Val Wilmer

Speaker 20:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:05

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were castaway to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the photographer and writer Val Wilmer. She's spent 70 years exploring the music for which she's had a lifelong passion: jazz. She's photographed and interviewed the greats, and when jazz and blues begat rock, she had a ringside seat. Muddy Waters, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and countless others were all captured in images which have featured in exhibitions in the UK and US since her first major show at the VA in 1973. She has written seminal music texts, most notably As Serious as Your Life, an exploration of the evolution of so-called free jazz and its racial and gender politics. She took her first portrait when she was a teenager. Borrowing her mother's box brownie, she turned her lens on the jazz pioneer Lewis Armstrong at London Airport. He broke into a broad smile and the image became one of her classic shots. She says, As I get older, I realise how much of what happens in our lives is actually pure luck. Val Wilmer, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you. So let's begin with luck, Val, as it is an essential component in every success story. What would you say has been your luckiest shot? My luckiest shot was the first one.

Presenter2:01

That one of Louis Armstrong at the airport. How did you know he was going to be there? My mother and I, and my brother, who was very young at the time, we'd all been to see him.

Presenter2:10

And then I read in the paper that he was leaving from what was then called London Airport. It wasn't even called Heathrow. So I said to my mother, Could we go?

Presenter2:19

And she hummed and harled, but it was I think it was half-term holiday, so she said, All right then so we went there and uh suddenly there he was. So we followed him outside and I said, Could I have your autograph? And then I said, Could I take your picture? When you were exploring the music side of things, buying records for example, where did you go? Where did you used to shop?

Presenter2:39

Well, I was very lucky because I grew up in South London in Streatham and there was a place called the Swing Shop. So when I was about 12, I think it was about 12, I walked in there and the guy looks up and he sees this little girl in sh wearing shorts and he says, yes, what do you want sort of thing? And he probably thought I wanted a pop wreck of some kind.

Presenter2:59

But I I asked if he had any jazz records. The first one I came to that I recognised the name was Humphrey Lyttelton. Fidgety Feet the record is called. It was two shillings and sixpence old money. He said, Oh, you can have it for two Bob, two shillings.

Presenter3:16

So I came home with it, and I've still got it tucked away somewhere in a cupboard. My mother said, What's that? She heard this noise. What is that? I said, That's jazz and that was it really. But what was it about jazz that you love? Why did it capture your imagination as a young girl?

Val Wilmer3:26

And that was

Presenter3:31

Well, it was the excitement, but it's also the story, because through that record shop I found out that there were one or two books that told the story of jazz. The first thing you learnt was that jazz comes from Africa.

Presenter3:47

Well, whether jazz comes from Africa is complicated, but of course it does. The force of it, the driving force of it, the whole ethos of it, the whole history is the music of enslaved black people in the Americas creating a new sound as a way of carrying their history.

Presenter4:06

Well let's get started. Disc number one.

Presenter4:08

Well, we're going to hear Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. They went into the studio one day in 1927 and they recorded Potato Head Blues.

Presenter4:19

which has really never been equalled.

Presenter5:20

Lewis Armstrong and his hot seven potato head blues. Val Wilmer, let's go back to the beginning then. You're born in 1941 in Harrogate originally to Sibyl and Eustace, the eldest of two children, but you were brought up in London. What do you remember about your early childhood? I do remember the air raid shelters which were still there.

Presenter5:40

And the bomb sites, and we used to play on the bomb sites, especially in the summertime because they were covered in buddlier and butterflies and so on. But the main thing really, I think, was that my father was very ill, so I had very few memories of him. And he died just before I was seven. So it was his second marriage, wasn't it? Because he was much older than your mum. Yeah. My father was a Victorian. He was born in 1882.

Val Wilmer5:59

Yeah.

Val Wilmer6:01

Yeah.

Presenter6:07

And he was a friend of my mother's parents. In fact, he was actually older than my mother's mother, which I always find quite amusing, only by one month, but I used to find it very amusing.

