Acker Bilk at Stratford-upon-Avon Civic Hall

The Stratford-upon-Avon Music Festival is one of this country's longest established and most popular events on the music calender, which this year included, as part of a superb mix, the remarkable Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and the world renowned pianist John Lill. And today, Sunday 19th October, the festival ends with the Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra, Instant Sunshine, and, at the White Swan Hotel, a tribute to the late and great tenor saxophonist and jazz club owner Ronnie Scott.

Now Ronnie Scott was a wonderfully inventive musician who played with the best. I remember seeing him with the Woody Herman Orchestra back in the '60s. Ronnie was also a great teller of jokes, and a man who was a friend of Acker Bilk's, who is also a great teller of jokes, and a jazz musician who has been a part of the UK jazz establishment for the best part of 60 years. He's also a musician who, with his Paramount Jazz Band, delighted a capacity audience at the Civic Hall last Wednesday evening.

I first came across Acker Bilk in 1959, when traditional jazz had become 'Trad Jazz',
a genuine movement (and one that did a lot to generate an interest in all things jazz in this country) that filled a vacuum in the popular music industry until The Beatles came along and changed everything. Talking of which my wife, Hilary, remembers going to see Acker (as well as The Beatles) at the Cavern Club in Liverpool where, on certain evenings, you often had to dance on the tables to avoid the rats, who, according to my wife, were very fast on their feet.

These days, at the age of 79, Acker Bilk doesn't really do fast anymore, instead both he and the Paramount Jazz Band have developed a wonderful sound that is both light-hearted and elegantly lugubrious, that takes the listener straight back to the band's 1950s recordings: listen to 'Marching Through Georgia', and the old Harry Raderman hit from 1920, 'Dardanella' to relish its richness, especially Acker's own trademark low-register preference that, even in the higher-register, sounds lower than any other player around, then or now. It's a clarinet sound that goes straight back to New Orleans and Johnny Dodds, with the added sophistication of Barney Bigard (also from New Orleans) who gave the Duke Ellington Orchestra of the 1920s, 30s and 40s its distinctive and compelling drive. And it was this combination of sophistication and drive, plus 60 years of experience, that we received from Acker Bilk and his band on Wednesday.

These days Acker Bilk surrounds himself with relatively younger musicians who are able to give the required pace and variety where needed, and this was most evident in the explosively melodic playing of pianist Colin Wood, whose workout on 'Autumn Leaves' was an extraordinary bravura performance, as was trombonist Ian Bateman's re-invention of 'Sweet Sue'. Trumpet player Enrico Tomasso was everywhere, with his playing a constant source of delight, and a brilliant melding of Louis Armstrong and Louis Prima, truly exciting stuff, all backed up by the rock steady bass playing of John Day and the drumming of Richie Bryant.

As mentioned at the start of this review Acker Bilk is also a great teller of jokes which he told with superb timing between numbers.

" There was this bloke out taking his dog for a walk, a whippet or something, when he comes across this pub. He was dying for a pint too. But there was a sign on the door saying 'No Dogs, Except Guide Dogs'. So the bloke puts on a pair of dark glasses and goes in. When the barman sees him he says:
' Can't you read? No dogs except guide dogs.'
' But this is my guide dog.'
' Don't give me that, guide dogs are either Alsations or Labradors.'
' What they given me then?' "

Acker Bilk is now something of a national treasure and we have to be grateful the British Army taught him to play the clarinet and no doubt helped to hone his skill as a joker.


Note: The above photograph of Acker Bilk taken from Boisdale Belgravia .