temperance Seven, wrote an extremely entertaining and amusing book, 'A Long Way from Pasadena' about the life and times of the band. We are delighted to reproduce some of his thoughts on Alan Cooper.

He came from one of those vastly interconnected Yorkshire families; toyed with the idea of taking orders; served his time in the RAF; won a scholarship to Leeds School of Art, where he was a fellow student with Frankie Vaughan and guitarist Diz Disley; played clarinet with Bob Barclay's Yorkshire Jazz Band; and came to London in 1956 to study sculpture at the Royal College.

At that time he was tall and elegantly slender in a 20s style, and he took to the tight black tailcoats of the Seven with aplomb. He had a wife, Peggy, a silver-haired schoolteacher, and they lived aboard a small motor cruiser moored out in the stream just upriver from Battersea Bridge.

It was some years later, when Cooper and Peggy were living apart, and she had a small ground-floor flat in Colebrook Row, Islington, that she earned herself a place in history. She was in the Camden Head late one Saturday evening, and a young hooray was making a bore of himself, rounding the bar to ask if anybody had a French letter to spare. Eventually Peggy stood up, put her foot on a stool, and reached one hand under her skirt: "Well," she said, "if your girlfriend doesn't mind borrowing..."

When he is at his best, Alan Cooper is an outstanding jazz clarinettist - something he's proved with almost every band in the land; at his far from best, which can be much of the time, he's still worth hearing; but catch him on the wrong occasion, speak the wrong word into his ear, and he can play, with malice aforethought, the vilest, most out-of-tune rubbish you never expected to hear.

Let's look at Cooper, Alan Swainston Cooper, sometimes called Henry MacHooter, in 1961. The slimness has gone, developing into a pear-shaped form on legs (his back hurts him); the hair is slipping too, off the head and down the chin. Peggy's gone as well; although they are still technically husband and wife, she lives in Islington and Alan in a tiny bedsitter on the corner of Hollywood Road in Fulham, which he shares with about 30 instruments in various stages of decay, including an enormous bass phonofiddle that hangs menacingly over his head as he lies in bed, and a very little monkey that Cephas Howard [former Seven trumpeter] gave him for his 30th birthday. (Not long after he found it strangled in its chain.) But the eyes haven't changed , they've become even more so: hazel in colour, broodingly intent, partly hidden under huge, arched lids. The big nose and slightly fleshy lips look almost semitic, but they're half concealed by the full brown beard: he resembles one of Queen Victoria's younger sons, one of those dukes who went mad - the real Jack the Ripper? - and were locked up for ever, or committed suicide. And there's a strange smile on his face. It may be just fun and enjoyment, or perhaps he's about to come out with some cynically bitter condemnation of the scene around him.
Continued on Pasadena 2

Junction 4

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:51:13 CDT

Anyhow, above gripes apart, once Coops, Ian Howarth and myself settled down into regular trio sessions one, and sometimes two, nights a week We hit a groove which I think surpassed anything we had done at the Old Bailey boozer (The Rumboe Years).

We broadened the repertoire even more and added lots of more interesting tunes to the traddy standards. “Night and Day”, “Blue Monk”, “Cheek to Cheek” , “You’ve Changed” and “Nice Work if You Can get it” were likely to be mixed in with the “Shines” and “Indianas”.

And, of course, just like the Rumboe, the respect and appreciation which Coops attracted on the scene guaranteed lots of musician visitors every week, some to sit in, some just to listen.

Regular visitors were avant-garde sax player, Lol Coxill; ex-Bonzo Dog percussionist Sam Spoons; Coops’ old Leeds crony, guitarist Diz Disley; pop star Thunderclap Newman: author and trumpeter Jeff Nuttall: cellist Stanley Adler; Humphrey Lyttelton bassist Brian Brocklehurst; Alastair Robertson of Hep Records; and many more.

Coops and Lol Coxhill made a great pairing. You couldn’t imagine two more different musicians but they both had an unblinkered attitude to music and played some of the best and most creative stuff I have ever heard.

Then there were many London-based musicians who called in to pay their respects and play with us, including Keith Nicholls, Bill Greenow, Mel Henry, Geoff Simkins…the list could go on and on.

As the venue became better known and patronised we began to get other gigs - weddings, birthday parties and sessions at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith and bookings at the Soho Jazz Festival.

Picture: Lol Coxhill (right), on soprano sax sits in with the trio.

Continued on Junction 5　　　　　　

Junction 3

JamieEvans — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:17:39 CDT

Picture: The trio at the Plough but with Blind Douggie sitting in on drums. Bicycle Jim lurks in the background.

Whether Denis knew much about the history of the Plough when he became tenant is unknown but it was an ugly redbrick postwar building on the corner of St John’s Hill and Strath Terrace, SW11. (I use the past tense because the place has now been demolished and, as I write, the site is awaiting the inevitable block of flats to be erected.)