Val Wilmer6:13

Good job.

Presenter6:17

As you mentioned, he died when you were very young, the day before your seventh birthday. That's right, yes. Must have been incredibly traumatic for all of you and a huge blow for your mum, who was then left to to bring up you and your brother alone.

Speaker 26:21

That's right, yeah.

Presenter6:31

I remember coming home from school and um she was polishing the doorstep with you know this red polish we used to have Ronic.

Presenter6:39

And she just had her head her head down, I suppose, literally, and she said to me when I came home from school, she said, Darling, she said, Daddy died to day.

Presenter6:47

Just like that. I can still remember her and seeing her say it, you know. So life would never be the same as it should have been in in the s in the conventional sense, you see. But I think that she had expected that that the family would be looked after in a way that you then weren't, right? Yeah, yeah. But what exactly happened? It's complicated. It's to do with the law of intestacy and um

Val Wilmer7:02

And work, right? Yeah, yeah.

Presenter7:10

We had a house, but we had nothing else. We had a very nice house.

Presenter7:14

And we had six bedrooms, so she took in lodgers. And we used to call, you know, paying guests, which was very common in those days, people who lived with the family and ate their meals with us and so on. But the interesting thing was, our first two lodgers was a woman and a man, and the woman was from Ireland, and the man was from India. So that's how it started, which is very radical for those days. So these new influences started coming into the home. Did they bring with them music, stories, you know, a different cultural perspective?

Presenter7:48

Well, in every way.

Presenter7:50

We had s one or two weird people. Only one person ever stole from her.

Presenter7:56

And everybody else was, you know, either okay or else quite a source of wisdom and knowledge.

Presenter8:02

The thing was, because I was three years older than my brother, I was the beneficiary, the main beneficiary of all this knowledge. He learned a lot, but he didn't learn how to box and fight in the street, which is unfortunately what I learnt to do. This is not serious stuff, but it made me a bit of a rough child. But I also learned how to use tools.

Presenter8:23

Because, um, for my tenth birthday,

Presenter8:26

One of the lodgers gave me a rabbit.

Presenter8:29

And so one of the others said, Well, we've got to have a proper hutch. So we made a hutch was like three times the size of those little things you see.

Presenter8:37

Well, those woodworking skills are going to come in very handy on the island. For now, I think they'll have your second piece of music if you wouldn't mind. What's it going to be and why? Well.

Val Wilmer8:39

And they are fine.

Presenter8:46

We're going to listen to Big Bill Bruinsi, an extremely influential guitar player.

Presenter8:52

I saw him in nineteen fifty seven when I was a

Presenter8:56

about fifteen, at the Royal Festival Hall of All Places.

Presenter9:00

This is a song that when you're that age, and especially when you grow up.

Presenter9:06

Just as a a wave of migration from the Caribbean and you see black people in the streets and on the buses and sweeping the streets and you say, Who are those people? and you're told, Don't talk about them and then you hear this song.

Presenter9:22

I think it might waken you up a little bit. This is black, brown and white.

Presenter9:27

This little song that I'm singin' about

Presenter9:32

People you know is true.

Presenter9:35

If you like it.

Val Wilmer9:37

And got a worth for a living.

Val Wilmer9:39

This is what they will say to you, this is if you quiet.

Val Wilmer9:45

He's all right. If he was brown.

Val Wilmer9:48

Dig around

Presenter9:49

Yeah.

Val Wilmer9:50

But as you

Presenter9:50

Black

Presenter9:52

Mm-mm, brother.

Presenter9:55

Big Bill Brunsy and black, brown and white. So Val, it sounds like the dynamics at home were changing a lot. And along with the Lodgers Val, the paying guests, there were two other important influences on your early life, the church and the girl guides. I can imagine you enjoying woodwork and tying knots. Well, you see, the thing is, people who go to the girl guides break down into two types. There's the little girls who are sort of always girly, and there's the others who want to get out and be hikers, pioneers, and bushwomen. And I was one of those. It was exciting to me. And I still think, I was thinking about it only this morning coming here.

