When my mother took me on the train to Dorset's Wareham and my new abode away from London, in 1947,. I remember my mother pointing out the Queen Mary docked in Southampton as we sped through the countryside on a steam train. Years later, in 1963, I was playing in the orchestra that entertained the first class passengers en route to New York, and my first view of skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty. I only took the gig so that I could listen to American jazz musicians in Greenwich Village during the overnight stopover at Pier 92. I was not disappointed because in 1966-7, I and a band of musicians went aboard the old Queen Elizabeth based in New York, doing cruises and spending the winter cruising the Caribbean and Mediterranean, thus avoiding the winter in England.
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In 1963, I was working a night club in the West End, when a bass player the pianist knew wanted a trip off from the South Hampton to New York run on the Queen Mary, so we swapped jobs for one trip. I took two basses with me on the ship: one to play in the First Class orchestra, and the other to sell in New York because string instruments sold at a tidy mark up in America if they're older than 100 years. With the proceeds I bought a Fender Precision Bass guitar and Fender Bassman amp, which I smuggled off when we arrived back in England. I was ecstatic to listen first hand to my jazz idols playing in Greenwich Village and at the Village Vanguard.
In 1964, I went to the island of Jersey to work at the West Park Pavilion (now extinct) with Ronny Rand and the Blue Rockets. I stayed for two years, the second of which was with a quintet of jazz lovers who were later contracted by London's Geraldo agency to play on the Queen Elizabeth doing cruises out of New York for six months. The most interesting of these cruises was one entire month in the Mediterranean which commenced with our first stop in Gibraltar, then across to Tangier, and back again to Barcelona, Greece, Egypt, Italy, Israel, Lebanon, the French Riviera, etc. The ship for this cruise was "all one class."
After that, we reverted to weekly cruises down into the Caribbean and South America. Martin Blackwell, our pianist, became famous in London in later years as resident pianist at Ronnie Scott's jazz club in Frith Street, Soho. Roy, the drummer is dead, Jack Duff, tenor, from Scotland, dead. Stewart, trumpet, dead. We did 6 months on the "Lizzy" and then split up. I took a gig in the orchestra pit at Clacton on Sea on Fender bass (an instrument for which I never developed a great fondness, but the market was moving in that direction). However, my two years on the island of Jersey were most satisfying because I bought a 14 foot boat and was able to pursue my hobby of fishing, albeit salt water angling. My investigations of Jersey have more recently revealed that the entire music scene has changed for the worst since my day.
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I put together a quartet of organ, bass, drums, and alto sax with an emphasis on vocals . We made three trips to Sydney, Australia on P&O liners during the winter months of three consecutive years, but I can't remember the precise dates. One time we went via South Africa's Cape Town, and the other two trips from Southampton to Florida to the West Coast via the Panama Canal. Up the West Coast to Vancouver and across the Pacific to Honolulu to New Zealand and on to Sydney for three days in port. The return journey was a slow plod up the Barrier Reef to Darwin to Singapore to Kobe in Japan and back to Honolulu and down the West Coast the way we'd previously traveled. We'd set sail before the onset of winter and returned in the spring when the golf courses were playable.
Then there was a four month stint on a Cunard cruise ship called the Adventurer based in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. We sailed every Saturday night at midnight and returned early Friday morning having visited the same ports every week. Most of the passengers were Americans who'd flown down from Chicago and East Coast towns. I needed to go to the American embassy for a visa to pass through New York en route to San Juan to join the ship. Nigel Nash from Stroud was in the band on alto. The band was led by a trumpet player and had two saxes and a trombone. There was a different cabaret act every other night. I was on the Fender bass adjacent to a grand piano of dubious quality. It was the experience of this trip that prompted me during the "As You Like It" rehearsals to tell Diane Shumlin that she'd better get her act together and have our passports processed by the American Embassy in London! PRONTO!
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The Queens were later used as troop carriers when America entered WWII. A bartender on the Mary told me that she had cut a ship in half during a transatlantic voyage full of US soldiers. The culprit had tried to cut across the Mary's bow but misjudged her speed. Then Mary, apparently, would not stop because of German U boats, which she could outrun. I went aboard the Mary many years ago in Long Beach, but they'd changed the ship around so significantly that almost the only thing I could remember was the Observation Bar and the Bridge. The P&O boats had 240 volts AC current wired to the bandstands and stages on their ships, but the Cunard boats required the use of a transformer for the amplifier for my string bass. Fender bass not used on the Lizzy and since I'd previously smuggled it ashore at Southampton, it was fortunately not required during cruises on the Lizzy: it was more like cocktail music.
The Fender worked well with the P&O lines band because we played a great deal of rock music to keep them dancing, although I'd told the staff Captain that the more they dance the less they drink, which affects the tips of the stewards plus the revenues at the bar. He wisely agreed. He signed the overtime sheets with scarcely ever a glance at them.
I once referred to my seagoing days as the "halcyon years," but nobody understood what I was talking about. Perhaps I can persuade myself to drag out the color slides and relive my earlier life amid what Shakespeare's calls "the tumbling billows of the main."