By Mike Dewey
Amersham Jazz Club has a well-deserved reputation for the quality of its traditional (Trad) jazz gigs. It is also the longest continually running local jazz club. This year the club is celebrating 60 years since it was founded, although it now meets at a venue in Wycombe Marsh!
Trad jazz, also known as Dixieland or New Orleans jazz, had a short-lived popularity boom in Britain in the early 1960’s, headed by bands such as Chris Barber, Kenny Ball, Acker Bilk and Terry Lightfoot. It emerged out of the craze for skiffle, a type of music played on rudimentary instruments, popularised by the likes of Lonnie Donegan. Both skiffle and trad jazz soon faded from mass popularity as the rock music revolution took off. Since 1964 Amersham Jazz Club has maintained local interest in trad jazz.
Early Jazz Gigs in Amersham
Amersham was at the forefront of the skiffle and trad jazz scene in England, ahead of the 1960s boom, with a skiffle ‘party’ taking place at ‘Ye Olde Malt Tea House’ in Old Amersham on January 10, 1958. The group performing was ‘Hells Hot Five’. Admission was free, but invitations had to be obtained by application to Jane Padgett at the Tea House. Regular skiffle sessions then followed, until on August 2 that same year a jazz session with the seven-piece band ‘Les Garcons’ was held at the Tea House as a ‘try-out’. This proved to be highly successful, with over eighty people attending, who were ‘a mixture of skiffle and jazz disciplines’. Two weeks later another session was held, this time with both skiffle and jazz bands performing.
By December 19, 1958 the venue had been named the ‘Malt House Jazz Club’. Membership of the club cost one shilling, and entry to a gig was three shillings. The sessions were weekly and ‘Les Garcons’ appeared regularly. It seems that the club then became the victim of its own success. It was ‘attracting hundreds of jazz-loving youngsters from as far afield as Aylesbury and High Wycombe’. Unfortunately, among these youngsters was a ‘rowdy’ element, with ’groups of young men setting out with the intention of causing trouble’. The Padgetts, who owned the Tea House, reluctantly decided in November 1959 that they had no alternative but to close the club.
Amersham Jazz Club
In 1964 jazz enthusiast Mike Reid established a new club in Old Amersham, which met in the Tudor Room at the Crown Hotel, across the road from the Ye Olde Malt Tea House. The Crown is an old coaching inn and the Tudor Room the former stables, complete with oak beams, an ideal place for a jazz club.
Initially four bands rotated, led by Ken Colyer, Mike Daniels, Steve Lane and Keith Smith. As time went by other bands were introduced such as Alex Welsh and Monty Sunshine. The high reputation of the club allowed it to attract touring American artists, such as Willie The Lion Smith, Champion Jack Dupree, Kid Sheik and Captain John Handy. Probably the most memorable night was when singer Ruby Braff guested with the Alex Welsh band.
In the early years the club was not without an occasional outbreak of rowdyism. Two men were tried at Bucks Quarter Sessions for assaulting a police officer and causing him grievous bodily harm. This followed an incident on February 12, 1969 outside the Jazz Club in the courtyard of the Crown Hotel.. The two men assaulted were Mike Reid and Norman Wilson, the latter being described in court as the ’doorman’. One of the assailants was found guilty and given two suspended nine months sentences to run concurrently, and fined £20, the other man was discharged.
In 1974 Mike Reid moved to Scotland and running the club was taken over by Norman Wilson, another founder-member, with help from John Mitchell and Brian Hine. In 1981 the club was asked to move from the Crown Hotel. Part of the hotel’s premises, including the Tudor Room was to be converted to a conference suite. At that time the club had 500 regular members, many of whom were angry at the short notice given to move, only three weeks which was later extended to five weeks. Bookings had been arranged with bands, some of which had been booked two years in advance, and there was concern that compensation might have to be paid.
Move to Beaconsfield
The club then moved to the White Hart hotel in Beaconsfield. Initially this was intended to be a temporary move, as the club wished to remain in Amersham. The Saracen’s Head in Whielden St agreed to host the club but could not obtain a music licence to enable it to do so, noise nuisance being the main objection. So the club remained at the White Hart until 1984, when it moved the short distance to Beaconsfield Football Club.
There was a temporary interruption to this arrangement in July 1992 when the football club’s clubhouse was destroyed by fire. Following an appeal in the local press Beaconsfield Rugby Club in Holloway Way, Windsor End agreed to accommodate the club temporarily. The first band to appear there, on July 19, was Derek Tatum’s Chicagoans, followed by Steve Lane’s Red Hot Peppers on August 5.
After six months the Jazz Club returned to Beaconsfield Football Club, their clubhouse having been rebuilt, and were to remain there for the next nineteen years. Then in 2021 the attitude of the football club’s management changed, making it clear that they no longer wanted to provide a home for the Jazz Club. So the search for a new venue began, initially by considering other possibilities in Beaconsfield, then by widening outside that area.
Move to Wycombe Marsh
Purely by chance, when one of the club’s organisers was travelling down Cock Lane he happened to notice the Wycombe Marsh Royal British Legion club, and ‘off the cuff’ called in. The rest ‘is history’ , since December 2021 that has been the home of Amersham Jazz Club.
The club, which is self-supporting, is now organised by local residents Dot and George Eggleton, and Hazel Hunter. It continues to enthusiastically promote live music performed by top traditional-style jazz bands from across the UK and Europe.
Gigs are held weekly, on Wednesday evenings, and are regularly attended by around 40 jazz-lovers. Attendees come from a wide area, from Essex to Devon. The Club has an excellent dance floor and dancing is a popular feature at the gigs.
For further information about Amersham Jazz Club visit their website www.amershamjazzclub.co.uk or email [email protected]