Jazz Pilgrims archive page early 60's onwards JP 32
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The Chris Watford Story of bands etc:
I was a founder member of the Dolphin Jazzband, down in Hastings, buying
my first simple system clarinet in December 1954 at the ripe old age of
19, which I thought was too late to start ! The previous summer, I had
seen the bands appearing at the White Rock Pavilion on a Sunday evening,
including those of Ted Heath; Jack Parnell; Harry Gold; Carl Barriteau;
Basil & Ivor Kirchin, Sid Phillips, Humphrey Lyttelton, and Ken Colyer,
and whilst working in Tunbridge Wells, I started buying 78rpm records
from Barnards, in Camden Road, and from another record shop round by the
Central Station. I preferred the smaller bands, and started saving up to
buy my first clarinet- for £5 !
The Dolphin Jazzband;
Pete Treger tpt, Brian Towers tmb, Chris Watford clt, John Collinson piano,
Geoff Coates bnj,
Alan Whitmore dms / WashBrd and John Griffiths bass Ted Bishop bnj on
Candy Lips
To hear the lads click on to the title:
Squeeze Me ( Bob Rae tpt recorded Railwaymens Hall, St. Leonards-on-Sea 10th October 1959
Here Comes The Hot Tamale Man recorded Angel Inn, West Hill, Hastings 2nd April 1962
Grandpa's Spells recorded Angel Inn, West Hill, Hastings 2nd April 1962
The Entertainer recorded Market Hall, George Street, Hastings 7th April 1962
Candy Lips recorded Angel Inn, West Hill, Hastings 16th April 1962
The Dolphin Jazzband's front line of
Brian Towers(tmb);Pete Treger(tpt) and Chris Watford(clt) at
one of their summer sessions in St.Clement's Caves, Hastings.(1961).
from the John Powys collection
Each summer, we played three times a week in the St.Clements Caves to
hundreds of mainly foreign students, plus a Saturday residency in our
own Club. Despite having day jobs, we also managed a weekly residency in
Eastbourne, plus the occasional sortie to places like Lewes;Brighton;
Deal, and to Dover, where we first met trombonist Bod Bowles.
In September 1956 I was transferred to work in Aldershot for a year,
which gave me the opportunity to hear the Ken Colyer band in its heyday
in London. I met a lot of jazz musicians who were to become lifelong
friends, and joined Mike Casimir's band for a short while before
joining Barry Campbell's Unity Jassmen in London. Barry had been taught
to play trumpet by Mike Peters during his National Service, and our
front line was completed by the Kent-based trombonist John Finch. I had
to leave the band when I was moved back to work in Hailsham at the end
of the summer of 1957, but not before I had also joined the Zenith
Jazzband in Southend, travelling down there every other Tuesday for
heir residency in the London Hotel.
Chris Watford's Washboard Wizards - personal:
Chris clt + alto, Pete Treger tpt, Geoff Coates 12-strg guitar, Alan
Whitmore Wshbrd.
Informal session 4th June 1962 Anchor Inn, George Street, Hastings.
East Coast Trot
Once back in Hastings I rejoined the Dolphin Jazzband, and having formed
a stong friendship with the John Kelk Eagle Jazzband in Canterbury, I
frequently played at their Club in the Rechabites Hall, Pound Lane.
When I heard that their trumpeter, Keith Button, wanted to retire, I
wrote to Barry Campbell up in London, and presuaded him to give up his
job as a silk screen printer and move down to Canterbury, and he enjoyed
leading the band until he moved away in the 1960s. Down in Hastings, we
steadily improved, recording for Steve Lane's VJM label in West London
in 1961 and 1962. The band then broke up, and trombonist Brian Towers
and I reformed as the Jazz Caverners,
Jazz Caverners Rehearsal at Angel Inn 1965 - Pete
Kitcher tpt, Brian Towers tmb
Chris Watford clt, Ted Bishop piano, Roy Martin and Geoff Coates bnj, Ian
Scriven bass
and Reg Lower drms:
Swipesy Cakewalk
Rickety Dan
Coal-Smoak
- click to listen
with the help of some fine jazzmen
from Eastbourne. This band recorded for VJM in 1966, after which I left
the band, moved to Hildenborough, and formed my Elite Syncopators to
play similar Classic Jazz in the Tonbridge and Maidstone areas.
ELITE SYNCOPATORS
Willie The Weeper Mabels Dream Doctor Jazz Till We Meet Again
This circa 1972/73 from left to right:
Brian Craig tpt, Sam Weller tmb, Nicola Watford piano, Chris Watford clt and Nobby Willet bnj.
