MP:Now, Ian, this is an occasion I've been waiting for years: to have the chance to talk to you about your career. So, here goes: can you tell us about your early days in music and how you got interested in jazz?

IW: How I got interested in jazz. Oh, that's a difficult one. It was forced upon me, rather. I was interested in model aircraft, actually; that was my hobby. We used to fly models all over Blackheath, where I came from. One of my flying compatriots, Maurice Moore, was interested in jazz; he had a record collection. I would go to his house, where he insisted on playing records, while I insisted I wanted to go out and fly models. To cut a long story short: he was called-up for National Service, and he left me his gramophone and a large number of 78s. For want of something better to do, I started playing them and that was the start of my interest in jazz; that would have been in 1948. Before that, I had been interested in George Formby, the ukulele player; then I went on to guitar, so it became Tennessee Ernie. The nearest I had come at that time to jazz was Josh White.

MP: Did you see him when he came to England at that time?

IW: No, I did meet him in later years in America.

MP: What was the first band you joined, and when was that?

IW: Oh, how time kaleidoscopes! It was in Charlie Connor's Band, around 1950, and I was still playing guitar then. Dickie Bishop was also a member. Actually, I always wanted to play trombone, but the trumpet player had a cheap clarinet for sale for 25 bob, an old 'simple' system, so I bought it. Charlie showed me how to play a couple of notes, so the first week I had this clarinet, I actually played it in public....these two notes that Charlie taught me to play! Luckily Charlie was playing over the top of them! But I carried on with the guitar for a long time.
Then in 1950 or '51 I joined a group called the Mike Jefferson Trio: Mike Jefferson, piano and a clarinet player named Dave Webb.

MP: Did you begin to hear records of clarinet players who appealed to you?

IW: Sidney Bechet first, mainly because there were several of his records among the 78s Maurice had given to me. Bechet's playing excited me; one of the first things that really gripped me was the sound of the Feetwarmers. Then as I got more and more into it, my horizons widened.

MP: Tell us about the River City Band.

IW: The River City Band came about when I decided to get into the front line - to be nearer the girls, you know - by playing clarinet. As there was no band at that time that I could join, I had to form one, and that was around 1951. I formed this band out of a band that had been run by another good friend, Freddy Lunn, who unfortunately died in a car smash. We had Ray Knowles, Ted Prior, Graham Patterson, and others.

MP: Were you doing regular gigs by then?

IW: We were doing probably two a week. The King & Queen in Mottingham, South East London was the home base.

MP: Then you made the transition to Mike Daniels. How did that happen?

IW: Around that time I started to give myself little challenges, setting my sights on where I wanted to go next. Mike played in the South London area - which was my area - quite a lot, so I started going along to see him. Teddy Layton was playing clarinet with Mike at the time. Eventually I began sitting in a few times, then Teddy missed a couple of gigs due to illness for which I depped, then Teddy decided he was going to leave, and Mike asked me around 1952 or '53 would I like to join the Band. Actually what he said was, "You're not very good yet, but you show promise"! So I joined and a week later we did a Jazz Club broadcast, about which there is a story:
I lived in this house which backed onto another house with a hundred feet of garden in between. There was an old Anderson Shelter, which my father had turned into a shed, and I used to practise in there for hours on end. The woman who lived in the neighbouring house said to my mother one day, "You know your son plays that instrument all the time, but it's not as if he's getting anywhere!"
Much laughter....
So my mother said, "Well, if you turn the radio on - at such-and-such a time - you'll hear him". So there I was doing my first broadcast.

MP: Touché indeed! Can you tell us now how you first got to hear of Ken Colyer and get to know him; how did all that evolve?

IW: It involved a chap called Hughie Goodwin, who was part of our aeroplane-modelling team, and at that time he was already into listening to the Lewis Band and other New Orleans bands. Hughie started to play me records, then one day he took me down to Catford where Ken was playing. That must have been about 1953/54, and I started to attend Ken's sessions regularly, and up popped another of my little self-challenges, because I decided the next band I wanted to join was The Ken Colyer Band. It's funny.....but it does seem that when you set yourself a real challenge, you find you can do it! Ken used to invite me to sit-in when it was appropriate and as he got to know me. Then Acker left, and I got the phone call in November 1954.

