Ronnie Scott

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy six, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway this week has probably done as much for the cause of jazz as anyone in this country ever has. It's Ronnie Scott.

Presenter0:38

Now, Ronny, this desert island would mean a change of pace for you. You would have to get up.

Ronnie Scott0:42

Early in the morning. Yeah, one of the reasons that I became a musician was because I hated to get up early in the morning.

Presenter0:47

What time do you get up, Nadis?

Ronnie Scott0:49

Or the crack of 2.30pm as a general rule.

Presenter0:54

How well could you endure loneliness?

Ronnie Scott0:57

I think I could take it for uh for a couple or three months, perhaps. I think after that I'd start gibbering a little.

Presenter1:05

What would you be happiest to have got away from?

Ronnie Scott1:08

You know, there isn't much that I I'd I'd be uh really mad about getting away from. But, you know, people talk about they'd be happy to get away from the hustle and bustle of of uh of city life and well, I quite like it and they say they'd like to get away from the telephone. And I like, you know, having a telephone. I think it's marvelous. It's the bills, the telephone bills I'd like to

Presenter1:26

Yeah, that's different.

Presenter1:27

What do you want music to do for you on your island? To recall the past, to give you great performances?

Ronnie Scott1:35

In the main, just good performances of pieces of music that I like. I mean, some of the pieces would bring back memories, but in general, they would just be good performances of good tunes.

Presenter1:46

What's the first disc?

Ronnie Scott1:46

The first one is a tune I like very much by Burt Bacharat called The Look of Love and it's played by Stan Goetz who's one of my favourite tenor saxophone players and he was one of my very early influences and he really is a magical saxophone player.

Presenter2:28

Stan Gertz playing the Bert Bacherach tune The Look of Love. What's your second disc?

Ronnie Scott2:34

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing they call me Mimi from La Boheim and I'm a sucker for Italian opera, you know, in particular Puccini. He wrote such wonderful melodies and there's something about the juxtaposition of a voice like Elizabeth Schwarzkopf's and an orchestra of this quality that I find very, very moving.

Speaker 23:33

We bring your son.

Presenter3:48

Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, they call me Mimi.

Presenter3:51

Ronnie, you're a Londoner, aren't you? Yes, yes.

Ronnie Scott3:53

Born and bred, East London, Cockney, well within the sound of Bowbell.

Presenter3:53

It's done.

Ronnie Scott3:57

Musical family? Uh well my father was a saxophone player. He uh played with such bands as Jack Hilton and then he led his own group.

Ronnie Scott4:06

our groups for for a while. He was, you know, commercial saxophone player, hotels and things.

Presenter4:12

When did you start your musical study?

Ronnie Scott4:15

Uh I think when I was about fourteen I first got interested uh in in music uh

Ronnie Scott4:22

Through the cinema I think I saw films with Mickey Rooney where he was a a drummer and the Glen Miller Orchestra in uh in the f the various films they made and that kind of turned me on to wanting to play in a band. What was your first instrument?

Ronnie Scott4:36

First instrument ever was a a cornet, which I bought secondhand for five baht from a secondhand shop that I used to pass on the way to school.

Ronnie Scott4:45

That didn't work out very well, and then I got a soprano saxophone.

Ronnie Scott4:49

which had various pads missing, which I knew nothing about at the time, and I found that awfully difficult to play.

Ronnie Scott4:55

And eventually my parents bought me a tennis accident and I took lessons. In fact, I took lessons from

Speaker 14:58

Yeah.

Ronnie Scott5:00

somebody called Jack Lewis who who was Viralyn's father-in-law which is really my real claim to fame I think. What was your first job? The very first things I I did were in the East End of London with a a group of kids around my own age and we used to read stock printed arrangements and play for sundry bumitzvas and things like that. But the the first West End engagement I had was at a a club called the

Presenter5:24

But

Ronnie Scott5:28

The Jamboree, which was um a nightclub and they

Ronnie Scott5:33

Needed a tennis axophone player to work for three weeks because the original tennis axophone player in the band was leaving and the replacement couldn't start for three weeks. So the leader of the band asked me if I'd like to do it. And I could hardly play at all. I told him this and he said, well, you don't have to. I'm contracted to present seven musicians and I've only got six at the moment, so all you've got to do is sit there. And that's what I did for three weeks. You just mimed. Yeah, in fact.

Presenter5:54

Yeah.