In the 70s the pub had been quite a jolly working-class boozer selling good Youngs ales although anyone who wasn’t a Battersea gor-blimey was regarded with suspicion to start with.

Unfortunately, Fred, the guvnor died suddenly and in his wake came a series of disinterested and incompetent managements and the place was gradually avoided by anyone who wanted a civilised pub with a welcoming ambience.

Denis imagined that if he put on jazz a couple of nights a week the “nice people”, as he referred to his desired clientele, would come flocking in. It wasn’t a bad theory because the demographic of the Clapham Junction/Battersea area was changing quite dramatically as younger middle-class couples bought up property and many of the old three-storey Victorian terraces were being converted into flats for the trendy influx.

To a degree that is what happened because, in my experience, if there is one thing that most yobs and Neanderthals hate it is jazz.

But there were quite a few things going against making the Plough a really successful jazz pub.

First there was the layout which made it difficult for more than a few punters to get near the band and there was no amplification system either.

Then there was the totally depressing cloud which seemed to hang over the place, with its brown walls and carpets. The stench of postwar austerity seemed to linger on into the 90s in the Plough although Denis did his best to cheer the place up with new flooring and furniture.

The piano which Stan Greig had provided was sinking by a semitone every week or so and Denis, naturally enough, thought that buying the instrument was the end of his outlay and objected to forking out money for a tuner continually. This sometimes meant my trying to play a hopelessly out-of-tune piano, horrible for me and just as bad for anyone listening too.

Another minus point was Denis’s wife Eileen who profoundly loathed all forms of jazz music. It was her habit to play Elvis Presley and suchlike on the pub’s tinny sound system immediately before we started the session which went down like a pork chop in a synagogue with the jazz-seeking audience who turned up a little early.

Continued on Junction 4
　

Alan Cooper fondly remembered

JamieEvans — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:11:24 CDT

Alan Cooper remembered.

Alan Swainston Cooper (1931-2007)

This story was originally published in the New Sunday Times Travel Book (1986) and is an account of a jazz tour of the Low Countries I made with former Temperance Seven clarinettist Alan Cooper in 1985. The tour was set up by another dear and departed friend, the late Dave Smith (1923-2006) of Eindhoven, who found the venues, accommodated us in hotels and his own home, and usually bought the beers as well...

Low Country Life

By Jamie Evans

"A Foggy Day in London Town, in B-Flat," says Coops. "One...two...one, two three, four," miming grotesquely. And off the four of us go, skittering through the chord changes. Two Brits and two Dutchmen, we have never even met before let alone rehearsed. We don't even speak each others' languages. We are performing in the Trafalgar pub, Eindhoven, southern Holland, on an August Saturday night, by now halfway through a good, romping version - even though I say so myself - of Just One of Those Things.
The Dutch audience is clapping, the proprietor is smiling. I titter at the piano as Coops, bass clarinet under his arm, makes his standard intermission announcement. "And now the gentlemen of the ensemble will take a short break and repair to the bar to mingle with members of the audience who will, no doubt, express their appreciation in the time-honoured tradition." And they do. Our first gig is a success.
The Alan Cooper Trio (there are in fact four of us) is a hit on
the eve of our two-week Dutch tour.
The proprietor is an admirer of Thelonious Monk. He feeds me genever jong as I play Round Midnight for chorus after chorus until my hands can barely move through fatigue and gin.

Picture: The Alan Cooper Trio (four-strong) in action.

Continued on Low Country Life 2

Farewell 3

JamieEvans — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:57:37 CDT

The band became known as The British All Stars and its nucleus originally included
Jim Bray on bass and the remarkable but wayward pianist Bert Murray,about whom many unprintable stories abound.Guest trumpeters included Alan Elsdon,Andy Dickens,Ken Sims,Mike Peters,Ben Cohen and Ray Crane over the years and eventually Ray Smith replaced Bert on piano with sometimes Johnny Parker taking over and Rae Owens joining on bass.

Featured guests included Diz Disley,Keith Nichols and most notably Bruce Turner whose wonderfully quirky style on and off-stage perfectly complemented Coops.In his memoirs,Hot Air,Cool Music,Bruce wrote wistfully about their early encounters when he was with Freddy Randall , Coops was still playing with the Yorkshire Jazz Band and they appeared on the same bill together:`Whatever Alan Cooper did was greeted with rapturous acclaim.Then it would be the Randall band’s turn,and my clarinet solos had this curious effect of silencing the vociferous crowd.It was as if I had barged in on a private party and been coldly requested to leave.This was hard to take,considering the wild reception my rival,Alan Cooper,was always guaranteed to receive.I turned to Fred for advice.`I can’t think what this guy is doing that’s so special,’he replied,

`I suppose you could try bobbing up and down the way he does.All I know is,he’s stealing all the applause.’ Bruce concluded: `neither of us ever found out what the Cooper sound was,or how it could be achieved.’
On a later tour Tony Pyke’s ethereal alto also proved an admirable foil for Cooper’s limpid clarinet . Another unforgettable occasion featured Jimmy Edwards as our special guest with his array of brass instruments. He and Coops got on famously with Jim,as a trained musician,being amazed by Alan’s eloquently poetic improvisations.He could also perform a wicked parody of Stranger On The Shore(`Strangler…’) at times but it was said that Acker had heard it and approved!