MP: That was for Germany, wasn't it?

IW: That's right. We went straight out to Germany for the residency in the New Orleans Bier Bar in Dusseldorf.

MP: It sounds a wonderful training ground to break a band in...

IW: Break 'em down, more like.

A lot of laughter...

IW: Long hours: 9:00 p.m. 'til 4:00 a.m. at weekends. Actually it sounds worse than it really was. We'd play three numbers, then take a break, although we didn't leave the stage at that point - just enough time for a roll-up; then another three numbers. Then, after three such sets, we'd leave the stage for half an hour. So really we weren't playing that much more than, say, a two-hour session in Britain. But it was hard enough. After the first week we were all pretty shattered....then we got used to it.
Then came the crunch: we thought that when we returned to England we were going to blow everybody off the stage with these marvellous lips we must have. It didn't work that way! Those circumstances at the Bier Bar were actually so relaxed that, when we did get back and played our first concert - in Bristol, I think - we were all shattered at the end of two hours' continuous playing as compared with the four or five hours in Germany, playing intermittently.

MP: Did Mac Duncan join at about the same time as you?

IW: Yes, Mac joined the same day as I did. Eddie O'Donnell went back to Leeds and Acker went back to Bristol. It was the first time I'd met Mac, when we both joined Ken.

MP: You and Ken and Mac, and indeed Colin, were becoming what was later recognised as the classic Colyer Band. To us listening it seemed like telepathy.

IW: Colin joined a bit later; originally it was Stan Greig, then Stan went to join Humph after we came back from Germany. For quite some time we had Bill Colyer on washboard until Colin joined. Dick Smith was on bass before Ron Ward and Diz Disley on banjo before Bastable joined. Diz left us in Germany because he met a beautiful redhead! Typical Disley...

Much laughter

MP: One felt from the way you all blended together - even before Colin joined - that you had this telepathic instinct. How did that amazing front line develop for you?

IW: I don't know that it consciously did. It's hard to comment on that. We were certainly very friendly toward one another - especially Mac and myself - he was my biggest side-kick; we'd do all kind of things together....well....some things! But musically: it just happened, it just developed. In fact sometimes you read things in the press about a particular band, and you say to yourself, "We didn't think that way"....we just did it! And it's very difficult to analyse as to how or why. We certainly didn't do a great many rehearsals - not for most of the tunes. Of course if you're playing a rag where you have an arrangement, you have to rehearse but, generally speaking, you find your way as it happens. And you work things out over a period of time.

MP: I suspect also that your knowledge of chords from the guitar would have helped your playing.

IW: Yes, when I started clarinet that knowledge of chords did help a lot - still does actually.

MP: What was Ken like as a leader? Was he strict, would you say, or did he just assume you knew your job and that was that?

IW: I don't ever remember him telling me what to do. He was more likely to tell me what not to do, although I can't remember a specific even then. He let you play your thing and never tried to alter what you were doing. Even when I (voice changes to a conspiratorial whisper) "brought the saxophone in" he didn't say a word. I'd bought this old saxophone in a junk shop in Wimbledon - swapped it for an electric kettle and a couple of odd things - wedding presents I didn't want, as you do! And I turned up at the Club with this saxophone; Ken may have looked a bit hard at it, but he didn't say anything. So, on a couple of numbers where I thought it would fit, I picked it up and played it. He never said a word. He certainly didn't tell me not to do it any more, so I played sax on a few numbers. Ken led the band by demonstration, by example; he assumed you knew what to do.

MP: By this time you had taken up the residency at Studio 51 which became The Ken Colyer Club. What was the feeling like there, the whole atmosphere for you?