Ronnie Scott5:56

But they used to get all sorts of good musicians coming down to sit in with the band, so it was really a marvellous experience.

Presenter5:56

But neither

Presenter6:03

And after that?

Ronnie Scott6:04

After that I went on the road with the band called Johnny Clay's. The Clay Pigeons. The Clay Visions, right. Johnny was a trumpet player in the kind of Roy Eldridge style and the band was really very good, quite ahead of its time. And Johnny had a great influence on me, I think.

Presenter6:19

Yes.

Ronnie Scott6:20

From there I think I went with Tito Burns. That's where we first went to the right.

Presenter6:24

That's where we first met in a radio series with the unlikely title of The Accordion Club with the band of Tito Burns, who is now the tycoon of the same name.

Ronnie Scott6:35

That's right, yes.

Ronnie Scott6:38

And then you were with Ted Heath for a while. Yes, I went with Ted Heath. Uh I lasted about six months with Ted Heath. That was a marvellous time actually because Ted's man was really like um

Ronnie Scott6:48

Like the Beatles were in their day. It was really a very glamorous affair and attracted thousands of people and I was

Ronnie Scott6:56

the kind of youngest guy in the band and it was a marvellous experience.

Presenter6:59

It was great

Ronnie Scott7:00

Musicianship in those bands. Oh yeah. And great discipline too. Yeah, but uh that's probably why only lasted six months. I got fired from the band after about six months. When did you form your own first band? That was around 1954, 55 when there were there suddenly seemed to become available a group of guys that I admired very much. And we got together and formed a nine-piece band that was really a great deal of fun. It lasted two or three years. Then you tried a big band? Yeah, that was a little disastrous insofar as there was a fantastic clash of temperaments. I thought that the to have the best big band in the country you had to have the best

Ronnie Scott7:44

And the biggest name musicians, and it didn't quite work that way.

Presenter7:48

Let's break at this point for your third record. What's that to be?

Ronnie Scott7:52

Uh this is a record by a guy called Joe Henderson, not Joe Piano Henderson, I hasten to add. This guy is a a marvellous uh tennis axophone player. I particularly like the kind of freedom that that he has um in his improvisation, which seems to be uh

Ronnie Scott8:08

uh the way jazz is moving and the whole thing is to me a beautiful example of contemporary music.

Speaker 28:52

Ah

Presenter9:13

Invitation by the Joe Henderson Quartet. Now Ronny, you were one of the best tennis axe players in the country. You were winning all the polls. You were doing all right. Why did you decide to open a jazz club?

Ronnie Scott9:25

Well, I'd always felt that the jazz clubs, such as they were in those days, really catered to kids who wanted to come down and dance. And I thought it would be nice if there was a place where the music was primary and there wasn't any dancing. I'd been particularly impressed on my first visit to New York by visiting 52nd Street, where there were 12 or 14 jazz clubs within two or three hundred yards of each other. The first one I went to was called The Three Deuces, and that I think really was the basis of the club we opened finally in Gerrard Street in 1959.

Presenter9:59

But

Ronnie Scott10:00

Ronnie's Got Club.

Presenter10:01

Yes. Live jazz seven nights a week.

Ronnie Scott10:04

More or less live, yes. We uh had no liquor licence at the time, it was really just a cafe with with uh local musicians playing.

Presenter10:12

There's

Ronnie Scott10:12

Did they come in?

Ronnie Scott10:14

Uh no, it was very difficult, very difficult to make ends meet and uh we tried uh all sorts of ways to make it pay. First of all, we got a a a a liquor license, we could we were able to sell alcohol, which helped a little.

Ronnie Scott10:27

But then, you know, local musicians this applies I think to every country in the world local musicians are taken for granted and uh we found that it

Ronnie Scott10:36

If we were going to stay open, we'd have to import foreign musicians, Americans in particular.

Presenter10:40

Yes. And in those days, of course, there were a lot of union restrictions about American musicians playing in this country.

Ronnie Scott10:43

There's a very confusing.

Ronnie Scott10:45

Yeah, but we got a deal going with the British Musicians Union and the American Federation of Musicians whereby if we brought an American musician over to work at our place, then uh uh a British musician would have to go to America and work uh in exchange.

