The Bournemouth Years1957-1970Piano
Washboard | Guitar | Piano | 1977 to Date
The "Rebels" lasted only a few short months, before I was approached to join a new band, this time as pianist. Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band (the name was thought up in my mother’s living room, when we misheard a line from Chuck Berry’s "Johnny B. Goode"), aimed to reverse the trend of the previous couple of years and take rock music back to its rock’n’roll roots. The bandleader, Roger Collis, had originally intended Zoot to handle the piano as well as vocals, but - at least in those days - my technique was better. (If it had been organ and not piano, I’d never have got the job).
Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band went on to become a cult attraction on the London rhythm and blues scene, but by then I’d left, as usual refusing to turn pro, though I remain friends with Zoot to this day. The history of the band after it left Bournemouth is well documented, but one by-product of its earlier years is always ignored. We introduced what was probably the first version of line-dancing in the UK.
The Hully Gully was a minor hit for The Olympics at the end of 1959, but the dance of the same name made no impact whatever in the jive-mad UK. The song had a nice feel about it, and Zoot added it to our list of numbers. During one of our first performances of it, Zoot began doing the dance steps of the "Southampton" jive - three steps to the side, and a gentle little kick - and the audience gradually followed suit, until they were all facing the stage in lines, mirroring his movements. We were now gigging across most of Southern England, and the dance quickly became a craze, though not always done to The Olympics’ song. (Most conventional dance-bands hadn’t heard of it.)
With the departure of the Big Roll Band to London, for its first abortive attempt at going pro, I was invited to join the Sands Combo. Though less bluesy in their material, the Sands had become trendy, through their adoption of the new dance craze of the Twist, and their set covered a wider range of pop music. The band leader, Roger Bone, soon succeeded in getting us the most prestigious residency in Bournemouth - The Pavilion Ballroom -  | "The Sands Combo"
(L-R Graham Douglas, Roger Bone, Dave Anthony,
Pat Sheehan, Nigel Street, Al Kirtley) |
a vast 1930s mausoleum that attracted five hundred teenagers every Thursday night for The "Big Beat Session". Vocals were handled by Dave Anthony, later supplemented by Zoot Money, then between attempts at breaking into the London scene. The support band was fronted by Tony Blackburn - later to find fame as a disc jockey - whom Zoot insisted on introducing as "Tony Blackhead and the Pimples".
Our residency at The Pavilion brought us within the orbit of the Bournemouth musical "mafia" that ran most of the main tourist attractions, and several other prestige gigs came our way, including a weekly gig on the "Jazz and Twist Boat", sailing from Bournemouth to Swanage, about fifteen miles down the coast. The ship was the "Embassy", a paddle steamer that was already well past middle age when it took part in the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation, but on a calm, clear night, the trip was idyllic. We began to regard ourselves as seasoned matelots, until one night, hove to in Poole Bay in the midst of a Force 8, because the captain wouldn’t risk rounding the Old Harry Rocks, I found myself aiming for Middle C, and hitting B flat above - untypical even of my limited technique. Fortunately, the embarrassment this caused was truncated when I threw up over an onboard poster, describing "A Starlight cruise for the young and old along the spectacular Dorset coastline with continuous bar and buffet". It was the only bout of seasickness I’ve ever had, but I wasn’t alone, and the Sands Combo, which had started the gig as a six-piece, ended up as a trio. Cruise holidays have never appealed to me since then.
 | Al Kirtley - with the
Crispin Street Quintet |
The Sands Combo line-up broke up shortly afterwards, due to a dispute over pay, and I teamed up with a fellow ex-Sands member, Nigel Street, an accomplished saxophonist, who had started a modern jazz group. I’d wanted to play jazz for several years, but never considered my technique to be up to it, but, with a bit of encouragement from Nigel, I joined what eventually became the Crispin Street Quintet. Due to a combination of my lousy technique, and the fact that most of the house pianos at our gigs didn’t work properly in the upper register, my solos didn’t exactly dominate the band, but I could lay down a half decent accompaniment, and even managed to arrange a couple of numbers. I also learned a fair selection of jazz standards, which was to stand me well a couple of decades later.
By the end of 1963, the Crispin Street Quintet had decided to turn pro and work abroad, so, true to form, I left. It was not long before a local agent, Vic Allen, approached me to join a new group that was being put together by a local businessman, Roy Simon, who evidently saw himself as the next Brian Epstein. Mike and Pete Giles, with whom I’d played in Dave Anthony and the Rebels, had already agreed to join. Though a clothing manufacturer by profession, Roy apparently had extensive show-business connections, and had "been in the Navy with David Jacobs". (It only occurred to us later how large the Royal Navy was in World War II).
Roy believed that the "Merseybeat" sound was a temporary aberration, and, as a lover of traditional jazz and big bands, decided to include a trombone in the lineup, to give the band "wider appeal". He had apparently carried out extensive market research into what the teenage girl record-buying public wanted (it later transpired that he’d asked his teenage daughters, who must have been trombone-freaks), and had discovered that the key characteristics were 1,Good looking. 2,Very tall. 3, Dark. 4, Very thin - "the lean and hungry look" (Roy had read Julius Caesar at school) 5, Personality. 6, Good musicians. We certainly qualified under item 4, and possibly 6 (Phil Collins later declared Mike Giles to be his favourite drummer). Item 2 was, however, a problem, since the trombonist, Mike Blakesley was only marginally taller than his instrument when the slide was fully extended. Undaunted, Roy doctored the market research to the effect that 26% of the "respondents" - believed to be vertically-challenged girls - did not want their heroes too tall.
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Thus was Trendsetters Ltd. born. After an avalanche of publicity, including a spot alongside Henry Mancini on Southern Television’s "Three Go Round", and four of our own shows on Radio Luxembourg, our first single, "In a Big Way", was released on 26 March 1964. For many years, I laboured under the illusion that it had made the lower (and therefore unpublished) reaches of the charts, but sadly the Guinness Book of Hit Singles doesn’t show it having reached the top seventy-five, even for one week.
(Amazingly, the two Trendsetters singles seem to have become collectors items. As at September 2003, In a Big Way was priced at $43.95 from www.musicstack.com and Move on Over at £15 from www.vinylcountdown.co.uk ). Trendsetters Limited carried on for a few years, before evolving into Giles, Giles and Fripp, and finally King Crimson, but, of course, I’d left long before then, although I do play on one of the tracks on The Brondesbury Tapes, recorded in 1967 and released in 2001.
I’d stayed close friends with the original bass-player of the Big Roll Band, Mike "Monty" Montgomery, and we decided to put together a trio, with a wide range of material, from waltzes and quicksteps to rock’n’roll and pop. Monty and I handled the vocals jointly, the theory being that each of our voices would cancel out the imperfections in the other’s - a nice theory, except that Monty sang sharp, and I was usually flat. After a shaky start, with me trying to solo frantically through quicksteps as if I were Teddy Wilson (it probably sounded more like Harold Wilson), we gradually improved, and the gigs started rolling in. A steady stream of functions supplemented a series of residencies, including a long running stint at Rockley Sands holiday camp, where we were called out on strike by the Musicians’ Union, due to our combined wages being ten shillings short of the MU rate. (The dispute lasted ten minutes before the management caved in).
 | | The Al Kirtley Three |
The trio eventually became known as "The Al Kirtley Three", and by the late 1960s, Johnny Hammond, who’d also been in the Big Roll Band, took over on drums from Roger de Souza. This line-up continued until I moved away from Bournemouth in November 1970, and gave up playing for seven years.
Washboard | Guitar | Piano | 1977 to Date
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