JIM Simpson has been involved in music most of his life. He bought his first record when he was nine, formed a jazz record club at school when he was 14, and started teaching himself trumpet. He formed his own band while serving in the RAF in Gibraltar.
Back in Birmingham, in the early 1960s, working as a photographer and moonlighting as a musician, he was leading his own band by 1964, soon quitting the day job and supplementing his income as a musician by freelancing as a photographer. During that time, he photographed many of the visiting American blues and jazz players. These pictures are now regarded as a priceless record of a pivotal period in the development of the music in Britain.
In 1968 he set up Big Bear Records, now the longest-standing UK independent recording company and also opened his Henry’s Blueshouse, every Tuesday at The Crown on Station Street. Here he discovered Aston band Earth, changed their name to Black Sabbath, and steered them to two hit albums. On July 5, the band will play their final show with the original line-up at Villa Park, Birmingham.
Below is an article that first appeared on Showtime! with John Phillpott last year. It charts the rise of the 1960s 'beat boom' in Birmingham, and provides a fascinating insight into a time when rock music was starting to flood the national consciousness. With narration provided by Jim Simpson himself, I'm re-running it because I believe it to be an important document that tells of a momentous era in the musical history of Britain's Second City.
Footnote: Last November, Jim received The Lifetime Achievement Award for his decades-long influence in the music industry, and in particular his role in the founding of the Birmingham Jazz and Blues Festival, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this summer.
BIRMINGHAM rocked. It always did, at least it did from the early 1960s. The city probably still does… and hopefully always will.
Actually, that may not be strictly accurate, in more than one respect. For it was back in the 1950s that at least one Brum band regularly rocked the house.
Jim Simpson writes: 'They were the Modernaires, formed in 1957, whose date sheet included a weekly Saturday night residency at The Crown Hotel on Station Street. Perhaps it was The Modernaires who single-heartedly heralded the dawn of the Brum Beat era – or perhaps it wasn’t, maybe there were other rocking Brum Bands back then who have somehow slipped under the radar.
'One thing is for certain. The fact that a whole lot of Birmingham’s Finest strode the rock stages of the civilised world during those Swinging Sixties.
'It started off as a local phenomenon, with dozens of pubs and dance halls presenting an unprecedented number of local bands such as Carl Wayne and the Vikings, Denny Laine and The Diplomats, The Cheetahs, Lee Stirling and the Bruisers, Roy Everett and The Climbers, Mike Sheridan and the Nightriders, Pat Wayne and the Beachcombers, Danny King and the Dukes or, at other times, The Royals and The Mayfair Set, Jimmy Powell and the Five Dimensions, Keith Powell and the Valets and so many more.
'Almost every pub that had sufficient space presented live music, and those such as The Crown, The Mackadown, and The Black Horse in Northfield would feature nine performances every week - that’s each evening as well as Saturday and Sunday lunchtimes.
'As a direct result of this astounding grassroots activity, in 1962 journalist Dennis Detteridge created the monthly music magazine Midland Beat available at music venues and on news stands across the region at the cost of just one shilling, yesterday’s equivalent of five pence.
'Current bluesman Ade Wakelin’s dad Vic was in charge of marketing and I got to take the photographs and write blues and jazz columns in return for the princely salary of £12 a month, though that did help me to scrape together something resembling a living when combined with my earnings as a photographer and jazz trumpet player.
'Frankly, I would have done it for nothing, just to be able to witness first-hand and capture on film the Brum Beat phenomenon as well as the veritable forest of pubs, clubs and dance halls that made such a significant contribution to Birmingham’s burgeoning, and well-deserved, reputation as The UK Capital of Rock and Roll.
'The Rainbow Club above C&As on the corner of New Street and High Street was a Saturday night must for bands and audiences. Then there was the influential Regan circuit, operated by Ma and Pa (that’s Mary and Joe) Regan, an Irish couple living on Woodbourne Road in Bearwood, who regularly booked four or five or six bands a night to play at their large capacity, not smart but cool ballrooms, The Handsworth Plaza, The Ritz in Kings Heath, The Old Hill Plaza and The Gary Owen Club in Small Heath.