On all these trips,Coops was the first to venture into the local markets -or souks-clad in desert boots and sun hat and would emerge with all sorts of exotic souvenirs , camera slung around his neck, having taken numerous shots of any local landmarks that appealed to his ever-voracious aesthetic tastes .Once, we were playing in an Abu Dhabi hotel where an expat family were celebrating a wedding. They were so enthralled by Alan’s (Or `The Professor’ as he was often called) articulate oration in presenting our show that he was invited to conduct their reception and accepted with alacrity using such arcane words as ‘perforce’ to great effect as only he could!In fact,we discovered to our delight a local product in Bahrain called `Cooper’s Pif-Paf’- a spray designed to dispose of insects- so we used to whisper to Coops on occasions requiring verbosity: `Give them a burst of pif-paf’!

Picture: Prof Jimmy Edwards got on famously with Coops.

Continued on Farewell 4

Farewell 2

JamieEvans — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:48:27 CDT

Cooper played a Clinton system clarinet and claimed to have had no particular influences but there were echoes of all the major Creole players in his work including Noone,Simeon and Darnell Howard.He also enjoyed New York jazz of the 20s,naming Jimmy Dorsey as a favourite. ‘Hot’ dance music by such obscure figures as 20s Chicago bandleader/saxist Paul Biese appealed to him and he particularly adored the charming songs of Cliff Edwards,`Ukelele Ike’.

He was an avid frequenter of junk shops and collected such obscure instruments as hot fountain pens and sarrusaphones which is perhaps why it seems Roland Kirk became a friend and would visit him to share this passion. Apparently Kenny Davern,not known for his modesty,would make a point of listening to Cooper when he visited London and was heard to praise him publicly.

I first had the pleasure of meeting and working with Coops in the late 70s when he played several gigs with Bill Brunskill’s band in South London and I was often invited to his palatial house in Wandsworth Common which,with its astounding collection of antiquities of all kinds, seemed almost like an annexe of the Victoria & Albert Museum.(When he moved to his final home in Hay-on-Wye it seemed as if a stage set had simply been struck and reassembled on another location!)Invariably the avuncular Coops would greet you(`Dear boy’) at his front door with a parrot that had already deposited something unmentionable on his Norfolk-jacketed shoulder and there would always be a long-term stew bubbling on the stove,perhaps a goat curry accompanied by an ancient killer-strength pickle of some sort!

We later worked alongside each other in Dick Laurie’s Elastic Band,occasionally with Coops’ old friend Jim Shepherd on bass sax. In 1979 Alan recruited a band for drummer Dave Mills,our mutual friend, who had been responsible for launching The New Temperance Seven with Coops and another near-genius Willie Hastie a few years previously but now lived in Bahrain.The idea was to assemble a group to entertain the ex-pats living in the Gulf.Alan kindly invited me to join and,indeed,we were to successfully tour the area for almost twenty years.
Continued on Farewell 3

Farewell to unique talent and person

JamieEvans — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:43:22 CDT

Mike Pointon, London-born writer/broadcaster and jazz trombonist looks back over the life of his deeply missed friend, Alan Cooper.

Alan Cooper was much more than a jazz clarinettist of world-class stature, he was a true gentleman born out of time with an innate capacity for friendship that transcended music .Perhaps he gained most public recognition via his eccentric Edwardian persona and a brief chart-topping period with the original Temperance Seven when they had an unexpected hit with You’re Driving Me Crazy in 1961 but there was much more to ‘Coops’, as his many friends affectionately called him, than that…

Gordon Alan Cooper was born in Leeds in 1931 and,while studying at Leeds College of Art,started playing in the Vernon Street Ramblers alongside fellow student Diz Disley ,who had entered the College on the same day in 1947. They both joined the Yorkshire Jazz Band in 1949 and by all accounts Leeds at that time with its street parades and use of jazz at local functions developed a communal ambience not unlike its inspiration,New Orleans .

The band’s trips to London brought them wider recognition,together with early,if primitive,recordings which included such future names as Dickie Hawdon and Ed O’Donnell . Unlike some of his contemporaries Cooper decided , although he loved playing,that his principal career lay in the art world and he graduated in sculpture at The Royal College of Art,eventually teaching at St. Martins and Chelsea Colleges .

