hushed audience at Ronnie Scott's - a big band plays 3½ hours of continuous dance music at Rockly Sands Ballroom in Poole.
ANN SWART was at both events and describes her reaction to the two cultures linked by the same music.
Ronnie Scott's sophisticated jazz club in Soho in London's West End has an atmosphere supposedly conducive to listening to serious jazz. The club is só expensive that it can limit its clientele to those who can afford to consider themselves dedicated jazz lovers.
The • kudos the management nas set un around their exclusiveness means that the club attracts the best musicians. 'These artists can be guaranteed the prestige of one of the most classy jazz clubs in Britain.
When the legendary Earl Hines, in his seventies, sat down and played his piano the hush that descended was real. when it came was generated by honest appreciation and pleasure and was accompanied by mumblings of 'yeah' and 'Swing it, Fatha'.
The 'Fatha' handed on to the young, white and female co-workers in his band the skill, rhythm and craft learned in half a century of playing jazz. The evening showed that process in action: a worker handing on his trade. As Earl explained: 'I'm the Fatha and these, co-workers, are the greatest young people I can find.' The result, although lacking the real emotion I associate with Kansas City in the '30s, was a polished, skilful performance too high in entertainment value to have the excitement of spontanicous icalive music. bul licarig lac old man is an experience I will remember with pleasure and will savour for years.
At Rockly Sands, a crushed caravan holiday camp on the mud flats of Poole harbour, the local branch of USDAW, the shopworkers' union, danced to two '30s-style big bands.
The ballroom is cheap out of season and over tive hundred Co-on members attended the event. Since they couldn't afford (and didn't want) the luxury of the canned atmosphere of Ronnie Scott's, alcohol was used effectively to The National Abortion Cam. The applause my induce an electricity which was tuned and extended by the bands.
To ensure the hall was full and the audience ready for a long evening before closing time, the ticket includes an hour of free wine from 7.30pm.
By the time the first band started 1, like the rest of the room, and ready for the ball. listen to the music but to be enveloped by it, to be energised by it, to physically respond to the saxophone solos.
Applause was not for big names but for the technical competence and craft of the musicians' ability to extend the audience and give us the chance to escape the dullness of our working lives.
Given this set-up, the music of Basie and Ellington was tunes.
was tanked ap, uninhibited We were there not to while the soloist was introduced.
leading to more and more deskilling.
tion of apprenticeships, • autumialull.
discernible only by familiar The audience response, though, was tal had given big bands their popularity 40 years ago. The dance floor was jammed with bodies their craft. swaying to the music. There was no pause for the sexist jokes of Ronnie Scott; just time to grab the wine you had stored in your pint mug The connections between the '30s and now were seen not only in the music but also in the perience. topics of drunken conversation, chiefly around the fear of unemployment for the shop worker, with the 1980s dimension of-new technology and Older workers talked of continual deskilling of their trade through the decades, the eradicafears of esoteric.
Two consecutive nights, two cultures, each alien to the other, linked by music generated from the ancient music of Africa; old workers recounting and handing on the knowledge of Ronnie Scott's is a luxury I, for one, can live without, but however I felt about hearing 'Kan. sas City' played between 'Blue Suede Shoes' "and "Lets Twist Again', visiting our class al play was an exciting as well as a political exEarl (Fatha) Hines would have been loved appreciated . OS the audience in the ballroom but in a completely different way from the motionless (emotionless?) jazz lovers of Ronnie Scott's. The fact is that the Co-op workers could not afford him and jazz is too