To hear the Syncopators click on to the above titles
By 1975 I had moved to Upminster in Essex, and with London musicians such as
Dennis Field or Ben Cohen(cornets) or Ken Sims (trumpet), and Kent
banjoist Nobby Willett, we had a residency at the Blue Boar Inn,
Southend. A year later, I suffered a brain haemorrhage, which stopped
me playing (forever, I thought), and also led to me taking early
retirement at the age of just 40. Shortly after that, my wife departed,
leaving me to bring up our two young children- grim days indeed !
Twenty years later, I went to a concert by my old friend Sammy
Rimington, who asked me where I was playing those days. I told him I had
been very ill, but he said that I looked pretty good to him. Fired with
enthusiasm I went home, started sitting in with local bands up in the
East Midlands, where I had been living for some years, and found that I
was fit enough to play again. I joined a poor band in the Leicester
area, got them a gig at the Burton-on-Trent jazz club because I believed
that they would improve with rehearsals, but found that they did not, so
not wishing to lose the gig, which was still some way off, I formed my
own band as The Dallas Dandies, which was the name of an early Johnny
Dodds group. I used some good Birmingham based musicians, and my old
trumpeter Brian Craig came all the way up from Tonbridge to help out.
After the 20-year layoff, I had forgotten how to hold the clarinet, and
I must have played far too many wrong notes as I gradually got my
technique back into gear. I was virtually unknown in the Midlands, and
promoters didn't want to book an unknown band, so I decided that the
best way to get back on the scene was to book the best trumpeter in the
Midlands, Gordon Whitworth, to front the band, as he had a strong
personal following wherever he played. To a certain extent it worked,
but I had a real stroke of luck when my old friend Jerry Card asked me
to do a gig for him, as his band was double booked. This was a
commercial gig for BP at their service station in Orpington, to launch
the opening of their new Express Shopping facility. The money was good,
so I was able to employ some fine musicians, including drummer Colin
Bowden. This session, outside , where motorists would file past us on
their way in to pay for their petrol, went down very well, and the Area
Manager recommended us to BP's Promotions team,saying that he preferred
our style of jazz, so we went on to play at some fifty similar Openings
all over the country, culminating in putting out six separate bands at
Filling Stations in the Milton Keynes area simultaneously about a year
later. Despite regular breaks, these were long sessions lasting from
10am until 4pm, often in inclement weather, yet at no time did any of my
musicians ever look at their watches and want to stop. I think it was
because the line up was always different, and the musicians were often
finding that they were playing with friends who they hadn't played with
for several years. It gave me a great chance to get to play with some
fifty of the top musicians on the scene, and to develop my own playing.
Dennis Armstrong became my regular cornettist for a time, but in 1998 I
augmented the Dallas Dandies to do a tour of UK jazz clubs playing all
of the quite highly arranged tunes that had been recorded by King
Oliver's Creole Jazzband back in 1923, to mark the 75 Anniversary of
those Classic recordings. My trumpets were Brian Craig once more, still
living in Tonbridge, and Mike Daniels from Cambridge. They met in a
field off the M11 near Stansted Airport to rehearse the two-trumpet
breaks and codas in Brian's camper van, and there are videos of that
tour which may eventually see the light of day.
Soon after this, I decided to form a George Lewis-style band, with a
different personnel, and I called this the New Orleans Standard-Bearers.
I enrolled my old friend Bill Stotesbury on banjo, who had played with
my Elite Syncopators before leaving to join Ken Colyer for eleven years.
I dug out Graham Paterson for piano, who was very rusty but still played
just like Alton Purnell. That gave the band a distinctive sound, and
when Graham passed away I was very lucky to obtain the services of a
virtually unknown pianist , Peter Tabois, from Grimsby, who stayed with
me until I eventually retired in 2004. It was difficult to have the same
trumpeter, as both Tony O'Sullivan and Ken Sims were both in demand with
other bands, but with the help of other fine trumpeters such as Pete
Smith, who took over in the Delta Jazzband when Sonny Morris sadly died,
I was always able to have memorable sessions.
Concurrent with running that band, I also formed the Chicago Feetwarmers
with soprano sax legend Charlie Connor, from Cambridge. I heard him for
the first time at his local Sunday lunchtime session in his village of
Isleham, out in the Cambridgeshire Fens, and invited him over as guest
at my local residency at a pub near Stamford. He phoned me the day after
our session to say that he believed there was a certain magic
understanding between us, and as I had also thought this, it became the
beginning of a wonderful musical experience for both of us that lasted
until I retired- although our friendship continued until the day that he
died. I retired for many reasons, in 2004, but whilst I would have liked
to have continued for another year and learnt a few more interesting
tunes, one can never achieve all that one hopes to do in life, and I am
very glad that I was able to have a second bite of the cherry and have
another decade playing the music I loved . I still have various
recordings available, so if interested please email me for details at
chrisexe@btinternet.com
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