Jazz club ‘grew like Topsy’

Press, 11 February 1986, Page 8

Jazz club ‘grew like Topsy’

Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in Soho, London, “grew like Topsy.”

When the British saxophonist, Ronnie Scott, and his business partner, Pete King, opened their club in a basement 26 years ago, it was simply a coffee bar where local jazz musicians could play. Its growth has been exponential. They had no idea that the club would become a showcase for the world’s top jazz musicians, said Mr Scott, during a brief break from rehearsal in the Christchurch Town Hall yesterday. Mr Scott performed in Christchurch last evening, accompanied by Welling-ton-based musicians, Doug Caldwell, Paul Dyne and Roger Sellers. Acclaimed performers such as Buddy Rich, Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald usually played at the club whenever in London, said Mr Scott. Not that the club is only for the acclaimed. Unknown musicians with talent were regularly given the opportunity to perform, usually in tandem with a big name group. British musicians are given equal if not more space than their American counterparts at the club.

Mr Scott, a born-and-bred East Ender, said that when he started to play tenor saxophone at the age of 14, all he wanted to do was play in dance bands, because that was “all I knew.” He did.

Discovering jazz, and people playing it and interested in that mode, he began playing in jazz bands on his nights off. Later, when he had acquired enough work in jazz bands to survive, he dropped the dance band playing. The decision to open a club was prompted by London’s lack of anjt real jazz clubs, as distinef jrom

dance halls, where musicians could perform regularly, and also was inspired by the jazz clubs he had seen in New York. The club was rented at £lO a week, open six or seven nights a week and done up with a £lOOO loan from Mr Scott’s stepfather. Proceeds from the door went towards the overheads and any remainder was split between the musicians.

The growing popularity of the club prompted a move to bigger premises in 1965. The present premises, round the corner from the original site, has seating for, 270 people, a full wine and food licence, and is estimated to cost about $9OOO a week to open. Mr Scott was reported recently as saying that the economic running of the club was the constant challenge of walking a tightrope between choosing what was commercially feasible and what was true to the spirit of jazz. Managing the club has not meant that Mr Scott has had to forfeit his own playing. He plays saxophone with his quintet in the club (in tandem with visiting groups) two or three weeks of the month. The remainder is spent on tour in Britain, Europe and now Australia and New Zealand.

His partner, Pete King, looks after the administration. Jazz has never been in the mainstream of popular music. Interest in jazz, however, does not appear to have declined. In fact, more and more young people attended the club each week, said Mr Scott He attributes the increased interest among young people to their disenchantment and boredom with a lot of modern music. Although some "pop music” was good,

most was “banal rubbish.” Young people wanted something more interesting and with more depth, like jazz.

Fog* those who have not yet -swatched the surface

of jazz, Mr Scott recommends initiation in the form of the rock-jazz mix provided by such groups as Weather Report and Herbie Hancock’s barid. It would be more palatable

to young people initially. Jazz was like most things: the more you knew about it, the more interesting it became and the deeper you dig, he said.