you must have been a beautiful baby

Early in 1947, a grumpy baby was born – me. Around the same time, another few million babies came into the world. We were what became prosaically known as “The Baby Boom.” This bulge in normal demographic patterns was a result of hundreds of thousands of servicemen being demobbed after the war. They arrived home with more on their mind than finding jobs and decent housing. They wanted to celebrate in time-honoured ways and prophylactics were probably on ration at the time. As a result, midwives had the busiest couple of years of their careers.



The baby boom was a well-known phenomenon. My first words were “I’m a baby boomer.” At school we were taught the implications of the term as a form of sex education (or at least that’s all we received in those days). Politicians of the 50s and 60s would stick their thumbs into grey waistcoat pockets and give lengthy orations about the future perils of demographic changes, although I’m not sure we’d then yet become demographs. In short, everybody, from infants to dowager aunts, knew about the baby boom. We baby boomers all understood about shifts in age to population distribution ratios. I was expecting the country to be mainly populated by elderly people by time 2010 arrives.


So why didn’t the Office of National Statistics know about it? The statisticians there have pointed an accusing finger and reprimanded me for deigning to live so long. The demographic curve is weighted heavily in favour of the elderly – we far outweigh youth. Economists and sociologists are suddenly worried. The impression I get is that these young academicians producing these scary reports have been taken by surprise, along with our politicians. Why didn’t they ask me? I’d have told them for a damned slight less than one Network Rail manager’s bonus.


Oddly, whereas the population is ageing, the very ethos of our culture is becoming increasingly youth focussed. For example, my life is blighted by incessant drum and bass powered at me from trillion-watt speakers in H-reg Astras with wound-down windows and primary-school kids at the driving wheel. Surely, if we baby-boom demographs are in the ascendency, we should be hearing Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, the Rolling Stones and Zoot Money floating in the summer air and not just a vibrating, chest-curdling bass string?


It’s not solely that I’m now an old grumpy man. I realise I’m just an awkward statistic, an embarrassment, a non-economically-active-unit, a state liability, number 3,000,001. And I know that subsequent baby booms have probably subverted my promised status. But occasionally I’d like to be treated like an adult with a brain. I want to say “I’m in the room, you know” when they talk about me. I don’t want to be SAGA patronised; I simply want non-political proportional representation. I too was once the future of this nation. Yep – it’s all my fault.


For a while, I did consider forming an activist direct-action apolitical association to promote the interests of the elderly. I even had a name for it – the Ancients Strike Back Organisation (ASBO for short). But when I thought about it, I couldn’t face the idea of spending my evenings in meetings with people like me.


So I’ll do what’s expected. I’ll leave our streets and popular culture to youth, close my windows, turn up the volume and immerse myself in some Jelly Roll Morton, Wynton Marsalis and a bottle or two of Montana Reserve Sauvignon Blanc.

a string of pearls

In desperation to avoid encounters with the World Cup, I turned to the internet. By accident, I find I’ve invented a new game. I call it the “Lester Young” for want of a more apposite title. Better suggestions will be welcomed.



7digital is a legal music download website. I pay about £7.99 for a typical album and can then listen to it for perpetuity on my MP3. I visit frequently, not necessarily to buy but to listen to the snatches of jazz they allow me to preview free before I commit to actually giving them my credit card details.


I search on a musician and am then presented with a list of albums by that artiste. Beneath the list is the inevitable beckoning finger – a section headed “Like this? Try these downloads?” And on the screen appears a box containing recommended listening which I could enjoy having declared an interest in the original artist. Click on one of them, and the process is repeated – that musician’s albums are listed and beneath is another box recommending similar performers. And so it goes on – ad infinitum if I had the patience and the download bandwidth. It’s a progression, albeit not always logical.


The game I devised is simple. The objective is to enter the name of a recording artist and then repeatedly click on the recommended others until the name of my original choice appears under the heading of “try this.” I am debarred from clicking on the same artist twice. Although I invented the game, I’m still a novice. But here’s my first attempt, starting (and finishing) with my favourite tenor saxophonist.


