Just Jazz, November 2004

Wonderful,
Wonderful
Copenhagen

In September 2003, John, Jackie, Toni and myself went to Little Whitley Jazz Club to see Derek Winters playing with the New Orleans Delight. We didn’t know the band, but knew that Derek was spending more and more time playing with them in Denmark and that was good enough recommendation. What a treat we had in store! The band was made up of 6 excellent musicians (7 with Derek!) and played in a style that was refreshingly new to us. Lots of Latin-American rhythms and subtle interplay – these musicians, all individually talented, really do play as a band.
So, I sat as near to the stage as I could (this being a normal packed to the seams Little Whitley gig), and captured the whole performance on video to savour later. The spot happened to be right next to their CD case, and so, much to the amusement of Claus, the drummer, I took payment for their merchandise during intervals. This was when I first saw their gig-list by the case. I picked one up and handed it to John. ‘ How on earth do we keep this away from Toni ?’ I said to him. In September 2004 the band was to tour Denmark with two guests, Derek and Sarah Spencer.

In March 2003, we had been persuaded by Toni to travel all around the country, from Devon to Shropshire and even to London on a Sunday evening (school next day!), to see Sarah perform. Derek had introduced us to Sarah’s ‘hot and dirty’ music when Toni was 12 years old by giving her 2 of Sarah’s CDs (with a few misgivings about some of the lyrics!) and they had been played on a daily basis ever since.

Having had our appetite whetted, we went to see the band at the Waterworks in Birmingham and the Globe in Tamworth. Back home, Toni was straight onto the Internet to see if New Orleans Delight had a web site. They have, and of course it includes a gig-list!

So that’s when it started. ‘Can we Granddad?’ ‘Please Nannie!’ ‘But what about Bude – all those bands you love, all that dancing, the jazz workshop? – and you should be at school anyway!’ Of course, we were longing to go ourselves, but Denmark! – a long way to travel for entertainment – how could we possibly afford it? Well, kids aren’t the only ones that rely heavily on the Internet! A search soon gave me the best option on flights – EasyJet’s Newcastle to Copenhagen (I’m working in Durham at the moment) came to £150 for the 4 of us – and £100 of that was tax! But EasyJet – we’ve all seen the TV programme! Somewhere to lay our heads – a cottage (£360) in the grounds of a beautiful hotel in Vejby Strand looked a good idea, but where about in Denmark was that? TheAA.com found it for us and it looked an ideal location. That just left a means of getting from one gig to another – again one of the cheapest options was to book through the EasyJet site – a car big enough to take 3 women’s luggage was £220. It was beginning to look viable - £180 each for a weeks holiday. Within a few minutes it was all booked and without even picking up the phone!

1st September. The logistics could be better. We live in Cornwall, Jackie and Toni live in Birmingham, and I am working in Durham. Still, it’s all organised – we are to leave both cars where I work and then my boss will take us to the airport. At 8am I received a text message to say that his car had broken down. Never mind, when I get to work I can organise a taxi – no need to worry the others, who are, by now, on their way. At 8.15am, on the way to work, my car broke down. Don’t panic, phone the RAC! I got to work and told the accountant about my troubles. That was the end of them. The FD took us to the airport in his luxury Volvo 4 x 4, the check-in at EasyJet was smooth and uneventful and within an hour and a half we were in Copenhagen!

Right, now to pick up the car. How easy was that! At the desk was the first of many charming Danes we were to meet. He asked for our reference number and gave us the key. No trying to sell us extra insurance, collision damage waver, talk of excesses – just a lovely smile, a free upgrade, a complimentary map, and help with the route. We arrived in Vejby to find a beautiful cottage in it’s own huge garden in the grounds of an even more beautiful thatched hotel.

After a good night’s sleep, we got down to the serious matter of why we were here. We phoned Kjeld and asked him for directions to the first gig. He asked us to go and buy ourselves a KRAK map book (A-Z of Copenhagen and district to you and me), and ring him back. He was able to give us the exact reference to the first gig at Bellahoej Kraemmermarked. If you ever go to Denmark – and I highly recommend it - I advise you to get one of these maps. The Danish language is not easy – they tend to string together the most unlikely letters and you would have to know the pronunciation to be able to take verbal directions!

