[Dixielandjazz] Sandy Brown again

Tue Oct 1 16:09:56 EDT 2019

Looking for something not completely indifferent I chanced on 

sandybrownjazz.co.uk 

and some speculations on remote prospects of a film.

I remembered the interview, which at first I linked with Chris Milne, a fellow Bechetmaniac who introduced me to the last years of the Sidney Bechet Appreciation Society, and Mal Collins. It was rather W. Gordon Smith who interviewed Sandy, however -- and I remember details of the broadcast, which I heard at the time of its airing in Scotland. 

Anyway as far as plain formatting permits  I include below details of the interview from on-line. It's possible that in bemoaning the dearth of material which could be included a mention of an unavailable interview dealing more with Sandy's acoustic architect work is somehow a mistaken reading of the note I put below. 

I do have various odds and ends of reminiscences from others, as I was nowhere in the vicinity when Sandy was playing live, though born late enough it's not yet a miracle I'm hanging on (or not hanged) my locations never matched his. 
But I suppose Sandiana could be assembled, I know something of non-jazz Edinburgh in the period … I won't settle for there's no time like the present, for any presents I have lived through have pissed through in the masts of time, or some rearrangement of those letters

To: ian at sandybrownjazz.co.uk <ian at sandybrownjazz.co.uk>

BBC Two England - 19 April 1975 - BBC Genome

Network 
A series of programmes made specially for audiences in the BBC regions and now seen for the first time countrywide. 
Tonight, from BBC Scotland: Scope: Sandy Brown Edinburgh's Royal High School has produced many good jazz musicians, but none more gifted than clarinettist SANDY BROWN. And as an authority on acoustics his counsel was sought all over the world. Sandy Brown died last month. 
This film, made during the last year of his life, is a tribute to his musicianship, his science, and his memorable character. 
Producer w. GORDON smith 
Series coordinator FRANK GILLARD 
Contributors

Clarinettist: Sandy Brown.
Unknown: Sandy Brown
Unknown: Frank Gillard

--- there seems to have been an information hold-up on the contributors front?

And let us hope the material on which the interview was stored between Scottish showing and "Nationwide -- should have been Nationswide" -- was not swiped and wiped like so much of BBC Jazz 625 and several score or hundred hours of comedy rediscovered when an archive stored by an obsessional comedian (Bob Monkhouse) came to light following his demise. The guilty party, renamed Scott, pleaded that he had programmed a lot of jazz on radio before 1950 -- no use to me, "not yet born" -- under his previous name "Scutt". The name he had changed it to was replaced by something else in my mouth (washed out with soap and water), which epithet is not for a family friendly foregathering such as this field fosters,
all the friendly best,

Robert R. Calder  

Robert R. Calder 

On Tuesday, 1 October 2019, 11:12:06 BST, ian at sandybrownjazz.co.uk <ian at sandybrownjazz.co.uk> wrote: 

Hello Robert,

Thank you for your message and for going on the mailing list.

I shall share you questions on the website in the November 1st issue. I do recall something about Sandy and the average age of jazz musicians checking out, but I cannot quite place where I heard that. I don’t think the interview is available. There was a TV interview with Sandy mainly talking about acoustic engineering but it is not publicly available. We’ll see what we can find out.

Brian Lemon was a close family friend to Sandy and the Fairweathers, but sadly is no longer with us. It is one of the problems now that there are few people to check with, even though many of them lasted beyond 45!

I met Graham Tayar when I was writing about New Merlin’s Cave – an interesting man. Again, he has left us now.

https://www.sandybrownjazz.co.uk/forumnewmerlinscave.html

Best wishes,

Ian

From: ROBERT R. CALDER 

Sent: Tuesday, October 1, 2019 4:56 AM

To: ian at sandybrownjazz.co.uk 

Subject: Sandy Brown TV Interview

Does anybody else remember a maybe 25 minute interview on BBC Scotland near the end of Sandy Brown's too short alloted span, with I think Christopher Milne, a man I met only once, at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival of 1983, when he put me in touch with Mal Collins, and a Sidney Bechet Appreciation Society. Chris Milne was a Bechetfile, I remember, and a broadcaster....  

Of course my memory might be letting me down and the interviewer was perhaps a broadcaster and sometime playwright called W. Gordon Smith.  

In any event, my young blood was a little chilled by Sandy's observation that he had checked on the average age at which jazz musicians checked out, and it was 45 and he was currently 44  -- actually I might be a year or two out here, but it was about a year before he died. Unfortunately I was away from Scotland when the late Jack Duff, another who should have lived longer, did his Sandy tribute gig(s?).  I did see the band with Al Fairweather and other of his and Sandy's sidemen  (with Brian Shiels wonderful on bass if not I think old enough to have worked with Sandy) in the drinking and eats place which had been the Railway Luggage Office on Waverley Bridge. Ian Armit was on piano. 

Forrie Cairns played well, but much more out of Bechet than a la Sandy. 

And there was at one festival, 1995, an afternoon of solo pianists, including Dick Hyman, and some expert might be able to find the name of a composition whose playing Brian Lemon prefaced with references to Sandy, and the information that he had composed the item beginning with a compilation of little things Sandy used to come up with again and again when doodling at the keyboard.

Another time I'll pass on Graham Tayar's reminiscence of Sandy's less happy failure to demonstrate that "bebop is rubbish!"

slainte mhath!

Robert R. Calder