Lester Young – Al Cohn – Don Pullen – Cecil Taylor – Thelonious Monk – Ornette Coleman – Sun Ra – Randy Weston – Gerry Mulligan – Chico Hamilton – Charles Lloyd – Dave Holland – Chick Corea – Art Tatum – Teddy Wilson – Count Basie – Duke Ellington – Charles Mingus – Pepper Adams – Elvin Jones – Thad Jones – Art Blakey – Fletcher Henderson – Benny Carter – Clifford Brown – Roy Eldridge – Henry ‘Red’ Allen – Mugsy Spanier – Eddie Condon – Bunny Berigan – Charlie Barnet – Jimmy Lunceford – Don Redman – Bob Crosby – Glen Gray – Artie Shaw – Woody Herman – Paul Whiteman – Chick Webb – Ella Fitzgerald – Tommy Flanagan – Billy Taylor – Ahmad Jamal – McCoy Tyner – Bill Evans – Lennie Tristano – Roy Edridge (oh bugger – I’m disqualified for repetition but it’s my game so I’ll finish anyway) – Ruby Braff – Chet Baker – Freddie Hubbard – Hank Mobley – Cannonball Adderley – Lester Young. PHEW.


The progression is curiously logical, albeit sometimes in a bizarre sort of way: Art Blakey to Fletcher Henderson, for example, and I’m not sure about Woody Herman and Paul Whiteman. But I can trace the links for most of them. I wonder if the rules should limit the moves to say twenty. I’m pretty confident I could have returned to Pres with a little more judicious thought and application. And perhaps I could vary the game by trying to discover the most disjointed and incongruous sequence, maybe something like Louis Armstrong – John Coltrane – Monty Sunshine – Howling Wolf – Madonna – The Bachelors – LPO – Louis Armstrong. This is a sort of Mornington Crescent with music.


I think I must be bored.

les oinions

I’ve just returned from a vacation motor-homing in France. I’d like to say that I’ve been chasing the shadows of legends such as Django Reinhardt and Sidney Bechet, but the fact is that the jazz scene in Brittany seems to be as lively as the jazz scene here. The amorphous yet ubiquitous trio is advertised in places and I did see that Maceo Parker is appearing somewhere on a Breton stage, but generally April is obviously not a good month for the jazz band in France.

We did have a brighter musical interlude in a pub in St. Malo. Playing in the background was a compilation including a couple of jazz numbers. The Visigoth behind the bar turned out to be a classically trained singer (at the Conservatoire in Paris, no less). And, as if to prove the point about the eclecticism of world music today, he later played one of his favourite albums, a sort of blend of Irish jigs and traditional Breton improvisations on Vivaldi. The band turned out to be Planxty.

Looking back over the three weeks, a few impressions now spring to mind. Pure white aubergines; Cedric the omnipresent herring gull watching us warily (we obviously don’t have guardian angels; we have guardian seagulls); bundles of bedding airing on high window sills; toilets without seats or loo paper; efficaciously stinky cheese; crepes; the sudden disappearance of fresh moules frites after the 30th April; immaculately pollarded trees; gaily painted shutters on quaint old houses; freedom from “no camping” signs; GR34; Rodin and Max Jacob; and coruscating oceans of blue coastline, craggy and fractured, hazy and breezily warm.

Before we went, somebody told me that Bretons hate the English. That is a canard of monstrous depth. I write ‘canard’ in the English meaning of a false rumour, not the French which means ‘a duck’. Wherever we went, we were met with friendship and good humour from interesting people. We saw vivid light in French eyes which seems to have been extinguished in those of the English. And my schoolboy French got me through – “Je m’appelle Pooter Dodman. Comment-allez-vous?”

For our next visit, I’m determined to learn the language. I have the first two Michel Thomas CDs and I’ve made a start on translating the poetry of Jacques Prevert. I have to run before I can walk because it’s all downhill from here. At my age, I don’t have the time to amble any more.

So for now I’ll stop rambling. But for pedants world-wide, I know many of the words I use above demand accents over some letters, but I don’t know how to find the right keys on my QWERTY system.

sent for you yesterday

Earlier this week I put in an E-bay bid for an elderly Bush record player capable of playing 78rpm records at roughly the correct speed. It was never going to be an exquisite piece of furniture. But it had a multiple changing arm and classic early 1960’s design in ‘vintage’ plastic and Formica. It would be a perfect fit in the nascent music room-cum-workshop-cum-model trainset yard-cum-craft workshop-cum shed.