Presenter10:36

If you ever ask people what's the happiest you've ever been, and to me it was going off to camp, sitting round the camp fire at night, eating sausages that you've cooked yourself and singing camp fire songs together.

Presenter10:49

I mean, this sounds like you're going to get on a treat on the desert island. And what about girl guides, Val? Did you collect your badges keenly? I did, yes. But also in the girl guides I became um a cub instructor.

Presenter11:02

I went to our local church, was a very, very ancient church.

Presenter11:06

And I told my mother one day, I told her, I don't believe in God anymore, I'm not coming to church anymore.

Presenter11:12

She was very upset, but I had to go to to the ch church parade still with the wolf cubs.

Presenter11:20

The reason I liked going there was I liked the sound of the organ.

Val Wilmer11:20

The reason I like go

Presenter11:23

When they played hymns like Eternal Father Strong to Save.

Presenter11:28

The whole church, the wood, reverberated with the organ. So the feeling of that being in the middle of the music physically, feeling it, and being surrounded by it, was powerful from the beginning for it. Very powerful. And whenever I could get on stage, I did. And at one time I was with the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the Albert Hall.

Val Wilmer11:36

I'm feeling it.

Val Wilmer11:39

Browing pub

Presenter11:47

In the middle of the Duke Ellington Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra all at the same time taking photos at a rehearsal.

Presenter11:55

But the sound all around you is quite something else.

Presenter11:59

Val, it's time for your third disc. What have you gone for? Well, we're going to hear something completely different. When I left school I went to study photography. It wasn't really my intention. But I got a job in a dark room.

Presenter12:12

I used to go in the dark room every day. I think it was at about quarter eleven or something on the on the Home Service probably. I can't I can't remember. There was a classical record.

Presenter12:23

And I walked in there one day and I just automatically switched the radio on and I heard this amazing sound, and I didn't know what it was. It's Kodai's uh sonata for unaccompanied cello.

Val Wilmer12:52

Uh

Presenter12:54

Uh Uh

Val Wilmer12:54

Yeah.

Presenter13:26

Part of the first movement of Kadai's Sonata for Solocello, played by Janos Starker. Val Wilmer, when you left school after taking A levels, what were your plans? When I was at Streatham High we had um with two other girls we had a school magazine. I I think it only lasted one issue.

Presenter13:44

So I thought perhaps I'd like to be a journalist, but I didn't get much encouragement from the careers department. You know, this is a time when women were so, their lives were so circumscribed. You know, life was so limited. Every time you turn round, you were told, women don't do that, or ladies don't that, ladies don't go into pubs. Can you imagine that? I had started doing a bit of photography.

Presenter14:09

like of the sort of scout troop and things like that.

Presenter14:12

Next thing I know I'm studying photography at uh Regent Street Polytechnic.

Val Wilmer14:15

To read

Presenter14:17

And pursuing your passion for music, you photographed and got to know many leading musicians. Some of them spent time at your home and actually met your mum. Did she appreciate the calibre of artists that were coming through her front door? I think she did, gradually, yes. She met Duke Ellington a couple of times'cause I was friendly with Harry Carney, who was his right hand man, the baritone player of the band.

Presenter14:39

Well obviously she knew how important he was and um we went to Berlin together. I was taking some photographs for Melody Maker at the Berlin Jazz Festival and unfortunately on an opening night there was an al a lot of alcohol flowed freely. I got fairly inebriated and uh she got

Val Wilmer14:52

Turn.

Presenter14:58

really drunk for the first and only time in her life. And I had to pick up the pieces and next day she was bright eyed and bushy tailed and I felt I wanted to die. I I just absolutely wanted to die. And for her sake I struggled through the day knowing that I had to take photographs that night.