He still took part in the burgeoning mid-50s London jazz scene and when the newly-formed Temperance Seven enlisted him in 1957,initially on bass clarinet ,Cooper’s tall,subsequently bearded,elegant figure and soft, cultured voice were ideal for their majestic on-stage image.(On a Middle East tour many years later,when playing in front of an after-dinner audience, he once drolly informed them that the bass clarinet was a seldom-heard instrument,mainly because its volume could hardly project above `soup level’).

I was playing regularly at the Royal College Of Art a year or so later in a band which included Bill Greenow and our banjoist was John Watson, to become known as `Gieves’ with the Temps, thanks to Cooper’s period sense of humour. Although several of their members sat in with us on occasion I don’t recall encountering Coops at the time but came to admire his gracefully stylish playing via their later records and through seeing them live .He gave up playing regularly with the Temps after his natural instinct against the more venal aspects of showbusiness became offended but his idiosyncratic style was showcased with such leading groups as Alex Welsh,Freddy Randall and Sandy Brown ,for whom he often depped as their creative styles had much in common.
Continued on Farewell 2

Junction 6

JamieEvans — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:05:51 CDT

Eulogy for Ian
Drummer Ian Howarth was originally from Lancashire where he played washboard in his school skiffle group and trombone in his school orchestra before taking up the drums. He was an original member of the Vintage Syncopators, one of Red Hayes' Jazz Wizards, and played with and led the Temperance Seven. He also played with Alan Cooper's Trio. Ian died of lung cancer in December 2008 aged 60,and his friend, pianist Jamie Evans, gave the following eulogy at Ian's funeral in January 2009 at Putney Vale crematorium.

"I played piano with clarinettist Alan Cooper on and off for over 30 years and during the latter part of that time, our drummer was Ian Howarth. I was dubious at first when Cooper suggested we use Ian because, although he was always an engaging and amusing man, I didn’t think a comedy band / traditional drummer would fit in with our broader small group swing style.

"I was, of course, totally wrong. Ian turned out to be perfect. He could turn his hand to most styles, from woodblocks to bebop.

"Not only that, he was great company and we would often meet for a few pints of real ale even when we had no gigs. “Dr Young’s elixir will soon put you right lad,” (excuse the Wigan accent) he would say toasting me with a glass of Youngs Special Bitter, tweaking his Panama hat (summer) or cloth cap (winter).

"Well today is a particularly sad occasion personally. Cooper passed away less than 18 months ago and now, with Ian’s departure, I am sole survivor of what Ian always referred to as “Alan Cooper’s famous trio”. I am not too sure about the “famous” but to have lost two dear friends and great musicians within such a short space of time is a double blow.

"Ian also counted the late US drummers, Max Roach and Elvin Jones among his friends and he collaborated with a wide range of musicians in the UK, ranging from many New Orleans stalwarts to modernists like Lol Coxhill and Stan Sultzmann.

" I’ll never forget the look of delight on Ian’s face at one of our gigs when Lol Coxhill and Cooper duetted on the most amazing surrealist, free-form version of A Closer Walk With Thee.

"One of Ian’s favourites was Thelonious Monk and for many years now I can’t hear two of the great man’s compositions without thinking of him. On one occasion I unwisely attempted a solo version of In Walked Bud but floundered hopelessly on the middle eight. “Not a bad version of Bud Nearly Walked In“, was Ian’s droll judgement.

" And at one of our residencies, in the days when pubs closed at 11 o clock, I used to serenade the departing punters with Round Midnight. Ian soon retitled that one to Round Ten Past Eleven.

"It’s a fond farewell to a loyal friend and, on his day, a superb drummer…"

Junction 2

Anonymous — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 09:37:18 CDT

After our three-year residency in the City of London (The Rumboe Years) I only played with Coops sporadically until we did our Dutch tour in 1985 (Low Country Life). I would call him every now and then for a gig at a pub or restaurant, usually just a duo. And occasionally he would do the same for me.

If I knew he was playing at a particular venue, I would sometimes turn up just for a chat during the interval although he was doing quite a lot with a really horrible trad outfit which I found rather offensive. I thought it was a waste of his talent appearing in that type of band but Coops always remained sympathetic to his musical roots.

It was in the spring of 1990 that Jazz at the Junction sprang shakily into life. Coops had been playing in an East End pub near the art institute where he sometimes taught. It was a very successful scene and the locals all flocked into the pub making the guvnor very happy.

In a fortunate co-incidence the landlord had decided to take over a pub called the Plough near Clapham Junction and wanted Coops to fix up some jazz sessions for him. The pub was only a couple of hundred yards from my front door in Plough Road and not a lot further from Coop’s Bolly residence in the other direction.

Thus we achieved most musicians’ dream, a residency which was literally a walk from home and no worries about drinking and driving, transport there and back, and the rest of it. One of Coops’ old cronies, Stan Greig, sold the guvnor, Denis, a piano (although that was to cause grief later) and we were all set to go.

