³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Let me go back to the place that seemed to be the epicentre in those early days of the 1950s - The Embassy Ballroom, Burslem.

I first saw it on a wet and wintry Sunday afternoon and couldn’t believe my luck... naked light bulbs, bare boards, flaking paintwork and those odd touches of faded glamour like the big time-speckled mirrors, that sad string of fairy lights and the weirdly pastoral mural that had blossomed on the wall behind the bandstand.

It was the next best thing to a New Orleans bordello. It made me feel like I was in a film - and I was desperate to be a part of it all.

Ceramic City Stompers

I was there with Phil Rhodes. We’d come over from Keele because a guy called Cliff Lee was holding auditions.

Phil was good. I was cheeky. We both passed the test and the next Friday the Ceramic City Stompers made its debut.

For the first couple of weeks the crowds were modest but then a mate of ours on the Sentinel did a big lurid feature on the Embassy and the next Friday the queue was right round the block.

We were rough, but we were ready, and for a while it seemed like we could do no wrong. Rash young ladies sent us encouraging letters, some guys started peddling pictures of the band, someone else started a fanzine that folded after the first issue.

Old Betty Plant’s Pure Sweets named a gobstopper after us. There’s fame for you!

Occasional outings

Although the Embassy was our main stomping ground, it didn’t take long for other gigs to start rolling in. Usually it was local things like parties, rugby clubs and college hops but there were occasional outings like the trip to Manchester Free Trade Hall to open the show for the famous Big Bill Broonzy and Brother John Sellers - and a gig at the Liverpool Cavern in its pre-Beatle days.

Ceramic City Stompers in Manchester, 1957.

So far as I can remember we held our own out of the Potteries but I can’t honestly say that we were seen as anything special.

At home though, it was different because, as the proverb teaches us, there’s a flattering relationship between the size of pond and apparent size of fish...

To see photos of Jazz in the Potteries through the fifties and into the present century, click on the link below:

Trad … and pop

As you’d expect, the Stompers popularity peaked during the trad boom; this meant that we were lured out of our purist jazz ghetto and out into the wider world of popular music.

We found ourselves included on the bill for Saturday night dances at the local halls - and this meant fraternising with musicians that, at one time, would have been seen as our ‘natural enemies’.

This period is epitomised in my memory by the three-band-sessions that we used to do at the Queens Hall, Burslem and the Kings in Stoke. The basic format was always the same – a dance band, a rock group and us.Ìý

The place would be packed out, as like as not, we’d top the bill and we’d be given twenty five quid to share between the seven of us.Ìý (Someone was making a packet, and it wasn’t us but, at the time, we didn’t really care).

What we enjoyed was the chance to blow, the glorious flattery of wild – if undeserved – applause, and the chance to discover that we’d got a lot in common with some of the other guys on the same bill.

On the dance band side, for example, it was both humbling and inspiring to come up against a trumpeter like Kim Cordon who earned his crust playing standard commercial arrangements, but could cut us all to ribbons when it came to blowing jazz.

Those early contacts led directly to traddy-bop jam sessions at such pubs as the Shakespeare in Newcastle. Much later, it was no surprise to find the ex-Traddies sharing a stand with dance band be-boppers such as Pete Chell and John Simons.

The Cotton Pickers

Trad… and rock ‘n roll

The introduction to the rock ‘n’ rollers was, if anything, even more fruitful. I’m thinking now of a band called the Cotton Pickers – sometimes corrupted to Rotten Knickers!

They used to be resident at the Cameo Ballroom which, I seem to remember, was up a flight of stairs up above Burton’s Tailors in Longton.

The Cotton Pickers line-up included Eric Leese, who went into soul and bebop by way of playing banjo with the Stompers, and also the two Micks – Mick Gilligan and Mick Emery – who also teamed up with Arthur Wood and Keith Webb to make a rhythm section for a traddy super group called the Excelsior Jazz Band.

For a few years the band made some good music and we even did some radio and television but, as it turned out, the rhythm section was perhaps a little too good - because when Alan Elsdon left Terry Lightfoot to form his own band, he took the Excelsior rhythm section with him.

This eventuality caused a rapid decline for our band, but it was good for the lads; and ample proof of the musical benefits that come from fraternising with the rockers.

The Sixties

A few years later, when Keith Webb and Arthur Wood had left the Elsdon band, there was another bout of cross-breeding when Keith got together with one Colin Cooper to form The Hipster Image.

Meanwhile Arthur and I teamed up with John Cuffley, who used to play drums with the moderately famous Emile Ford, to form the ludicrously-named Cozy Browne Combo - which was the resident band at the recently opened Place Disco in Hanley.

Both of these bands prospered for a while; then there was a split and merger, with the result that Arthur, Colin, John and I formed a jazz, blues and soul band called the Gospel Truth.

As happens, this situation too did not last long.

Climax … Love Band

I left Gospel Truth to form the (still-playing today) Old Fashioned Love Band (with Cyril Preston and Colin); and Arthur organised the first incarnation of the Climax Chicago Blues Band.

Climax, of course, eventually went on to make fourteen albums and a couple of hit singles!Ìý Not a jazz band I know, but why should they be?ÌýThey’ve consistently made good music and we’re right to be proud of them.

Old Fashioned Love Band

The Love Band on the other hand, never went pro, but we certainly scared the life out of some of the London bands who shared the same bill with us.Ìý

Our strictly musical asset was all three of the front line were writing songs – songs that our fans actually preferred to the standard Trad repertoire that everyone else was playing.

There were, if I’m to be honest with you, other extra-musical attractions - such as our clarinettist Eric Newton’s brief period of glory as the Potteries first male stripper (but we’ll say no more of that, nor of the many other splendidly unbecoming antics that characterised the band…!).

It was a lot of fun and – even if I could - I’d scarcely change a thing.

That Potteries feel

Looking over what I’ve written so far I can see that I’ve used up my ration of words without getting much past the late sixties.Ìý An awful lot’s happened since then, of course, but the truth is that I’ve written about the things that seemed to matter most.Ìý (Ask someone else and he’d tell a different tale of course).

However, no matter who you asked, I think we’d agree on one thing: The Potteries may not have produced a major jazz band or a truly important soloist, but our scene has always been blessed with a generosity of spirit that scorned bigotry and instinctively asked ‘why not?’

Eric Newton

It was, after all, right here in the Potteries that a very good jazz man decided to do his blowing sitting in the middle of town with a string of puppets between his knees … yes, Eric Newton not only became one of the city’s best buskers but even made his clarinet famous too as he took it with him out on his marathon-running exploits.

Not, perhaps, what they had in mind at the Northern College of Music, but – as Miles might have said – SO WHAT?

What is astonishing above all though is that the same jazz vibe that invaded the city over fifty years ago is recognised and responded to still in many little clubs and scenes locally.

It may not be king in the big venues any more, but, boy, it definitely remains, kicking and screaming as ever…!

Mel Hill

**

Mel has been and is one of the stalwarts of the North Staffordshire jazz scene.Ìý As well as playing trumpet for over fifty years, he has written, lectured and broadcast about jazz for outlets from ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3 to the national newspapers. He also ran a hugely successful jazz show on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio in The Midlands for nearly twenty years.