Val Wilmer15:09

Yeah.

Presenter15:17

And I did, and then I said, well, of course, they're having a party for Duke Ellington's, I think it's his 73rd birthday.

Presenter15:25

She's all good, you know, and I said, We're not going.

Presenter15:31

And she was so upset and so disappointed, and I had to go to this bloody party, and I walked around with a tray in front of me with about four glasses of orange juice on it. I wanted to die, and my mother and then Harry said,

Val Wilmer15:42

This is an article.

Presenter15:48

Juka said, have you seen Mrs Wilmer? And he said, No, how are how are you doing? How are you doing? And you know, two kisses on either cheek. Just amazing. So you spent a year studying photography, Val, and then you got a job working in the office of the magazine Tropic. What was your role?

Presenter16:06

I wrote a couple of articles for them and then they asked me if I'd like to go and work for them and went to work in this shabby office off Edgware Road with a bullet hole in the window. Why did it have a bullet hole in the window? It had a bullet hole in the window because the descendants of Oswald Moseley had shot it up one night.

Val Wilmer16:20

It had a book

Presenter16:27

My job was to be a receptionist, but

Presenter16:30

What it did, it was the most extraordinary thing that could ever happen to somebody, a young person like me.

Presenter16:38

I suddenly was plunged into an all-black world five days a week, and we acted as a sort of meeting place for people so that

Presenter16:48

Writers, politicians, African musicians, Caribbean musicians.

Presenter16:53

Anybody who was anybody came through that door. Val, let's have your next piece of music now. It's your fourth choice to do. What have you gone for and why are you taking this to the island? After I worked for Tropic, I was working in a dark room in Soho. And I used to wander around Soho

Presenter17:10

And I was fascinated by the front of house photography. And one of them was a famous play.

Presenter17:17

Called a raisin in the sun.

Presenter17:19

which is by Lorraine Hansbury. She was the first African American woman to have a play on Broadway. And this poem by Langston Hughes, What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Presenter17:31

What the play was named for.

Presenter17:33

Amongst all the many musician friends I'd made was a man that I became quite closely involved with, a bass player called Art Davis. I said to him, when you go back to New York, can you get me a book of Langston Hughes' poetry? So he got it for me and I fell in love with Langston Hughes in the May of 1962. I was going to New York. Before leaving, I wrote to Langston Hughes and I said, Can I come and photograph you? And he wrote back and said, sure, call me when you get there.

Presenter18:06

Langs and Hughes could not have been more wonderfully warm and welcoming.

Presenter18:11

We drank scotch on the rocks out of extremely large glasses. At the end of my meeting with Langston, we went down to the front of the building to take some photographs. There were some little boys that lived next door, and so I photographed him with them. And when I got back to London, I sent him a few copies of the photographs, and he sent me another collection of his poetry. This is The Weary Blues from a book of the same name.

Val Wilmer18:39

Droaning a drowsy, syncopated tune, Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play.

Speaker 318:49

Uh

Val Wilmer18:50

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night, By the pale dull pallor of a one-bulb light, He did a lazy sway, He did a lazy sway To the tune of those weary blues.

Speaker 318:50

Oh no, I'm not exactly.

Val Wilmer19:06

With his ebony hands on each ivory key He made that poor piano moan with melody.

Val Wilmer19:12

Oh blue.

Val Wilmer19:15

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool, He played that sad, raggy tune like a musical fool. Sweet blues.

Val Wilmer19:26

Coming from a black man's soul, Oh blues

Presenter19:32

Langston Hughes reading The Weary Blues accompanied by Red Allen's Band.

Presenter19:37

Val, I want to take you back to 1964. By that time you were working for a London-based magazine called Flamingo and they gave you an assignment to travel to West Africa for six weeks to collect stories and photos for the magazine. You've said this trip was a huge influence on you. It must have been quite an adventure. What do you remember about it when you think back? Well, I went to four countries. Gambia, which was a little tiny place.