'In West Bromwich there was the Adelphi, in neighbouring Bearwood The Thimblemill Swimming Baths, where, every winter, they would board over the pool and turn it into a rock venue. Midland Beat once published a survey, showing that at one time there were more than 2,000 gigs available every week for live bands, because back then DJs simply played the records without the posturing and difficult-to-understand celebrity of today and were never, not ever, billed as ‘Live DJs’ as they are so often nowadays.
'Midland Beat also published the astonishing fact that at one point there were nearly 5,000 bands across the West Midlands – to qualify, bands had to own their own PA and van!
The first Brum Beat record release was in September 1963 - Sugar Baby, recorded by Jimmy Powell and the Five Dimensions, but it was to be the following year that the floodgates opened.
'The first hit to come out of this irresistible movement was both unlikely and untypical of what was going on at the grass roots. It was the somewhat slick, tasteful, and definitely not at all rocking Tell Me When by The Applejacks, based out of Solihull.
'Originally formed in 1961 as The Crestas, they renamed to The Jaguars and then hooked up with the singer, Al Jackson, and sort of truncated his name to become The Applejacks.
'They were also known for having a girl bass guitarist, rarely seen in those days. She was Megan Davies, an excellent musician. They signed to Decca, charted at #7 with Tell Me When and followed that with Lennon and McCartney’s Like Dreamers Do which made it to number 20 and then Three Little Words ([I Love You)” which reached #23. All in 1964.
'In September that year The Rockin’ Berries had some success with I Didn’t Mean To Hurt You, but hit big with their follow-up He’s In Town which got to number 3 on the National Chart.
'Those Perry Barr rockers, The Renegades, made it to #1 with Cadillac – sadly not in the UK, but in Finland, just proving that Brum Beat travels well. They continued their assault on the charts in Finland with Seven Daffodils at #12 and Matelot at #18 before switching their attentions to Italy, where they charted at #15.
'The Fortunes had success with their theme song to the seafaring Radio Caroline pirates with Caroline, and followed that up the following year with You’ve Got Your Troubles, #2, Here It Comes Again, #27 and Golden Ring #15.
'That same year, The Uglys, fronted by the indefatigable Steve Gibbons, charted in Australia at #9 with Wake Up My Mind while the UK charts that year saw an enviable run of hits by The Ivy League, Funny How Love Can Be #8, That’s Why I’m Crying #22 and Tossing and Turning #3. I have to go back to back to 1963 to find my favourite of those early Beat groups. 'The remarkable and unique Spencer Davis Group formed specifically to go into a weekly residency at The Golden Eagle on Hill Street.
'Spence was a graduate of the University of Birmingham, teaching German in a Birmingham school while singing and playing the folky end of the blues around the folk clubs.
'I have long forgiven him for nicking the drummer from my jazz band, the ever-swinging Pete York, who joined Spence and two brothers who lived in Atlantic Road, Erdington, bass guitarist Muff Winwood and the 14-year-old, still-at-school pianist, guitarist, singer, the phenomenal Steve Winwood.
'Originally – and unimaginatively – called The Rhythm & Blues Quartet, they were spotted and signed early on by Island Records supremo Chris Blackwell, who first of all insisted they name-change. Muff reasoned that they should use Spencer’s name because he liked to talk, and if he was taking care of the interviews, the rest of them could stay in bed. Sound reasoning in anyone’s book.
'The rise of the SDG was meteoric. The first single, their version of John Lee Hooker’s Dimples, was shockingly good, with young Steve sounding closer to Ray Charles than anybody, then or now, could imagine.
'Dimples got a bunch of radio play, Every Little Bit Hurts and Keep On Running made #41 and #1 respectively in 1965, Somebody Help Me hit #1 and Gimme Some Lovin’ #2 in 1966.
'The following year I’m A Man hit #9 – and Steve Winwood left to form Traffic along with a bunch of mates of his own age, pausing only to take tenor sax man, Chris Woods, from my band, Locomotive, with him.
'One cannot help but wonder what Birmingham’s Spencer Davis Group would have achieved had they stayed together for another 10 years or so.' - Jim Simpson.
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