The band went through various permutations before it eventually settled into a trio and when we kicked off in June 1990, it was a quintet. My memory is failing me somewhat here but I think it included a Dutchman playing violin. Not many punters turned up to start but Denis, a scouser and a charming man, was not concerned at all. “Don’t worry, mate,” he told me, “it’ll pick up as time goes by and if it doesn’t I don’t care. I like having jazz in my pub…”

Picture: Coops served in the RAF for his national service. It is unclear for which campaign this medal was awarded although it could have been the Campaign for Real Ale.

Continued on Junction 3

The Rumboe years

JamieEvans — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:02:12 CDT

Jamie Evans takes an affectionate look back to his years playing with Alan Cooper and others at the Rumboe pub, Old Bailey, London.

My connection with the Rumboe all started in the early 60s when I met that great character, the Scots pianist and trombonist Bert Murray.

I was an eager and industrious (well, at the start anyway) piano-player with the Scottish trad band, the Clyde Valley Stompers. I disliked the music but to be a sort of pop star and earn pretty good money and not have the drudgery of sitting in an office or factory all day was a form of paradise.

Bert was playing piano for the Alex Welsh band and we were booked along with them and another band for a specific form of torture known as an “all-nighter”. Startin g at midnight each band played a two-hour session until 6am when most of the audience were asleep anyway.

I made myself known to Bert and we inspected the piano provided, a vile-looking ancient upright.
“Good show,” said Bert gleefully, “it’s not miked up so we won’t have to do any work on this gig. No one will hear it anyway.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Here was a jazz musician who didn’t want to be heard or actually do anything. But as I later discovered Bert certainly wasn’t unique but one of a breed of jazzers who delighted in doing as little as possible, starting as late as they could and finishing as early as they could get away with.

Bert and I became friends over the years and round about 1976 I started getting calls from Bert to dep for him at the Rumboe pub on a Friday night. The format at the Rumboe was usually a trio, clarinet, piano and drums and the front man on a Friday was Alan Cooper, another eccentric and, to me at first, intimidating figure.

I wasn’t used to working without a double bass so doing the Rumboe was good practice for my left hand and I started to get called for deps on other nights too, backing some pretty high-class clarinettists like Forrie Cairns, Dick Charlesworth and Will Hastie
.
One of Bert’s more famous alcohol-fuelled exploits at the Rumboe was to do the entire session with the piano lid closed and eventually the management, like many before them, lost patience with Bert and fired him. I got the job thenceforth.

Anyway on Friday nights, Cooper and I formed an unlikely but reasonably popular combination. He was far more catholic than his Temperance Seven and trad band background suggested and our repertoire ranged from all the usual trad warhorses to more modern tunes, even Monk and Rogers and Hart.

Picture: The Clyde Valley Stompers in 1963. (L to R) Roy Pellett (clt), Jamie Evans (piano), Matt Peyton (bass), Ian Hunter Randall (tpt), Ernie O'Malley (drs), Les Muscutt (bjo}, John Howlett (tmb). The band broke up at the end of that year.

Continued on Rumboe 2

Rumboe 4

JamieEvans — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:58:14 CDT

As time went by Coops and I became good friends and would do any other gigs that came our way. I was playing on Wednesday nights with Alvin Roy’s band at the Prospect of Whitby, Wapping (that’s another story), working full time as a sub-editor on a trade magazine and helping run a family furniture business in Croydon. Consequently I was half comatose most of the time.

Coops was still depressed at his wife’s departure with his two sons, Boris and Rollo. We would often carry on with a few more drinks into the early hours after the session, at his house or mine, and I can confidently say that I would wake up on a Saturday morning with some of the worst hangovers I had ever had.

The Bolly (ie situated in Bolingbroke Grove), as Coops referred to his Wandsworth house, had by now become peopled with a strange collection of troglodytic creatures who lived in the nooks and crannies of the rambling pile. He had installed a housekeeper/girlfriend and they would often trawl the gutters of the Northcote Road vegetable market at closing on a Saturday afternoon salvaging any reject fruit and veg.

I only remember joining Coops for Sunday lunch on one occasion. On the menu was belly of pork, stuffing and boiled cabbage which was a rich combination in any weather but on a hot summer afternoon, sitting in the kitchen super-heated by the Aga cooker, it was a formidable plate of food.

Conversely in the winter the kitchen was the only warm room in the house and the rest of the place, unheated of course in Edwardian style, was absolutely freezing .

We were using a rather more adventurous repertoire as the years progressed so amongst the “Shine” and “Indiana” trad standards, we were slipping in “As Time Goes By”, “Night and Day”, “Tea for Two” and “Can’t We Be Friends” . This, of course, was met with disapproval by the trad-minded members of the audience but we were attracting a more open-minded clientele on the whole.

Picture: Christmas at the Bolly. Coops and Jamie in festive mood.