Val Wilmer19:57

Well

Presenter20:02

There was no such thing as tourism there then.

Presenter20:05

Sierra Leone, which of course historically is a very significant place in African history.

Val Wilmer20:09

Actually

Presenter20:11

Liberia and northern Nigeria. So they're all very the places that people didn't go to in any sort of traveling sense very often.

Presenter20:20

I did all sorts of things. I had to do I did stories on

Presenter20:24

Marriage at fourteen, good or bad.

Presenter20:28

iron ore mite production and music.

Presenter20:32

And I think one of the things that influenced me most, funnily enough, I grew up in a world where you had a trade or a profession.

Presenter20:40

But there people didn't seem to do that. So you'd meet a man and he's he's got an office, but then you find out he's also an estate agent, and then you find out he runs a taxi service, and then you find out he also r runs a small aeroplane. And then people would tell me, You see those women in the market.

Presenter20:59

They c went there with pennies.

Presenter21:01

They made enough money.

Presenter21:03

to put their sons through college.

Presenter21:06

And it was true there had been people who had bought a couple of pigs' feet.

Presenter21:10

Take them home, cook them, sell them in the market.

Presenter21:13

The next day they buy four pigs feet, next day they buy a dozen.

Presenter21:18

And they end up being able to educate their children and not only that, send them to university overseas.

Presenter21:26

I had never dreamed such a thing was possible. I'd been brought up to think that we were in advance of um the third world as it was known in those days, you know, that we were we were so progressive. And I found out we weren't.

Presenter21:38

We weren't progressive at all. We'll be just different.

Presenter21:41

Val, it's time for your fifth disc, if you wouldn't mind. What have you chosen? In, um Freetown, in Surleyome, I met a man called SE Rogers, known as Rogy.

Presenter21:52

And he put out a a record on his own record label.

Presenter21:56

It's a song about his best friend stealing his girlfriend away. It's a very sad song, it's a very beautiful song, and it was.

Presenter22:04

one of the most s popular records of that of that age in West Africa.

Presenter22:10

And it shows the influence of singers like Jim Reeves, which people are not expecting to hear in West Africa. There's quite a big country in Western Seen out there in Europe. Exactly. So here we can hear Rogi now singing My Lovely Elizabeth.

Val Wilmer22:16

In West Africa.

Val Wilmer22:19

Exactly, yes.

Val Wilmer22:24

Lovely

Val Wilmer22:26

My lovely Elizabeth

Presenter22:28

Yeah.

Presenter22:35

Uh

Val Wilmer22:36

Hi, I'm Deep Levi.

Presenter22:36

Worried at heart? Uh

Val Wilmer22:43

I say I am deeply worried at heart.

Val Wilmer22:48

Uh

Presenter22:48

Cause the girl I love so well My friend has emerged from me Now I scarcely know what to do

Presenter22:57

S. E. Rogers and My Lovely Elizabeth.

Presenter23:00

You traveled all over the US during the sixties and into the seventies, Val, listening to jazz, recording interviews with artists, and that time was pivotal for the civil rights movement. Were you conscious of a need to chronicle what was happening in your music writing? I wanted to go to the South and

Presenter23:16

hear people singing the blues in the rural situation and I wanted to go to churches and I wanted to go to New Orleans. But uh because of slavery and the whole history, the South was not a jolly place to be.

Presenter23:30

I've met a lot of people who've envied me my experiences, but there was a a price to be paid. You needed to be eternally vigilant yourself.

Presenter23:41

And also to meet a lot of people.

Presenter23:44

who were not necessarily that happy to meet you.

Presenter23:47

Their lives have been so blighted by racism

Presenter23:51

It could be quite overwhelming.