Presenter11:01

Yes, and you were able to bring in the big names? Yes, we were. Now you had premises in in Gerrard Street, uh the back room downstairs, pretty small, all pretty claustrophobic. Yeah, but a

Ronnie Scott11:11

Marvelous atmosphere. You know, it really was. It only it only held about a hundred people, a hundred and twenty people packed and um it was a basement and uh it was thick with smoke and the atmosphere was really fantastic.

Presenter11:25

Oh, you stayed there for what, seven years ago? What were the big moments of Gerrold Street, looking back?

Ronnie Scott11:27

Two of the seven.

Ronnie Scott11:31

Well, I suppose, um, the first uh American musician that we had working there, which was Zuch Sims, a fantastic player, and uh he was there for four weeks. And it was the first time

Speaker 111:39

Who's that?

Ronnie Scott11:44

For a very long time the people had been able to hear.

Ronnie Scott11:48

a musician of this caliber working nightly in a club for a three or four week period.

Ronnie Scott11:55

And it was really a revelation.

Presenter11:57

Let's have record number four.

Ronnie Scott11:59

I love the music of Ravel and this is a piece that I was introduced to uh when I was very young, sixteen or seventeen, and it's always uh remained one of my favourite pieces of music. I'd love to have this with me. It's Daphnis and Chloe, suite number two.

Presenter13:14

Daybreak from Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe suite, number two. Now, nineteen sixty seven, from that basement back room in Gerrard Street to three stories in Frith Street. This was a big investment. This was taking a big chance, wasn't it?

Ronnie Scott13:28

Yeah, not for us so much, because we didn't have any capital. Anyway, we borrowed the money, which we're still paying back, and which we'll probably be paying back forever.

Presenter13:35

No.

Presenter13:36

Jazz, real jazz, is is a minority interest in this country. You you've had to broaden out, of course.

Ronnie Scott13:42

Yes, um well I think that the scene in general has broadened out. The the dividing lines between what is jazz and what isn't jazz have become very blurred and vague and a lot of things we use at the club are

Ronnie Scott13:54

perhaps jazz uh based or have a a jazz tinge to them. We're prepared to compromise uh uh as long as we can present uh a a jazz artist at some time during the course of the evening.

Presenter14:07

Yes. Now you've had John Williams, the classical guitarist. When he's played in your club, has he played jazz or has he?

Ronnie Scott14:12

Oh yeah.

Ronnie Scott14:14

No, no, he just plays his usual classical concert thing and it it works marvellously. People sit very quietly and uh he's worked there three or four times and it's it's always been uh a marvellous experience, certainly for me, because I love the Spanish guitar.

Presenter14:28

How much do you play yourself, Nadis?

Ronnie Scott14:30

Oh, as much as I ever did. F more, probably. I work with a with a quartet and uh we work in the club and uh we do tours uh abroad and in England.

Ronnie Scott14:40

So I'm playing as much now as I ever do.

Presenter14:42

At one activity we haven't mentioned Ronnie Scott the comedian.

Ronnie Scott14:46

Mm. Uh

Presenter14:46

Yeah.

Ronnie Scott14:46

The

Presenter14:46

Yeah.

Ronnie Scott14:47

Well, you know, right, if you've got somebody there who people think of as a jazz legend, the atmosphere can tend to to get a little solemn and people can tend to be a little overawed.

Ronnie Scott14:58

By the thing. So it's nice to go on and and burst a few balloons and and kind of try and

Presenter15:01

Yeah.

Ronnie Scott15:03

Where did you get those gags?

Ronnie Scott15:05

Oh, you pick them up on the way. You can't you can't travel uh on tour with musicians half your life and not pick up some kind of routine.

Speaker 115:06

You

Presenter15:13

Right, record number five.

Ronnie Scott15:14

Uh

Ronnie Scott15:15

Uh yes, this is um this is of an alto saxophone player called Charles McPherson, who plays very much in the Charlie Parker tradition. I you know, when I chose the records

Ronnie Scott15:25

I left out anything by Charlie Parker or Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins because I think it's impossible to, first of all, to find a definitive kind of record that they've made. And also one hears their influence in most jazz musicians anyway. And this is a record by a guy who's very much influenced by Charlie Parker and yet he's his own man and I heard him recently in New York and he sounded beautiful. It's really the kind of playing that I enjoy very much. It's Charles McPherson's quartet playing Stranger in Paradise.

Presenter17:01

Charles McPherson, stranger in paradise. Let's go straight into disc number six we've got to now.