Continued on Rumboe 5

Rumboe 3

JamieEvans — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:56:17 CDT

Coops had a huge range of musician friends and acquaintances and every Friday all sorts of characters would turn up to sit in with the trio - some good, some average and some absolutely awful. Among the more memorable ones were: Jack Hutton, former Melody Maker editor on trumpet; a singing double bass player whose name escapes me; Bopper Burns a tenor sax player who never spoke; percussionist Ian Howarth who later became our regular drummer and could drink a yard of ale in about eight seconds. The list could go on ad infinitum.

One of the house rules we were asked to observe was “no singers from the crowd”. The management wanted a jazz pub and justifiably believed that if singers were allowed up with the band, the proceedings could degenerate into East End pub-type knees-ups.

So I was surprised when one night a tall, dignified gentleman and his wife walked in. He bought drinks for the band and left banknotes at the bar for refills whenever we felt the need. He was greeted effusively by Coops and I certainly warmed towards him myself after his generosity with the band refreshments. He then proceeded to sing “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey” with enthusiasm but little talent.

Later I questioned Coops about the “no singers” policy. “That was Cyril Richardson,” he told me, rubbing his index finger on the side of his nose. “If Cyril wants to sing, Cyril sings.” The gentleman in question was one of the Richardson Brothers , the notorious gang who ran south London crime in the 60s. However Cyril was the white sheep of the family and ran a highly legitimate transport business, was a jazz enthusiast and one of the nicest blokes you could ever wish to meet. And he bought drinks for the band.

So it was that if Cyril wanted to sing, Cyril sang.

Picture: Coops tries out the piano at Jamie's Clapham Junction home. He was quite an accomplished pianist.

Continued on Rumboe 4

Jazz at the Junction

JamieEvans — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:28:56 CDT

Jamie Evans reminisces over the four years from 1990 to 1994 when he played
piano with Alan Cooper's trio at the Plough, a pub near Clapham Junction

Continued on Junction 2

Picture: The trio in action at the Plough. Jamie, Coops and Ian Howarth on drums.

Rumboe 5

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:07:59 CDT

The years passed by and by 1978 we had become what, one of my old mates from the Bill Nile band, Ron Brown, .referred to as cult figures. Ron was averse to paying a compliment if be could avoid it, so I took that as a serious bouquet.

I remember looking at the audience one night and seeing quite a few well-known musicians and Roger Horton who ran the 100 Club. Maybe he’ll give us a gig at his place I hoped? But he never did.

Others who knew Cooper better than me warned that he would probably start getting bored and gradually he began to put in more deps.. Sometimes that was fine when they were people of the standard of Geoff Simkins who later became a leading alto-sax player in the British modern scene.

But, no names no pack drill, others were quite terrible and it was not much fun doing an evening of mediocrity.

The Rumboe was positively Machiavellian from the political point of view. The manager was an extremely fat man called Robbie, who split his time between the Rumboe and another pub down on Ludgate Circus. I overheard him telling one of his cronies “Cooper’s just not right for this boozer.”

I couldn,t really work out why he wasn’t right as he’d been filling the place with an extremely satisfied crowd for Friday after Friday.

I also remember the drummer, Ian Bell, who fixed all the musicians for the Rumboe telling me what problems he had keeping the bands happy at times, with some clarinettists refusing to play with certain pianists and drummers and vice versa.

Ian loved a taste by the way, and I’ll never forget one session I did with him on drums when he was just about able to stagger to his kit but proceeded to play perfectly for the entire evening.

Everything passes and I think it was at about Easter 1979 that Cooper and I were summarily sacked, he to be replaced by an alto player who had been hanging around and sitting in on a suspiciously frequent number of occasions. The drummer, Ray, was retained so he must have got the management’s seal of approval.

Maybe the job had run its course after three years and I still regard it as a great privilege to have played with a brilliant clarinettist and learned a lot from him as well.

So it was RIP the Rumboe Years but there was far more to come later.

All will subsequently be revealed.

Low Country Life 2

JamieEvans — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 10:43:41 CDT

The train to Maastricht is crowded with kids. They hammer out tattoos on the ashtrays, reassemble Coke cans and shout at each other. Coops and I try to doze in our corner seats but it is impossible. "Where are we going, dear boy?" says Coops. He's in his absent-minded academic persona today.
"Three days in Maastricht," I reply. "It's a medieval town stuck in a pimple of Holland between Belgium and Germany.
"Hmmmmmmm," he says, then straightens his military tie, dusts the jacket of his ancient and threadbare grey suit and puts his fisherman's hat on the rack above his collection of instruments - Bb clarinet, Eb clarinet and bass clarinet, to be precise. All this is routine for him. He flits about to the Gulf and Hong Kong all the time. But this is my first tour for 22 years, since 1963 when I was a young piano player with the Scottish jazz band, the Clyde Valley Stompers.
"And now," says Coops, grinning skeletally, "a tune which our pianist, Jamie Evans, and I used to play in an east London public house called The Rumboe. That is, on the odd occasion we remember being there. Ladies and gentlemen, Somewhere Over the Rumboe." Blank looks from the predominantly Dutch, Belgian and German audience. But they warmly applaud our version of
Somewhere Over the Rainbow. A French girl buttonholes me and calls me "a genius of the piano". I snicker modestly at such a ludicrous assertion.

