The American conquest of British popular culture is so widespread that we don’t think about it much anymore. The USA of 1980 really did seem like a foreign country but within a few years of returning to England there was a drive-in McDonalds at the end of my road, there was Budweiser beer in my local pub and American football at my local football club. Even my assistant at The Jazz Repertory Company HQ in Pitey Towers has become a cheerleader.
Not Without My Swamp
Budweiser Ad
But not all American exports to the UK and the rest of the world worked quite so well. The Baseball World Series? Well, the world outside of the USA seems to consist of, er…Toronto. American cars? Well, as they’re no longer 25 feet long with fins and half a ton of chrome they’ve lost their va-va-voom and the Budweiser disappeared from the pub not long after it arrived - some blame Bud Light.
Classic American Cars
American music though? Arguably, that’s the most successful and most welcome of America’s gifts to the world. And it was that way before Elvis arrived 60 years ago too. Before Elvis, teenagers did rebel and one way of doing this was to be a jazz fan – a form of rebellion so mild pre-1956 that most of their parents wouldn’t even have noticed anything was up ( a duffel coat wasn’t quite the same outrageous statement as a safety pin through the nose).
West End Blues
Louis Armstrong
And if you think jazz wasn’t rebellious, the journalist and broadcaster Alistair Cooke told of listening to Louis Armstrong’s West End Blues in 1929 and hearing the sound of his mother crying next door. When he asked what was the matter she said she found the music “utterly terrifying.”
Louis & The Duke - Cadogan Hall
A Jazz Repertory Company Production
The mystique of American jazz was helped no end by the Musicians Union’s decision to ban visiting American jazzers shortly after Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington’s Orchestra visited here in 1933. For well over 20 years Americans zipped straight over to the welcoming arms of the French and gave us a miss.
Cake Walkin' Baby - Louis Armstrong
Performed by Enrico Tomasso & The 100 Years Of Jazz In 99 Minutes cast
Back in the 1920s and 30s jazz was at its most successful (mainly because people wanted to dance to it). The advantage of the Union’s ban on American jazz was that we Brits had to learn to do it ourselves and we became very good at emulating earlier styles and we still are. It’s ironic that if you wanted to hear early jazz recreated authentically then, for many years, European musicians often had the edge over their American counterparts.
Because My Baby Don't Mean Maybe Now
Keith Nichols' Paul Whiteman Orchestra - 22nd November 2015, Cadogan Hall
Two concerts in London later this year bear this out. On September 19th at Cadogan Hall, Jazz In New York, The 1930s and on Nov 22nd, our EFG London Jazz Festival Concert, Paul Whiteman: King Of Jazz. Some of the finest musicians of our time will pay tribute to some of the finest names of time gone by in a true meeting of the best of American and British music in one.
Jazz In New York: The 1930s
19th September 2015, Cadogan Hall
The Jazz Repertory Company Concert series tours across the UK and Europe, with the finest musicians paying tribute to the best of classic and vintage jazz.
The Jazz Repertory Company Showreel
Something to make a noise about.
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