Mine was the sole bid. I opened with a fair margin above the starting price and kept a close watch on proceedings. Then, at the critical moment, I had a lapse of memory and discovered too late that another auctionee had leapt in at the last minute and trounced me by 50p. I lost my treasure to somebody named “Bidder 2.”


This means I still have a few shellac 78rpm disks waiting to be played for the first time. Two actually: a George Webb rendition of “South” and a Mugsy Spanier version of “Dipper Mouth Blues” the latter of which is disconcertingly described as a fox trot. Both are protected from 21st century dust by their original sleeves of thin card, printed with the retailers’ names. George Webb was first sold by C.H. Irwin of 78 Bedford Street, North Shields – slogan: ‘Try Irwin’s First!’ Mugsy Spanier’s sleeve advertises Sydney Scarborough of Under the City Hall, Hull – slogan: ‘Let us play them over for you!’ They knew how to use a good exclamation mark in those days, even if the advertising messages were a little less than zippy.


I wonder if anyone remembers C. H. Irwin of North Shields. Is it possible Sid Scarborough is still buried under the City Hall at Hull? Did he get to know Philip Larkin? So many questions; so few answers!


A German radiogram has come up for auction. It has 1957 art-deco renaissance blue period shiny avant garde blackness about it. I rather like it. I’ve come to the conclusion that to heighten the pleasure of our listening experience we should listen to recordings on equipment manufactured at the same time as the recording was made. Such congruence is the only way to achieve true and faithful euphony. Mrs Dodman said a rude word and tucked herself into her MP3 player for the night.


We’re refurbishing the old workshop. Progress could move with a little more alacrity if only the plasterer and electrician would actually do as they say they will. In Norfolk we discovered that the locals taught Spaniards the meaning of manana. But they are mere whippersnappers compared with Lincolnshire trades’ people. Here the words “I’ll give you a call with a starting date” should be interpreted with a timescale measured in years rather than days. If I press for something a little more specific, he’ll stroke his chin and say “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” But he won’t! See – I know how to use an exclamation mark as well. I didn’t before we moved to Lincolnshire. The old workshop, by the way, is where the record player will go, in case you wondered about the relevance.

strollin'

Blankney Wood marks one of the western boundaries of the Fens. A couple of hundred yards away, at the foot of the hill, flows an ancient waterway known as Car Dyke. It could be a Roman canal stretching from Lincoln to Cambridge; it could be a boundary. Some believe it to be nothing more than an early catchwater for rivers drizzling from higher ground. A few are convinced it could be one of the first sea walls, or perhaps have some military significance. Probably they’re all correct.



The area was once dominated by RAF Metheringham. The runways are now roads; the paths to pilots’ quarters now hidden tracks in the grass. Most of the base is beneath a plough of beans, winter wheat and sundry other cash crops. Here at the top of the hill is not quite factory farming, but from the nearby low ridge we look over mile after mile of vast plain-like fields. They vanish towards the horizon and the next outcrop of high ground. The Wolds are about 10 bee-line miles away. For all the world knows, I could be standing on the site where Troy once stood.

Signs warned us to keep out of the woods, although landowners have given permission for ramblers to follow footpaths providing the usual litany of rules is observed. We met only one human in the 3 ½ miles’ circular walk on a fine early-spring morning. He was friendly, like his old black lab. In fact, all cottage dogs along the way were vociferous but not bellicose. As we walked, ‘Perdido’ kept whistling softly in my mind. I was told to stop hissing.

Lunch was taken at the Royal Oak in nearby Scopwick. It’s the cleanest pub for miles around. If the food is not haute cuisine, it is at least good value for money and the young staff smiled and treated us as if we’re not senile old farts.


The camera had mysteriously switched itself to monochrome, so all photographs were a somewhat well-washed black and white. And I thought I’d learnt all the right buttons to press. Mrs Dodman sees irony in that final phrase. I don’t know why.

spanish knights

It’s funny how we tend to think of jazz in the USA and UK as unsurpassable paradigms of excellence. Or maybe that’s just me, but my collection of jazz albums is almost exclusively from one or the other. As a youth about the only non-U band I regularly enjoyed was the Dutch Swing College Band. I quite liked Mboto Mahari Ktumo and His Cotton Club Hot Six but they were from Uganda so can’t count as non-U.