IW: Let's go back a bit: it was nice to have a residency - about four nights a week we were playing there at that time, which would be about 1956 when it started. It was a "home thing"; almost like an office job in a sense. You played the gig, went home, played there the next night and then home, and on and on. The same people would come night after night: Pete Vince and John Reddihough, John Renshaw (the bass player) and others, all sitting there in the front row. Vi Hyland, who used to run the thing, was always there in the kitchen, and Pat and the commissionaire on the door.

MP: Of course there was no alcohol served in the place, was there?

IW: Not served - no.

Uproarious laughter!

IW: But The Porcupine was only across the road. That was a favourite watering hole to which we'd retire.

MP: I remember very well when George Lewis first came to London in '57, as a solo guest with your Band. That was certainly a highlight for me; what were your feelings about that experience?

IW: Oh, it was absolutely marvellous. It seemed we had waited so long. Paddy McKiernan, from The Bodega Club in Manchester, was instrumental in bringing him over. The day he arrived, April 11th, we went up to meet him off the plan at Manchester. We'd played a session at The 51, then drove overnight because his plane was due in around 7 o'clock and, of course, there were no motorways in those days; it took us about seven hours to get there! We didn't play him in, just stood there waiting for him, shook hands, then a couple of hours sleep, then we had a rehearsal in the pub. I was out of the band for a while because George was playing, so I rushed around to find a tape recorder, from Johnny Roadhouse, I think. Then I joined in later in the rehearsal and it was just a marvellous feeling playing with him there for the first time. The results are on a CD.

MP: They are indeed, and thank goodness you found that tape machine. Johnny is still around, I'm happy to say! What was George like to work with; how did you all get on?

IW: He was lovely. At first, for a couple of days, he was rather reserved. He was polite, but somewhat withdrawn and called you 'Sir' which, of course, you didn't want. He was a quiet man anyway but, as we got to know him, he became a friend rather than someone who just happened to be working with you. He really was a lovely, gentle man in the true sense. He loved what he was doing and, even more to the point, loved what we were doing. I wasn't going to say he was overwhelmed by the reception he got in this Country but, actually, he probably was. So many people came to see him; they'd longed to see him. We had longed to play with him. And there he was!
One little anecdote about the time with George: we did most of the tour with him, but Chris Barber did a couple of the gigs as well. At the end of one of their gigs they presented George with a double clarinet case - there's a good part and a bad part to this story: at the end of the tour George gave me his old clarinet case - a small case with a crocodile skin-type casing. George told me that it had belonged to Jimmy Noone, and he said to me, "Use it well!" So I did....and I used it too well, because over the years it became more and more battered until, in the end, it fell apart. Had I known what I know now, I never would have used it at all! That was the bad part.

MP: And George came back in '59 with the full band, and you were touring as two bands. We were all thrilled by such an occasion. Do you have any special memories about that?

IW: Oh yes. That time we had a band to meet them at the station. Once again: finally to hear these people that we knew only from records, it was simply just great. The two I became really friendly with were Joe Watkins and Slow Drag, although Drag I could never understand! But Joe used to translate for me. Drag was the master of the Creole Patois. Good Lord.....the programme from the event (handed to Ian by Mike - Ed). They were staying in an hotel in Russell Square. Now my (then) girlfriend, Maria - who later became my wife - had a flat in Guildford Street, which is just around the corner and, after hours, they used to come back to the flat, where we'd have these long, all-night discussions - just talking and drinking with Joe and Drag. During that time I learned that Drag played guitar, so one night I arranged for one of Johnny Bastable's guitars to be there. At that time I had a big tape recorder that Peter Goodwin had made for me, and I used to record all these sessions....just let the machine run and run and run. So this night Drag picked up the guitar and started to play and sing Eh la Bas. It would not be recognised as Eh la bas as we know it, but that it was! Much to my amazement, he sounded like Bill Broonzy - maybe not as practised as Broonzy but definitely there, with the bass pumping all the time. So....if ever I get to find and edit those tapes....

MP: Yes please! Of course you did meet Broonzy, didn't you....What was he like?

IW: Well.....he liked a drink (chuckles). He was good fun; it was just lovely to hear him

Continued in Part 2