Johnny Johnstone writes:
I was a very big fan of Alex Welsh and the bands he had over the years, and I was lucky enough to become friendly with most of band members.
I remember one night when the band played a gig at a pub called The Blue Ball at Risley, near Derby, and after the gig, some of us stayed behind and had a drink or two (pre-breathaliser days!). Lennie Hastings was in good humour, took off his wig, and started going round those who were, shall we say, thin on top and tried his wig on them. One of them was a dear friend and a fan of the band, probably in his sixties then, and he took it in good part. Heady days, if you will pardon the pun?
Archie Semple and Alex Welsh
Photograph courtesy of Johnny Johnstone
At another gig, the Alex Welsh band was in Derby at The Corporation Hotel (sadly long gone!), and Johnny Barnes played a marvellous four bar break which made me yell out and made the guy in front of us spill his beer! Incidently, my drummer, Derek Bush, rang Johnny today and had a good chat with him. You may know that Johnny suffered a stroke last September while on holiday abroad, but according to what he told Derek, he is making very slow progress. He has been out in the last day or two in a wheelchair, and self-propelled himself to the pub for a pint. He is still getting intense therapy and he is fighting it as best he can. Derek and I hope to visit Johnny in the next month or two and hopefully get him to the pub again.
I remember seeing Alex at the Five Ways, a pub in Sherwood, a suburb of Nottingham, about a month before he died . I remember how ill he looked. If my memory serves me right, Roy Crimmins was on trombone, Al Gay on clarinet and tenor sxophone and I think Ron Rubin was on double bass. It might have been Brian Lemon on piano, but I'm not really sure of that. It was very distressing to see Alex, obviously very, very ill. I went to Alex's funeral along with three other Nottingham jazzmen, Johnny Smith, a guitarist still active on the scene, and Ced Smith who played clarinet/saxophone and Chris Stones who played guitar/keyboard, both sadly no longer with us. We went to the wake afterwards which was something else! A wonderful send-off to a great jazzman.
9.2012
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