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2008 – The Paraffin Joe Show
'The Paraffin Joe Show Hits Manchester' – by Gloria Gaffney.
Gloria Gaffney recalls an eclectic record recital with a literary angle presented by Don Lee in a cosy city centre pub, The Unicorn, on 10 July 2008
[From About Larkin 27, April 2009]
Billed by the Manchester Jazz Society (MJS) in their programme as 'Paraffin Joe and his Nitelites – Philip Larkin's take on Jazz' and including a cameo tribute to David Gerard: 'Nancy with the Laughing Face', the evening proved to be entertaining and novel in several ways. Don Lee had chosen for the playlist a tuneful, mellow and a thought-provoking selection of tracks.
He began his presentation by explaining the reasons behind his choices. First he wanted to test the 'Paraffin Joe/Larkin's Law of Reissues' (All What Jazz, 226) given the vast programme of CD reissues that Larkin could scarcely have foreseen in the last 25 years. Second, he wished to enable non-jazz Larkin scholars to participate to a greater extent in an understanding of the music that was an essential background to Larkin's life ('I can't live without jazz' he told his radio listeners on Desert Island Discs in 1976). Third, he intended to give jazz fans a thematic presentation and a more rounded understanding of what motivated Larkin. Finally, he had built into the playlist a cameo appreciation of jazz fan/professional librarian and contemporary of Larkin, David Gerard, 1923-2005, who was an active and valued member of both the MJS and our own Society (see obituary in About Larkin 21, 2006).
As a preamble to his set, Don (pictured above) thanked Peter Caswell, MJS Secretary, for inviting the Philip Larkin Society to contribute to its season's programme. Steve Voce, the respected and outspoken jazz commentator, is President of the Manchester Jazz Society, and was also a valued Larkin correspondent (Selected Letters, 748-9). This led Don smoothly into the first track, a gently rocking blues by Buck Clayton, a favourite trumpeter of both men.
That seductive 70-year old danceband warhorse, Artie Shaw's magnificent 'Begin the Beguine', followed early in the playlist in order to establish the audience Larkin was addressing during his review years at The Daily Telegraph (All What Jazz, 280). After this, Louis Armstrong's 1929 version of 'St Louis Blues' was played – a raunchy tango that amounted to 'the hottest record ever made' in Larkin's estimation (All What Jazz 200). There was an abrupt change of mood and time-shift to 1951 for the honking R 'n' B sax of Earl Bostic. Here Don related a story about 'Flamingo' from John White, Larkin's friend at the University of Hull, and co-editor of Reference Back: Larkin's Jazz, the other main source of Larkin's jazz writings apart from All What Jazz. John's home in Cottingham was open house to Larkin and the two jazz fans would listen to and discuss at length, aspects of their collections. Whenever Bostic was placed on the turntable the poet would immediately leap from his chair and prance around the room in a crazy ecstatic dance. Larkin as dancer was the very antithesis of Astaire, so this must have been a rare sight.
There isn't space in this review to give reasons for Don's choice track by track and, in any case, MJS Treasurer Mike White, recorded the whole event for posterity, so I shall draw attention to just a few of the evening's highlights.
'Spider Crawl' made a great impact. If there was one LP above any other that Larkin campaigned to be reissued, then it was what became known in jazz circles as the Billy Banks Sides. As jazz reviewer for The Daily Telegraph, Larkin exerted his influence by repeatedly mentioning the Banks tracks which he recalled from teenage years of cycling home along the Kenilworth Road, Coventry, bawling out lyrics such as 'See that spider crawling up the wall' to the alarm of passing Coventrians. Larkin termed the reissue of Billie Holiday's 1958 recording of 'For All We Know' in 1968 as pandering to morbid tastes. These remarks led to considerable debate amongst the MJS experts. My own feeling is that it is a poignant but very sad recording of a singer whose life is fast burning out.
The audience brightened up with 'Tea for Two', the next choice, when we were able to hear the very same jam session which Larkin had attended at the Abbey Road Studios 67 years before [see About Larkin 27, p.14].