Presenter23:53

So I learnt what an innocent in the world I was, even at the age of 31, or whatever it was. Well, you see, what's happening in the world today, and what's happening in the United States today, it hasn't gone away. Racism is still a fact of everyday life. And W.E.B. Du Bois said it at the beginning of the 20th century. He said the problem of the 20th century is the colour line. He said that in the souls of black folk. And it really hasn't changed. I mean, obviously, it's improved in many ways. People aren't being lynched every day and so on.

Presenter24:28

It's not a happy place to be in. You know, we all grew up thinking that, you know, names can never hurt me, but it's not true. Words can hurt people. They hurt people for the whole of the whole of their lives. They hurt people for centuries.

Presenter24:42

Val, some of your books are regarded as classics, jazz people and as serious as your life. And whilst many people were happy to be interviewed, not all musicians were compliant. I know that Miles Davis was tricky and The Lonius Monk was quite hard to pin down. How did you succeed in the end?

Presenter24:58

Well

Presenter24:59

Monkey's not a

Presenter25:01

And very articulate person. He's a person who goes a week without speaking. I had a friend, John Hopkins, who was a photographer.

Presenter25:09

Hobby said, Listen, man, he said, We should Monk's coming to town, we should go and interview him, and we'll sell the story to Playboy. We went to a rehearsal that he was doing for a B a T B B C television programme.

Presenter25:22

I went up to him and said, excuse me, Mr. Monk, could we come and interview you? He said, yeah, come tomorrow afternoon at four, whatever it was. I said, okay, so Hoppy and I got together, we met, they were staying at the Hilton, and Monk was just about to have some sandwiches. He's had sent down to room service, and so he was very monosyllabic, you know, everything was, yeah, meh.

Presenter25:44

After a while we started to ask him

Presenter25:47

questions got him slightly riled and Hoppy asked him something, I think, that was quite political. And he got really mad and he shouted at us and he got up and he paced up and down and

Presenter25:58

And he started to speak, and it made quite a sensation amongst the musicians, because nobody ever heard him talk that much before.

Presenter26:07

And that brings us to disc number six. We're going to have crisscross Bartholomew's Monk. This is a record I learned to dance to with a Nigerian boyfriend of mine.

Presenter26:19

They said we couldn't dance this kind of music, but he showed me how.

Speaker 326:22

Right, what's the key?

Presenter26:23

Uh

Presenter26:24

Just go for it.

Presenter27:25

Delonious Monk and Chris Cross.

Presenter27:29

Val, in the late seventies you broadened your horizons. You became involved in the feminist movement and worked with Spare Rib magazine and numerous other collectives at the leading edge of what was becoming that new wave of feminism. What did it feel like to be part of that? The thing is that people of my born about the time that I was born those of us who had survived

Presenter27:49

despite all the rigours of of the female existence. When we heard about this um new wave feminism coming along, the truth is it probably was slightly daunting. We reckon that we'd done pretty well without it, but

Presenter28:04

Gradually the siren cry of the women's movement became too strong.

Presenter28:09

People were organizing about many things that would improve women's lot and it was very, very attractive. All sorts of things like trade union magazines and news magazines were changing.

Presenter28:23

And we helped to change them in their coverage. And eventually, together with Maggie Murray, who's someone I've been at college with, we started an agency called Format, Format Women Photographers. And that was the first of its kind. That hadn't been an all-female photographic agency. So this is 1983. Yeah.

Val Wilmer28:37

Yeah.

Val Wilmer28:38

That's it.

Val Wilmer28:40

Photographing

Speaker 228:41

So this is not

Presenter28:43

There was a focus right from the beginning, I think, with changing the ideas of representation in the industry. How did that work, and what did the agency achieve?

Speaker 228:48

In the industry.

Presenter28:53

We we like to change people's minds about things. So if they they asked for a photograph of somebody in a particular trade or occupation, they'd expect a photograph of a man. So this is a newspaper.

Val Wilmer29:02

This is a newspaper getting in touch.

