Four decades of Jazz at the Palace ♪ ♫
Today at the Electric Palace in Harwich we are celebrating the 10th annual International Jazz Day.
The 30th April is a date that is celebrated every year around the world, ever since Herbie Hancock first introduced it in 2011 when he was appointed ‘Goodwill Ambassador’ for UNESCO. The day provides an opportunity for people to enjoy jazz music together and to learn about the art of jazz, its roots, its future and its impact.
“This Day is intended to raise awareness of the virtues of jazz as an educational tool, and a force for empathy, dialogue and enhanced cooperation among people.” — UNESCO
To mark the event this year, we have asked two of the cinema’s greatest jazz enthusiasts, Chris Strachan and Simon Ashley, to look back with us at some of the jazz performances that been hosted at the Electric Palace and to share their own memories of encounters with the music that they love.
While you’re reading this article, why not listen to this jazz playlist that Simon has put together for today?
Ever since the Electric Palace re-opened in 1981, the cinema has provided the town of Harwich with a vibrant, beautiful and comfortable venue for music, as well as for film. There is a rich history of musical performance in the building, not least because from the outset, music would have been played along with every film that was screened. The cinema first opened in the silent era and so films would have been accompanied by piano and percussion and at that time the films were much shorter than today’s feature films, often only around 20 minutes long. In between the films there would have been live acts and musical interludes, all within an evening’s programme. The Electric Palace Music Committee who organise the concerts are simply carrying on a tradition! Wthin the group however, Chris Strachan and Simon Ashley share a particular interest in nurturing and promoting a jazz scene in Harwich.
Simon’s love of jazz goes back to his early years, he says he can remember listening to his Dad’s Louis Armstrong records and enjoying them. A defining moment for him was in 1970 when he went to the Isle of Wight festival and witnessed Miles Davis perform the extraordinary ‘electric’ set, with Keith Jarrett on piano and the young, Wolverhampton-born prodigy Dave Holland on bass, “both to become colossi of international renown” he adds. Chris nods in agreement, “Keith was really out on a limb there, he’s doing things for the first time and that’s what’s part of the magic of it”.
In 1969 Miles Davis had done what was unthinkable to many jazz fans, he’d lined up electric instrumentration to produce a new sound. This was the show he took on the road to the Isle of Wight festival, where he played to an audience of 600,000.
Simon says he also picked up some influences during his trips to the States, seeing Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers playing in New York’s Upper West Side and Ray Charles’ original sax player David Fathead Newman playing in a faded gothic ballroom in Chicago. A chance to watch the true giant Dexter Gordon at Ronnie Scott’s and a glimpse of influential pianist McCoy Tyner are also among his treasured memories.
In 2002 Simon moved from London to Little Oakley, close to Harwich. Now he lives just a stone’s throw from the Electric Palace. The story of his involvement in bringing live music to Harwich begins in 2015, when he and Chris Strachan met at the Memorial Club in Little Oakley. The venue was hosting a music event as a fundraising venture. Blues and roots artist Jo Harman was the prestigious headline artist at this event and Simon explained how he had recently heard Jo Harman’s music on a rhythm and blues show on the radio and he asked her to perform.
She returned soon afterwards to play at the Electric Palace and this time Chris Strachan’s own band the Harwich Horns were also on the bill. After the success of this concert, Simon was brought into the music committee at the Electric Palace.
Chris Strachan is one of the directors of the Electric Palace. Before moving to Harwich to take up a position as a GP, Chris had spent a lot of time in London in the early 1960s. While he was studying medicine at Kings College he had played in a jazz band with fellow students, including trumpet player Tony O’Sullivan, who was reading French at the time.
“I just happened to be born at the right time!” said Chris. “When I went to medical school, which was at Westminster hospital, it was the beginning of the absolute peak of trad jazz, it was pop music at the time and we used to play all over London. Once we played between London and Brighton overnight!”
As a member of a group of people in Harwich who first saw the potential in bringing the Electric Palace back to life, Chris has been instrumental in not only restoring it but claiming it as a much-needed venue in the town for music as well as for film. The cinema re-opened in 1981 after lying derelict for more than two decades.
As soon as the restored cinema was ready to welcome audiences, Chris was ready to start playing on its stage, bringing together friends and collaborators to form bands for one-off shows. Angela Macpherson, who was married to one of Chris’ new Harwich medical colleagues, was also very interested in what was happening at the Palace and she had a talent for organising concerts.
“One of the first ones we organised was Ken Colyer in 1982” said Chris. Performing outside London was unusual for Ken and despite having very short notice to put a band together, the concert was a great success and there was a full house at the Electric Palace.