Spain has never seemed a source of great music that isn’t flamenco, classical or Eurovision. Yet I’ve just discovered a rousing-tub-thumping-swinging-foot-tapping group which has been around for over 40 years – La Portenta Jazz Band, I think based in Barcelona. Fletcher Henderson lives on in the guise of a chubby senor.

They have several clips posted on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWxO3VQIWpo for example from 2008. Another clip portrays them about 40 years ago, when dark predominated rather than the team members’ current silver. The band was brilliant then; they’ve lost nothing with passage of time.

Once again I have to acknowledge my dismal ignorance. I’ve lived through over 50 years of jazz absorption, and still I’ve only scratched the shellac surface with so many bands yet to be discovered.

By the way, I’m still on the look out for an old-fashioned record player capable of 78rpm. If it has a vast bell-shaped horn a la Nipper and a crank handle - so much the better.

i'll sit right down and write myself a letter

Here is my Grande Opus V which I’ve entitled “The Rape of Suffolk.” I’m quite pleased with the name. It’s an alliterative acrylic abstract allegory.

A close examination reveals a slightly milky blue East Anglian sky suspended over a field of efflorescent rape seed. Thus literally it’s the rape of Suffolk. But allegories need a moralistic edge, so the subject is more complex than that. (N.B. I ignore the fact that my dearest friend Alf thought the painting was a seascape, thus effectively indicting my artistic abilities).

For Sleepy in China I’ll explain that Suffolk is a division of England and rapeseed is rapidly becoming the area’s main cash crop. Apparently we’ll save the planet by planting rape, although scientific opinion is split on the issue. I don’t care because I won’t live so long and I happen to feel that extinguishment of the sun is a far more pressing issue. But people are getting excited about a by-product of rapeseed (bio-fuel) and everywhere sickly swathes of yellow are replacing the mellow beige of barley. Good for the car industry; not so for brewers. I think this could be a cynical ploy by a coalition of dark forces i.e. government and farmers. Rapeseed is in high demand so prices and duties rise. Barley is in short supply so prices and duties rise.

Another thing Suff-folk are getting excited about is electricity, or more precisely, the transfer of the stuff from one side of the county to the other. Electricity companies want to build a network of pylons and the locals want to stop them. Residents claim these pylons will ruin the landscape. “This is nothing short of rape of the countryside,” one probably protested allegorically, allowing me to set a theme for the painting and this blog entry.

Notice the picture depicts a pylon sort of lurking watchfully in the corner, as if it harbours sinister intentions of starting the march imminently. If I’d have thought about the subject a little longer I’d have brought the pylon in from the left – hence reinforcing the allusion to the sinister. But it didn’t occur to me until too late and I can’t be bothered to change the painting now, although it’s not yet finished.

That’s a weakness I have. I’m not bad at starting things but finishing….? I’m a sprinter rather than a marathon runner. Stamina fades. I’m too busy wanting to start something new to expend energy completing what I’ve already commenced. So I’m quite pleased with the symbolism within the title but the painting itself is rubbish and undoubtedly will remain so.

However – and here’s the point of this posting – I’ve just acquired a Johnny Dodds LP. There’s no digital re-mastering here. It crackles, coughs, chokes and clicks just the way jazz used to when I was a youth. When I put the album on the turntable, drop the stylus, close my eyes and press against my temples, I can spirit my mind back to West Hill Drive and perpetual re-tuning of the Grundig in an attempt to locate and hold a signal from Luxembourg. “Salty Dog”, “Bohunkus Blues” and “There’ll Come A Day” seep reedily out of the speakers. Mrs Dodman calls it Mickey Mouse music because it reminds her of Steamboat Willie, but she lacks a sympathetic syncopated ear.

What has Johnny Dodds to do with Suffolk? I once knew a man who lived in Suffolk and was a great Johnny Dodds fan. He was an electrical engineer but I bet he’s writing angry letters at this very moment.