We found Bellahoej with absolutely no problems. The market was huge, and I wish now that we had allowed time to look around. We went to the first gig tent and asked about the jazz. They guessed at another tent, but guessed wrong. The next redirection proved fruitless too. Suddenly, Toni shouted ‘Follow that double bass’. It was Stefan! We found Sarah and Derek standing outside the tent, and it was time for hugs all round. This was to be our first taste of Danish organization. It was a large tent with a bar at one end and a raised stage at the other. The centre of the tent was taken up with a buffet including a chef wielding the hugest frying pan I have ever seen. Around the outside of the tent were long tables, beautifully decorated. No bun fight here – the occupants of the tables filed up to the buffet, one table at a time, and a wonderful buffet it was too. When everyone had finished eating, the buffet tressle tables were cleared away and the dancers came eagerly onto the dance floor. Both dancers and non-dancers alike were really appreciative – and who wouldn’t appreciate the quality of this line-up. The encore was a song that I had requested – Can I sleep in your arms tonight lady – but I wasn’t expecting the lovely harmony from Sarah!

Day two took us to the Seaside Jazz Club in Frederiksund. Here, we met Bo and Astrid. They had popped over from Sweden for a week-ends jazz! One year, they had holidayed in Malta just in order to see Brian Carrick and Derek in the Algiers Stompers. Bo is Derek’s co-pilot and had been entrusted with Kjeld’s camera. He apologised before hand for all the video film I was likely to take of his back! The organizer came over to talk to us as he had recognized Toni from his visit to Little Whitley – he was Brian’s chauffeur for the Jennsen’s tour! The world is definitely getting smaller. He gave Toni a Seaside Jazz Club T-shirt – what a lovely bunch of people these Danes are! The buffet was just as organized and just as delicious – we were starting to see a pattern here – the Danes take their jazz seriously, have found a way to finance it, and it’s going to keep jazz alive.

Day three - lunch-time. The venue was the J.F.Kennedy lounge in Hilleroed. This is just a pub, so time to tell you about the band. Anyone who has had the pleasure of hearing New Orleans Delight will know that Kjeld is one of the best clarinettists around. The band is handpicked and guests are of the highest calibre. We were therefore upset when Goran, fine pianist and excellent photographer, decided that the journey from Sweden to the gigs was getting too much. However, Hans has turned out to be an excellent replacement. Having already booked the holiday, we were devastated to find out that Bengt, the trombonist, had resigned due to pressure of work. We couldn’t see how his sympathetic playing could be replaced at such short notice. Soon, we discovered that the guest for this tour would be Mike Owen. Toni wasn’t happy. ‘He’s scary Nan’, she said, and I recalled this extremely hairy creature in a trilby wandering round Bude. He looks like the wild man of jazz and I could imagine a musical battle between Mike and Sarah – a far cry from the front line we knew and loved. The rest of the rhythm section – base player Stefan (who speaks English with an Oxford accent) drummer Claus (with the gorgeous smile) and Erling, his dad, (the charming banjo player) take some beating.

Day three – evening, was at the Fredensborg Jazz Club. This was held in a converted old cinema. Back to the well organised buffet meal. We were a bit apprehensive about the raw herring starter, but it turned out to be very tasty. The dancers were enthusiastic, but, reminiscent of the scenes in the Benny Goodman Story, stood motionless to listen and applaud Claus’s brilliant drum solo in Bourbon Street Parade. As a request from us, Sarah sang the ‘Donkey Song’, For sale - Hannah Johnson’s big Jack Ass, but moaned afterwards that she had been ‘terribly politically incorrect’ for nothing, as she was certain that not one of the Danish audience picked up on any of the innuendos!

Day four – Sunday afternoon in the Long John Jazz Club. This, I was not looking forward to. The venue is in the pedestrian area right in the centre of Copenhagen. We, (or rather I, as the navigator) need not have worried. With the help of the KRAK map book and my two co-navigators looking for albeit unpronounceable road names, it was dead simple. As we were walking through the town, still following our A-Z, Toni said ‘ Mike looks like he knows where he’s going’. Well spotted, Toni! I made one big mistake, however. As it is a pub venue, with a tiny stage and the likelihood of having people standing between the performers and me, I didn’t take my camcorder. This is my only regret of the whole holiday. I had a marvellous view of the stage and the performances were getting even better after 4 gigs playing together. During the session, my attention was drawn to Claus grinning and looking out of the window behind him. I realised what he was looking at and took my digital camera outside to take a minute of film. Five or six young couples were dancing (very well, I might add) outside in the street. The band wanted to open the windows so that the youngsters could hear better, but were reminded that the residents had managed to force a local law to prevent this. Having paid premium rates to live in the centre of the town, where they could soak up the atmosphere, they now insisted on quiet. Some people don’t know when they are well off!