Val Wilmer29:07

Or

Presenter29:09

It was send a woman banker.

Presenter29:11

And at the same time when they expected that we'd send a picture of a white person, we'd send a picture of someone of colour doing the same job. Your photography skills were called on, you know, as someone represented by the agency, when you would go on demos, I mean, reclaim the night marches, you were often shooting what was happening and doing that kind of reportage photography. Was it ever dangerous work?

Val Wilmer29:27

Is he were off

Presenter29:34

I got punched by a policeman once.

Presenter29:37

He didn't realize I was a woman.

Presenter29:39

The worst thing that happened was on the the nineteen seventy seven march of the National Front through Lewisham, protected by the police. And I was taking pictures and I got hit over the head by a dustbin lid by the um someone in the SWP who came and apologised for throwing it.

Val Wilmer29:55

Okay.

Presenter29:58

But um if anybody asks you what it's like seeing stars, I can testify yes, you do.

Presenter30:05

Val, I think we better have some more music. Your seventh choice, what have you gone for and why? Well I spent a lot of the 70s and 80s listening to a lot of free jazz and that's when I wrote my book As Serious As Your Life. This is a sort of typical thing, Julius Hempel, outer sex player, Abdulwadon cello and they've named it after famous people of the Malian cliffs, cliff-dwelling people, the Dogon, and they've called it Dogon AD.

Presenter30:42

Mm-hmm.

Presenter30:58

The Julius Hempel trio Dogon A. D.

Presenter31:01

Val Wilmer, so many of the photos that you've taken over the years have become definitive. You know, they they've actually gone on to shape how we think about the artists that you were capturing and their aesthetic, you know, their attitude. John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong.

Presenter31:18

Did you have any idea at the time that those moments were special? Well, you do sometimes. Yes, definitely. It's like anything in in any creative

Presenter31:28

feel, the harder you try, the more obvious it'll be. And some of my favorite photographs are ones I took fairly early on, so I wasn't trying to make sure that I got everything right.

Presenter31:41

So I photographed um a pianist called Freddie Red, an American pianist, and um

Presenter31:46

It was only years later I was looking at the negatives and I realized I'd never printed these particular negatives, so I started to print this this neg, and I it was just a simple picture of him sitting by with a cigarette by the dressing room mirror.

Presenter32:00

But everything was right about it, the quality, the sort of feeling of it, where you when you know when you those photographs where you feel you can reach in and touch the person. But I've got this picture of Freddie Redd, I've got it framed, a very nice frame in the hall. And every time I walk by I think, hello Freddie, how's it going?

Presenter32:17

But really I'm saying hello Val, how's it going? Well yeah that's it. Val, you know people often when they're talking about you they often remark on how lightly you wear your achievements and your status and I wonder about that and I wonder whether that's an intrinsic part of you or whether that's an attitude that's developed over years of hanging out with musicians who just you know play it cool. Well not all musicians play it cool. Some are arrogant as we know.

Presenter32:46

I was a shy person. I still am. It's ridiculous to be this age and to call yourself shy. You have to be able to handle yourself and the world. But I was shy and I think that was part of it really. And to be sensitive, you know, to others. And it all goes back to all those days in the church and the girl guides and discovering jazz and going to Africa. That's where it all starts, how you form yourself. And you see arrogant people, like people who play their own records all the time. You think, oh, I don't want to be like that. I don't spend all my time looking at my photographs. And Juke Ellington, somebody said to him, What's your favourite tune? He looked at them like

Presenter33:24

Yeah, he said, oh he said the next one he said the new baby is always the favourite.

Presenter33:30

And I think there's a lot in that.

Speaker 233:30

Yeah.

Presenter33:31

It's almost time to cast you away, Val. What will you miss the most, do you think? People.

Presenter33:36

I have to see people nearly every day, although I do spend a lot of time on my own. I live on my own.

