Remembering Kenny Ball

An affectionate and amusing story about jazz trumpeter Kenny Ball, who died last week, has been posted on Facebook.

It was written by jazz pianist Mike Hatchard. I re-post it here - with Mike's permission - because it made me laugh.

It also gives me an excuse to talk about my all too brief career as an events manager when Mike and I collaborated on a number of concerts and variety shows in London and Manchester.

I'll come to that later. First, here's what Mike had to say about his fellow musician:

Kenny Ball RIP

I only ever worked with him once, in one of the most surreal gigs of my life. I got a call from the Ronnie Scott agency saying that a surprise party was being organised for a multi-millionaire in the West Country who'd made his fortunes from sausage machinery. His son was hoping to get a guest celebrity along as part of the surprise; however, he felt that Eamonn Andrews at three grand (with a stipulation not to use the words ‘this is your life’) or Bill Maynard at four grand (and helicopter to transport him there) was a bit extreme (these sausage machine magnate heirs don’t like parting with cash) so they went with Ronnie Scott and Kenny Ball at two hundred quid a piece as the guy was allegedly a jazz fan.

Neither of them was obliged to actually play, but they would be taking their instruments. So the idea was, I was hired to accompany them IF they felt like playing; if they didn’t I’d be paid just for attending a party.

I met the unlikely pair at Paddington. Ronnie just sort of grunted, and Kenny seemed quite friendly. On the train there was a free bar. My advice, if you’re a sausage machinery magnate employing two jazz musicians as a surprise at your dad’s party is DON’T offer them a free bar. By the time we got to Swindon Ronnie Scott was on his knees. It might have given the impression to a casual observer that he was proposing marriage to Kenny Ball, only Kenny had apparently lost any awareness that he even had knees, and was quite horizontal.

At Temple Meads we were greeted by an over-friendly chappy who helped carry them into his limousine and drove us many miles to a large marquee in a field. The pair had sobered up enough to actually stand, and as we froze outside the tent on a wet afternoon Ronnie said, ‘Why don’t we play Happy Birthday for the c**t as he comes in and get the playing out of the way?’ to which Kenny agreed. I was disappointed, of course, as I was quite young at the time and keen to play with these legendary guys.

So there they were, instruments in hand, somebody announced ‘He's coming’ and the first couple of bars of Happy Birthday (that awful tune which, curiously, has a slightly redeeming Phrygian cadence at the sixth bar) were played. ‘No, not yet ...’ the same fellow said, cancelling his previous announcement, ‘now’. Again, the first few bars of Happy Birthday. Unfortunately this was again cancelled. The entire episode was repeated many times. After quarter of an hour I felt unduly familiar with the opening strains of Happy Birthday, and I wasn’t given to complaining about the level of familiarity I’d had with it before. The Phrygian cadence, which I rather pretentiously referred to earlier, hadn’t even been touched upon.

Eventually the guy actually arrived. Happy Birthday was performed in full (and the beginning was much better than the ending, which proves the merit of rehearsing) and the billionaire walked past failing to recognise either of his famous guests.

Later however, I did get to play one tune with Ronnie, an experience I treasure to this day. But the extraordinary thing was that a local trad band turned up and began to play and Kenny, much to his credit, was up on the stage like a shot. He remained there all night, playing until about two in the morning. Ronnie also joined in at one point, and the memory of his Coltrane licks over the top of an out-of-tune four-to-the-bar (or more or less four) banjo will haunt me for ever.

Years later I discovered I’d been caned at school along with Ronnie’s illegitimate son, but I’ve written about that before. The only other thing I might mention is that the birthday boy had a Rolls Royce on which the Silver Lady had been replaced by a gold sausage (the amusing pun, apparently, was ‘sausage rolls’). He was ordered by Rolls Royce to remove it (apparently they don’t have much of a sense of humour either).

Coming up: More on Mike and his alter ego Marvin Hanglider but first I'm off to Twickenham to see England-Italy (if I can find somewhere to park).

Comments

[timbone]

As this blog tends to levitate towards the smoking agends, may I mention something else about Kenny Ball. Kenny loved a fag, (for American readers, that is a cigarette). In fact, Kenny was what would be defined as a heavy smoker, so heavy in fact, that in the days before cigarettes became poison, he regularly had a burning cig lodged into the side of his trumpet whilst playing, in the recording studio and onstage. I was taking part in a muisical event at Pontins in Prestatyn in 2005. Kenny was a guest, and still enjoyed his cigs. One may be surprised to know that by this time, Kenny had emphysema, but hey, so what! Kenny died eventually of pneumonia. OK, it may be a problem if you have emphysema, but hang on, he was 82!!

Kenny had a great time. He pllayed his trumpet, he smoked his cigarettes, and he was always smiling.