Day five. We drop the mantle of ‘groupies’ to become tourists for the day. (Well, we did actually meet Derek and Sarah for lunch, and a very enjoyable few hours it was too!). We took the lovely boat trip (£5 for a whole hour) around the harbour and canals. A nice young man, with excellent language skills, pointed out all the places of interest, including Hans Christian Anderson’s house and the Little Mermaid. The poor thing, waiting endlessly for her lover, has had a hard time over the years. She has been decapitated twice – the first time it was treated by the police like a real murder hunt – had her arms severed, and been blown off her rock with dynamite!

Day six – Praesto Jazz Club, Kirsebaerkroen. This was going to test us. The KRAK map did not cover this area and it was about 100 miles from where we were staying. Kjeld had phoned and booked us a table, and when we arrived, ahead of the band, the owner said he had put us right next to the stage so that I could film. We paid our entrance fee, including lovely meal again, and were charged a special price for special English visitors – the equivalent of the member’s price. These people really do make you feel welcome! This was to be a live recording. The whole band really wanted it to work and to my eyes they looked a little nervous. I have no doubt that if a CD is released as a result of this recording, it will be reviewed by a much more knowledgeable person than myself, but I have to tell you how it sounded to us.



The respect that each member felt for the rest of the band was obvious. The empathy between musicians was absolutely beautiful. The harmonies between Sarah and Mike in Crying Time and Derek and Sarah in the hymn St Jude were magical. The Salutation March saw Sarah and Mike playing in unison – how these people listen to each other. Do white people really have the right to sing the blues? Can they feel the pain? Sarah certainly sounds authentic to my untrained ear, and all the audiences loved her renditions of Down in the mouf and Freight train blues. One for the Gov’ner – we have come to expect the way we are going to we feel when Derek sings this. He has made the song his own – and why not when he and Mike Cox wrote the words? The poignant trumpet solo always leaves us near to tears. But what a bonus – Mike, who had not heard the tune until 3 days before, squeezed so much emotion out of that trombone during his solo, it just left us breathless. Talking of which, his solo performance of Heart of a Clown left the whole audience speechless. We didn’t even know he could sing!
In contrast, the calypso Iko, Iko, got everyone’s feet tapping, not least Claus’s! Kjeld brings in the Latin-American Begonia and also led the way in the beautiful Closer Walk With Thee that had Sarah and Mike playing as one again and featured the superb sensitive banjo playing of Erling. Sarah seemed to forget the recording equipment when it came to singing The Georgia Grind – that was powerful stuff!

During one of the intervals I was asked by one of the members whether I was Sarah’s mom. Did I really look that proud of a fellow Brit? I suppose I could have! A copy of the video was certainly going to her mom, and Sarah, knowing this, got all the band to shout ‘Hi Mom and Dad’ into the camera!

Another surprise, Sarah decided to make a speech! Having expressed how much she had enjoyed the tour, she gave her stars and stripes tie to Kjeld. I assume he knew just what this meant to her – in the last 3 years since we have been attending her gigs, she has always worn this tie – and who knows how many years previous to this. This truly was a mutual admiration society!

Time for the last number - Joe Avery‘s Rock and Roll – ‘Go Sarah!’ Most of the diners stood for this number. I think everyone realised they had been party to something really special.

I hope they do it again next year – this combination will be hard to beat. New Orleans Delight are delightful – as people as well as musicians, Sarah and Derek always compliment each other, but the real surprise, (for us, certainly not for the rest of the band), was Mike. What a player! And he’s not scary at all – Toni’s only question now is ‘Which conditioner does he use?!’

So the holiday ended with a wonderful session in a wonderful venue and will result, hopefully in a wonderful CD. But, for my money, the best performances were at the Long John – and there is no recording of that. I suppose you just had to be there.

Jillian Pepper
September 2004