Presenter33:42

But um if I don't see people every day I I feel strange. What about survival skills? We heard about your woodworking and your boxing. Sounds like you can handle yourself. I don't know about boxing. I'm not that's going to get me very far, but um there's a resilience there. There's a kind of resilience. Well yes. All right. Well we'll let you have one more disc before we send you to your desert island, Val Wilmer. What's your last choice going to be?

Val Wilmer33:49

Boxing

Val Wilmer33:56

And this kind of thing.

Presenter34:03

Well, it it probably will surprise some people who think of me as an old jazzer, but um

Presenter34:09

This is a record that sums up being in the women's movement for me.

Presenter34:13

It was the record that everybody played, just as in the jazz world everybody had Miles' kind of blue. They had this one.

Presenter34:19

And it also, it somehow reminds me of myself. And it's Joan Armour Trading, Love and Affection.

Speaker 234:23

I'm gonna go.

Presenter34:26

Really?

Presenter34:28

William

Presenter34:29

Now we fucking f

Presenter34:32

To the sun

Presenter34:34

My eyes and the rain are my face

Presenter34:38

Yeah.

Speaker 234:38

Why can I

Presenter34:40

Uh

Speaker 234:40

Uh

Speaker 234:54

In the

Presenter34:56

Joan Armour Trading, love and affection. So, Val Wilmer, the time has come. I'm casting you away to the island with, as you know, three books, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and a book of your choice. What would you like? Can I take Langson Hughes with me, his collected poetry? Oh, absolutely. Did he sign it before he sent it to you?

Val Wilmer35:09

Can I take

Presenter35:15

Yes, she did. What did Langston Hughes write in your book?

Presenter35:18

In one of the books he gave me he wrote Inscribed Especially for Valerie Wilmer,

Presenter35:25

With a hearty welcome to our USA.

Presenter35:28

Langston Hughes, NYC, May 1st, 1962. It's yours. You can also have a luxury item, something that will make your time on the island more enjoyable. What would you like? I'm afraid it breaks the rules in terms of useful things, but it's very, very small. Talk me with that. Nail scissors.

Val Wilmer35:44

Well

Val Wilmer35:47

We need to go.

Presenter35:49

Oh, wow.

Val Wilmer35:49

Right.

Presenter35:54

Okay. Well, I mean, we've we've allowed these personal grooming items previously because there's a sort of aesthetic impetus there that isn't strictly practical.

Val Wilmer35:59

Because

Presenter36:03

And finally, this is the most difficult question for you, I think, Val. Which of these eight discs would you rush to save from the waves?

Presenter36:11

This is terrible. But I think I'll take the monk with me. Thelonious Monk, Christmas. Why?

Speaker 336:15

Chris House.

Presenter36:17

Just sums up the kind of music that I like, and Monk is just one of my all-time favourites. Perfect.

Presenter36:24

Val Wilmer, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much, Lauren.

Presenter36:51

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Val. I don't dare ask what she's getting up to on the island with those nail scissors though. There are many more castaways in the Desert Island Discs archive, including photographers Eve Arnold, Van Lee Burke and Martin Parr, as well as jazz artists like the very man Val snapped at the airport all those years ago, Lewis Armstrong himself. Search for Desert Island Discs on BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Jackie Marjoram. The assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producers were Sarah Taylor and Tim Banno. The series editor is John Gowdy. Next time my guest will be the actor Killian Murphy. Do join me then.

Speaker 337:46

The Post Office Horizons scandal has shocked Britain.

Val Wilmer37:51

He hasn't it over the last

Speaker 238:02

It was just horrendous. The whole thing was horrendous.

Speaker 338:06

I was told you can't afford to take on post office. And about their extraordinary fight for justice. What was motivating you? Well, it was wrong what they did. Listen to the true story at firsthand from the people who lived it in the great post office trial from BBC Radio 4 with me, Nick Wallace. Subscribe on BBC Sounds.