“I had the great good fortune to be the leader of the band, so I was doing the first two or three numbers, then I introduced Ken and he came on and he took the trumpet part and then I’m pretty sure that at one point we had a couple of tunes when both of us were playing”.
Over the years Chris’s love of jazz has tempted some outstanding international jazz musicians to come to Harwich to play at the Electric Palace. One key moment in this nearly 40-year history was when Chris and his wife Celia took a long a trip to New Orleans to experience the Mardi Gras in 1989. Here they immersed themselves in the music scene and their host in the city even arranged for Chris to play several times, including one memorable performance on Lundi Gras out in the suburbs, playing to locals in a church hall with Leroy Jones on trumpet.
Chris met many artists in New Orleans who have since appeared in Harwich. Some of these artists enjoyed the experience so much that they returned every year afterwards to play again. This helped to establish the music programme at the cinema with a distinctively New Orleans jazz flavour.
Memorable concerts include one of Europe’s leading saxophonists Andy Sheppard, who performed in Harwich just months before he became a huge star, playing with the jazz fusion band called Sphere. Soon after that, he was playing to packed concert halls around Europe. Georgie Fame is another big star who has played here.
In 2007 the Electric Palace announced a forthcoming a performance by Humphrey Lyttelton and tickets for the concert sold so fast that he was moved into the neighbouring church, St Nicholas’, which can hold 600 or more.
Although the show was in December, this didn’t seem to have bothered Humphrey Lyttelton:
“It was pretty cold and there he was in his overcoat, he had just played for two or three hours and he sat down and he signed autographs for a full 45 minutes”.
[quote from a National Jazz Archive interview with Chris Strachan]
Chris says that the concert programme just carried on growing from there. “10 a year, 12 a year and then it just went on growing until we reached our peak, which probably was about 17 or 18 concerts a year”.
Fast forward to 2015 and The Harwich and Manningtree Standard ran an article in July announcing a ‘sizzling summer of jazz’ in which the cinema would play host to the Bohem Ragtime Jazz Band, Digby Fairwewather’s Half Dozen, John Etheridge and Sammy Rimington and his band. A good summer for jazz indeed, because in June British jazz legend and former Little Oakley resident Spike Heatley had also appeared at the Electric Palace.
“Spike’s a great bloke with a great sense of humour” said Simon.
“You know, Spike played the bass on what is regarded as the seminal British rhythm and blues album of all time, Alexis Korner Live at the Marquee. Korner was the father of the British blues and basically nurtured a band called The Rolling Stones”.
When Simon joined the Music Committee his musical tastes helped to broaden the scope of the jazz programme.
To extend the musical palette, he booked the multi-reedsman Theo Travis, who had toured and recorded with David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and Robert Fripp of King Crimson, to perform with his own progressive jazz quartet, Double Talk. Other notable bookings have been the Oxley-Meier Guitar Project quartet, with ten different guitars to call on, and The Big Screen Trio, led by multi award-winning pianist Dave Newton and playing a selection of music from the movies.
A popular return visitor to Harwich is Jools Holland’s lead saxophone player and musical arranger Derek Nash and his Acoustic Quartet, which also features Dave Newton.
In 2017 the Electric Palace hosted a concert by legendary British guitarist John Etheridge in a duo with the extraordinary vocalist Vimala Rowe.
Last but not least, the Gin Bowlers and Mustard Brass Band, both fronted by Harwich’s very own Jimmy Monahan (aka Jimbino Vegan) and his brother Tom, have played here frequently alongside an eclectic mix of young rousing street musicians with their own funky take on New Orleans traditional jazz.
As we can see, the live music programme at the Electric Palace has thrived, with folk and pop gigs as well as jazz on the menu.
Then in 2018 the cinema had to close for its present round of refurbishments. This temporary closure of the venue displaced a few of the live shows to other venues, such as the Parkeston Railway Club, but since then the long periods of lockdown have put a stop to all such activities. We hope that it won’t be long until they’re back.
Musical performances form part of an ephemeral history of the cinema because they are events that have happened frequently there, but they leave very little trace. It seems quite unusual for a cinema to have a live jazz programme, but Simon and Chris show us how just a small number of people who have a great passion and appetite for arts and culture can make a huge difference in a place like the Electric Palace.
This article is just the start of the story, there will be many more memories of music at the Electric Palace and we look forward to finding out more when we can meet you all in person again. Until then, here are a few more of Simon and Chris’ treasured cuttings to help to jog your memory.