Ronnie Scott17:08

Yeah, well in this one I've killed three birds with one stone because um it features Duke Ellington at the piano accompanying John Coltrane who's one of the the great jazz musicians and they're playing one of Duke's tunes. I think the sound that John Coltrane gets on the tennis axon is one of the most beautiful things in jazz music and I think this is a a very good example. It's in a sentimental mood.

Presenter18:36

John Caltrane with Duke Ellington in a sentimental mood. Now, Ronnie, you've uh admitted to us you get up at two thirty PM. How do you spend your afternoon?

Ronnie Scott18:46

Well, it takes me three or four hours to wake up, right? To distinguish shapes and colours and things.

Presenter18:52

Yet

Ronnie Scott18:52

And then I

Ronnie Scott18:54

I go into the club. There's always something to do in the afternoon. You don't do anything useful like woodwork. What?

Presenter19:00

What I'm getting at is how good are you going to be a as a castaway? Oh, not very good, I don't think right now. Putting up the shelter, for example.

Ronnie Scott19:04

Putting up

Presenter19:07

I don't know. I think I die very Very quickly. Oh, no, come, come. What about food? Done any gardening? No. Fishing.

Ronnie Scott19:14

Fish

Presenter19:14

Bing.

Ronnie Scott19:15

No, I think all I could do would be to get a sharp stick, and kind of when the tide goes out, go to the little pools and try and

Ronnie Scott19:24

Stab a fish.

Presenter19:25

Let's get on to record number seven.

Ronnie Scott19:28

Yeah, we were talking about John Williams playing at the club and

Ronnie Scott19:33

When he was last there, I was so knocked out by his playing that I went out and bought a Spanish guitar because I I was determined that I was going to play one simple piece on the Spanish guitar before I died, you know, and I went

Ronnie Scott19:47

and took lessons. I took six lessons from a very charming, a very talented uh guitarist.

Ronnie Scott19:53

And I think it was the sixth lesson when he said something to me about do I have a a trade that I could fall back on. And so I we kind of looked at each other and I never went back. I still have the guitar at home, but I I just look at it.

Presenter20:05

Yeah.

Presenter20:08

So

Ronnie Scott20:09

Yeah, they are, they are. And then you can hear John Williams make such wonderful music. This piece in particular was a favorite of mine when he worked at the club. It's called Schezino Mexicano by a gentleman called Manuel Ponce.

Presenter20:09

Oh they are.

Presenter20:11

The end.

Presenter21:14

John Williams playing Scherzino Mexicano

Presenter21:17

And what's your last disc?

Ronnie Scott21:19

The last one is is Billie Holliday, who uh is one of the very few singers that I can in jazz music that I can listen to. She's one of those ladies that uh that are very rare. She means every word she sings.

Ronnie Scott21:34

And I think this is one of the best records she made. It was towards the end of her life, the tune was called For All We Know.

Speaker 221:47

This may only be a dream.

Speaker 221:56

Wink

Speaker 221:58

And go,

Speaker 222:01

Like a ripple on a stream

Presenter22:08

Billy Holiday

Presenter22:10

Ronnie, if you could take just one disk out of that eight, which would it be?

Presenter22:15

Yeah.

Ronnie Scott22:15

I suppose it would have to be Daphnis and Chloe. I think that would give me the most lasting kind of satisfaction.

Presenter22:21

and one luxury to take with you on the island.

Ronnie Scott22:25

Yes, I thought about this. Could I have a life-size rubber inflatable Faye Dunaway doll?

Presenter22:32

If such a thing is managed It will be They dispatched.

Ronnie Scott22:35

Good. And and how about the saxophone? Can I take the saxophone as well?

Presenter22:38

No.

Ronnie Scott22:39

No, one or the other. One or the other. What a heart-rending decision.

Ronnie Scott22:44

I'll listen, well I'll take the saxophone.

Presenter22:45

and one book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, and big encyclopedias.

Ronnie Scott22:51

Yeah.

Ronnie Scott22:51

Is there a book called Ten Foolproof and Infallible Ways of Escaping from a Desert Island?

Presenter22:57

If there is, it hasn't been brought to my notice.

Ronnie Scott23:00

The pissy.

Ronnie Scott23:01

In that case, I'll take Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham.

Presenter23:05

Right. And thank you, Ronnie Scott, for letting us hear your Desert Island disc. Thank you, Roy. My pleasure. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 123:20

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4.