The cameo tribute to David Gerard made an affectionate reminder of an exceptional man whom I got to know well during the last decade of his life. First we listened to an instrumental version of 'Nancy' by one of David's favourite modernist sax players, John Coltrane, coupled with a vocal version of the same tune by Frank Sinatra. Nancy (David's wife) would have appreciated this and she would have recalled that he was, in his youth, lead singer ndash; in Sinatra style – of a Welsh combo, The Grooves of Academe. 'Night People' recalled the interest that David and Don had shared in the career of Scottish jazz clarinettist Archie Semple, a track which Larkin had reviewed. The Mulligan/Baker track, we are told, had an interesting history: it was located on the one and only album of Baker that Larkin himself owned and is now held amongst the 1500 donated records in the Larkin Archives at the University of Hull. I remember that Chet Baker was a favourite of David's and, following a visit to his Middlesex home, Don compiled a selection of Baker specials to cheer him up. 'Tuxedo Junction' by Gene Krupa – with its superlative last long note – provided a fitting finale to the tribute. I can still hear David proclaiming: 'Follow that!'
There was a spontaneous response to the music from those who knew and remembered David as a valued MJS member. Don recalled that David had lived an extraordinarily varied and full life as a librarian (which was how he met and corresponded with Larkin), pioneer in oral life recordings (for example, he recorded interviews with survivors from D.H. Lawrence's family and circle), author, poet and publisher. In conclusion, two little known facts were offered: David was a tutor to the teenage Marianne Faithfull before she met the Stones and, in his late 70s, he began to compose rap lyrics.
After the interval there was a complete contrast with a vocal by Dutch singer Mathilda Santing of 'Is it for now or for always', from The North Ship, and very good it sounded to my ears, too. Don explained it as an example of a growing trend in jazz, rock and classical circles where musicians and vocalists are inspired, by Larkin's poetry, to compose original works or interpret the poems as songs. Other recent examples by jazz instrumentalists include, we were told, saxophonists Tim Garland and Barbara Thompson and pianist Michael Garrick with his remarkable 'Fuel Form Blues' as already performed at a Larkin event at the National Jazz Archive in Loughton (see About Larkin 16, Oct 2003).
So far Larkin's poetry had not really featured much but this was remedied by the playing of Larkin's own reading of 'For Sidney Bechet', contrasted with a 1999 rendering by the late George Melly. The evening came to an end with two absolute jazz classics. One was Bechet's 'Blue Horizon' of 1944, a superb recording of 'six choruses of slow blues in which Bechet climbs without interruption or hurry from lower to upper register, his clarinet tone at first thick and throbbing, then soaring like Melba in an extraordinary blend of lyricism and power that constituted the unique Bechet voice, commanding attention the instant it sounded' (All What Jazz, 41). The other, Don's final choice, was Bessie Smith's 1933 recording of 'I'm Down in the Dumps', which it certainly isn't! 'I'm twenty five years old / I got vitality / I'm always like a tiger / I'm ready to jump / I need a whole lot of loving / 'cos I'm down in the dumps'. This record had also been Larkin's final choice on Desert Island Discs and, as he remarked to Roy Plomley, 'it is so full of life and so invigorating'.
To applause it was agreed that the evening had been enjoyable and informative, where jazz and literature had met for mutual benefit. Although mostly a local audience, at least one PLS member, Mike Wilson – pictured centre, with Pater Caswell (left) and Don Lee – had been intrigued enough to make the long journey from Leicestershire to sample Paraffin Joe.
In view of the growing interest amongst members – and indeed the wider informed public – of the jazz side of Larkin, would it perhaps be worthwhile for the Society to consider a compilation CD of Larkin jazz favourites? I'm sure there would be a keen market for this.
Photographs © Gloria Gaffney 2008
[The page numbers given in this article for Larkin's All What Jazz: A Record Diary refer to the revised 1985 edition: ISBN: 0-571-13475-0; paperback ISBN: 0-571-13476-9]
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