We have a new young drummer tonight. He's smoking a giant joint and drinking far too much. "Can't we play some avant-garde music," he says. Coops aquiesces, lizard eyes narrowed and beard twitching. "No piano, please," says the drummer, pointing me barwards. "Alan will please play the big bass clarinet and make elephant noises." Coops and I collapse helplessly and a tour joke is born, to be repeated and enjoyed night after night.

Picture: Coops consults with the bass player and drummer in Maastricht.

Continued on Low Country Life 3

Low Country Life 4

JamieEvans — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:11:51 CDT

The first person we bump into on German soil is Johnny Parker, veteran jazz pianist and long-time crony of Coops. They egg each other on with tales of the old days. "So Coltrane comes down to my place trying to buy my straight soprano sax," brags Coops. "So I told Louis to try this Swiss laxative," trumps Parker.
By mid-afternoon, in a famous Dusseldorf beer hall, we are well into a jazzers' convention, drinking small glasses of dark alt beer served by genial blue-clad waiters who replace every empty glass with a full one unless prevented. A few yards away, the dignified boats and barges sail down the broad sweep of the Rhine with grace.The afternoon passes hilariously. Back in England they close the pub in the afternoon just as you start enjoying yourself.

The weather changes in Amsterdam. The sun beats down and the canals shimmer. We have two days off and Coops, still grumbling about "children and burgers" heads back south to our Eindhoven base. I decide to stay on and enjoy the city. It's good to be on my own for a while, just wandering where I please...I realise how responsible I have been feeling for Coops, always having to find things to keep him amused in the daytime.
I look at the Rembrandts in the Rijksmuseum and look adoringly at the wonderfully restored Nightwatch, now de-gloomed into its former grandeur. Outside the museum a mock-up of the painting has been set up on the pavement with holes cut in place of the main characters' heads for end-of-the-pier style photographs. Is that funny or sad?
Dead cats and other nasties now float in what I remember as clean canals. The girls of the red light district posing in their shop windows haven't changed. Nor have the sex shops apart from their wares becoming more explicit. As I settle my hotel bill, the resdent cat purrs at my feet. I stroke it and see that my hand is adorned by four tiny black fleas.

Sunday afternoon in Rotterdam. It could easily be Croydon or Hemel Hempstead, all shopping precincts, parking lots and modernity. Hardly surprising as the Germans flattened the place early in WW2. We eat in one of the thousands of Chinese/Indonesian restaurants, magnificently dragon-decorated, but my chicken and its sauce have only been introduced in the past two minutes.
The Hook of Holland, our boat and Blighty beckon. I'm still in partial shock after being a pretend-professional musician but Coops is already making phone calls, doing deals and setting up gigs and trips.

My desk awaits me in the morning.

Top picture: Coops and Johnny Parker outside a Dusseldorf watering hole.
Below: My lifelong friend Dave Smith and his wife Annie outside their Eindhoven home. Dave organised our tour and died in 2006 at the age of 83, Never forgotten by your many friends, Dave...

Low Country Life 3

JamieEvans — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:06:14 CDT

In Venlo, a south-east Holland border town, the rain pelts down on the asparagus fields. Western Europe is suffering its worst summer for decades. Dutch and German TV stations show scenes of caravan and camping sites sinking into the mud. It's an eye-opener for us who have been taught to believe that British weather is always worse than anyone else's.
The Sunday afternoon gig is in a pub-***-brewery. And at 3pm, a time when English pubs are closed and dead [ in 1985], we launch into Can't We Be Friends? But the audience is very talkative which irritates Coops. He makes his stock anti-noise announcement. "Ladies and gentlemen, the next tune, Groovin' High, will feature the bass clarinet. Not many people are familiar with this instrument. This is because there aren't many of them, few people play them and most people are talking too much most of the time to be able to hear them anyway."

It's a long way, by Low Country standards,from Liege in northern Belgium, to Amsterdam,
slap in the middle of the Netherlands. As the train rattles along, the landscape, housing and life-styles change gradually but markedly. "I like the Belgians," says Coops, drinking his Pils beer and stuffing down ham and cheese, doggy-bagged from the hotel that morning. "They're just like us. A nation of stroppy piss-artists who'd rather go down the pub than mow their rotten lawns." The straitlaced Dutchness, un-netted windows to show off their ubiquitous house-plants and dour furniture, takes over the view from the carriage window.
I feel excited by the prospect of seeing Amsterdam again. We roll through the suburbs and as soon as we set foot outside the station, Coops decides he doesn't like it. "Junk food, noise, traffic and children. Appalling place, dear boy."
"But," I cajole, "there are lots of lovely paintings here - Rembrandts, Van Goghs - all the old and new Dutch masters." He's slightly mollified but grumpy. Our hotel is just off Leidsestraat, only a few minutes' stroll from the Bamboo Bar where we are booked for a couple of nights. We have both developed a craving for the delicious Dutch street snack, raw soused herring with chopped onions. But here in tourist-stricken Amsterdam we can't find any. It's all hamburgers, chips, mayonnaise, ketchup and imitation sate.

Top picture: Jamie and Coops in a sunset scene. Below: The Bamboo Bar used to be a great jazz venue but when I was in Amsterdam a couple of years ago it had become a noisy pop music craphole.

Continued on Low Country Life 4

Rumboe 2

JamieEvans — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:36:50 CDT

Coops and I were near-neighbours at this time. He lived in his Crapper mausoleum to Edwardiana - already well covered on this website - which looked out on Wandsworth Common, south-west London. I lived in a rather less salubrious road near Clapham Junction railway station.

My wife, Mary, and I harboured vague hopes that the increasingly fashionable area around the Junction - Lavender Hill, Battersea Rise and Northcote Road - would eventually embrace our own house in Plough Road. We watched gloomily as the years went by and the trendy bars and restaurants gradually spread throughout the region , totally bypassing Plough Road.

Coops and I probably looked an ill-assorted pair. He drove a left-hand drive Volkswagen six-seat pick-up truck and wore tweed suits, coachman’s topcoat and deerstalker hat. I dressed more in the fashion of the day in floral shirts, flares, long hair and my chops were always adorned with sideburns and “Zapata” moustache. Although there was only a decade between our ages I often felt we must have looked like grandpa and grandson.

Our drummer Ray, inherited from a former trio, was a shadowy figure and I can’t remember much about him except that he performed well and didn't get in the way.

For at least some of our three-year stint Coops used to take one of his art evening classes on a Friday and he would always arrive at the Rumboe late, surrounded by a throng of acolytes and students, all eager to buy him his favourite tipple at the time, barley wine and bitter.
Continued on Rumboe 3

Pasadena 2

JamieEvans — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:00:33 CDT

He's wearing a tweed suit, almost certainly one that he bought in a secondhand shop - perhaps Alfred Kemp's (We Can Fit Anybody!) in Camden Town - and a similar but unmatching tweed hat. The pockets of the jackert are huge and swollen; there's a Leica camera in one, and a worn and bulging notebook in the other. His hands are black with grease; he's just spent most of the morning tuning his 3-litre Lagonda, or dismantling the gearbox of his Vincent HRD Rapide.

On stage, however, he is immaculate in white tie and tails, or the magnificent frogged smoking jacket in plum velvet that he had specially made for the Royal Command Performance. His bearing is regal, his presence gracious. But he's still a monster.

Cooper's regal eminence was at its best one evening in September 1961, when we played for a charity ball at the Savoy River Room. We had just formed ourselves into a limited company, and Ralph Peters thought that a photograph of a board meeting at the Savoy would make a good piece of publicity.

We descended to a large basement room, followed by a giggle of hoorays. One of them had a handsome gold and enamel medallion hanging on his chest. "I'd look very good wearing that for the photo," said Cooper. "Will you lend it to me?"

"You can't wear this!" was the horrified reply, "it's a baronet's badge." "Then," said Cooper, wagging his saxophone sling in the hooray's face, "I shan't let you wear this. It's a clarinet's badge."

With his talent, it's extraordinary that he stayed with the Seven, through all the hard days of coping with Douglas's cornet, Joey's gaspipe clarinet and Paul's trombone. Of recent years, he's takern to referring rather condescendingly to "the funny band", but (again, like Colin) he really preferred those early days of unprofessional chaos. He seldom missed a date - only once did I have to speak harshly to him, when he sent Goff Dubber, without any excuse, to dep for him (Cooper was probably doing a better-paid job with another band) - and I get the impression that he actually found great pleasure in playing with us.

From Hollywood Road, he moved to a ground floor flat opposite St Paul's School in Baron's Court, painted dark brown and hung with hundreds of old photos and song sheets; and then in the late 60s, he bought a house opposite Wandsworth Common. It had belonged to the daughter of Thomas Crapper, the appropriately named founder of the sanitary merchants in the Kings Road, and one of the conditions of the sale was that the house be left in its original condition. Cooper took this literally, keeping the same decaying curtains at the windows, the same ancient light brackets on the walls, even the same lino and the paper-lined kitchen shelves. He filled it with his collection of vintage cameras, innumerable musical instruments and glass-fronted cases crammed with a tumble of clockwork cars and toy railway engines. The magazine "Interiors" was delighted to photograph it, complete with "Professor" Cooper and his parrot, in November 1989.
Continued on Pasadena 3