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Traditionally Speaking |
The band rehearsal had finished about an hour before. They rehearse on an occasional basis, but usually discussions, gig dates, set lists, etc. are ongoing. The Sunset Cafe Stompers have a busy schedule throughout Dorset and Somerset with regular appearances and jazzbreaks.
Some had gone home – Mike Denham (piano and bandleader), Steve Graham (trumpet), Pete Middleton (trombone), Mike Betts (clarinet and tenor saxophone), John Coad (drums), but Pete Ward (bass) and Eddie Edwards (banjo) stayed behind to talk.
Pete had seen the page on this website about Kingston Jazz and had played with Norrie Cox's San Jacinto Jazzband in the early 1960s. Venues included the Fighting Cocks in Kingston and the Hampton Court Hotel, and in Windsor at the Star and Garter (later turned into a supermarket!). Eddie too had been around that part of the country in those early days. Both had picked up on jazz at 
school. Pete went to Slough Grammar School with trumpeter Dennis Jones before taking an electrical engineering course. Dennis had decided to learn to play jazz and put together a band. ‘You can be piano,’ he had said to Pete. They rehearsed at the North Star pub, where the piano was not very good, with Dave Burden (clarinet) and Michael Bradshaw (banjo). After a while, they moved to the Red Lion in Langley where the piano was worse! When a friend had a banjo for sale, Pete bought it.
Pete Ward
Dennis Jones moved to the New Eagle Jazz Band in Wokingham and the two went their separate ways, with Pete playing at the Admiral Cunningham pub in Bracknell. A chance meeting with Neil Manders resulted in Pete playing banjo with the High Curley Stompers for about a year alongside John R T Davies and Ben Cohen. Meanwhile, around 1960, Dennis Jones had hand-picked a bunch of musicians and formed Preacher Hood's Jazz Missionaries, but Pete was only able to keep in touch with him on an irregular basis due to his own commitments. As frequently happened, National Service interrupted things and Pete went into the RAF where, on the upside, he learned telecommunications which put him in good stead for a job on discharge. 'I remember coming across Geoff Over during National Service,' Pete remembers. 'He was playing trombone with the local band, but he always did a banjo solo in the interval!' That is when he saw an advertisement for a double bass, an instrument he has lugged around ever since. Looking back, Pete says: 'In the early days with Norrie Cox, I was stopped by the police in Surbiton because my car was leaning heavily to one side. I explained that a double bass was a very heavy instrument, and was allowed to proceed. A week or two later the car was scrapped with a broken chassis!'
A long list of bands came and went for Pete over the following years when he was living in Maidenhead including those of Dave Morgan and Fred Shaw. Others followed when Pete moved to the West Country in 1966. Sitting in with the Phoenix Jazz Band in Bristol led to a regular position in Nigel Hunt's Jazz Band. As time progressed there were long stints with bands led by Martin Bennett, Gordon Hunt, John Shillito and Dennis Armstrong. Things came to a bit of a halt in 1992 when Pete was due to play in Lynton but, instead, landed up in hospital with a stroke. His doctor told him to change his lifestyle, so he gave up the day job! Several months of recuperation followed before he was able to get mind and body to work again but, to jump forward a bit, he ended up in 1998 in the Sunset Cafe Stompers band.
Eddie Edwards had gone to Chiswick Grammar School. There was a jazz band already at the school and a friend was interested in the 
music. Bill Greenow was in the same year and Eddie can remember him practising his clarinet fingering on a paintbrush in lessons. They would go to hear bands at the legendary Eel Pie Island on the Thames near Hampton Court in the days when there was no bridge across to the island and people would be ferried across to the club in a boat.
Eddie Edwards
Eddie started out on trumpet, but when his friends started a skiffle group, he was given a banjo. ‘It was a zither banjo,’ Eddie says. ‘They used to call it a ‘ladies banjo’. But he was good enough to be asked to play with jazz bands in the Chiswick area when he left school, including Dave Evans’ band and depping with Steve Lane. By 1958 he was playing in the New Crane River band with Neil Millet. He too lived around the Kingston and New Malden area, played at the Fighting Cocks in Kingston and the Thames Hotel at Hampton Court (read more about these venues on our Kingston Jazz page).
‘We had all started off listening to the music that came out of America with Bunk Johnson and George Lewis,' Pete recalls, 'But more and more of my influences came from listening to the 'classic bands' of the 1920s, both black and white. Much of Preacher Hood's repertoire was along similar lines. I only ever played with Ken Colyer twice. On the first occasion I was reprimanded for playing too loud, 
but on the second he gave me a solo then turned around and applauded.'
As with Pete Ward, other bands followed for Eddie. If one could draw a ‘family history chart’ of jazz bands it would look pretty complicated. Trombonist Eric Allendale originated from the West Indies and Eddie spent enjoyable times in that band with Laurie Chescoe (drums) and Will Hastie (clarinet). He then moved on to Max Collie’s Rhythm Aces until joining drummer Tony Scriven’s band and then Mac Duncan’s band.
Eric Allendale.
Eddie moved to the West Country in the late ‘60s and continued to play with the Cary Street band and Roy Pellet’s Hot Four. Eventually, Eddie depped with the Sunset Cafe Stompers and now that is his priority band, as it is for Pete Ward. He will play with other bands in the area, however, and it is not unusual to turn up with another band at a venue he played with the Stompers a week or two earlier.
Here is a video of Eddie soloing on a nice version of Georgia with John Shillito's Select Four at the Bude Jazz Festival in 2011
John Shillito (trumpet/vocals), Ken Rennison (reeds), Eddie Edwards (banjo) and Bob Jarvis (bass).
Despite the fact that Pete and Eddie are now both retired from ‘full time work’, they are both busy playing. Eddie averages one or two gigs a week and has, during one week, played eight. The gigs these days are in pubs, fetes, church halls and for weddings and fund-raising events. These gigs are all paid, and like any band, do not bring in a lot of money, but more than cover expenses. In March, the Stompers played at Cheap Street Church in Sherborne and helped to raise £1,885.
The Sunset Cafe Stompers have a comprehensive book of tunes, and leader Mike Denham has them in his computer in a database that selects a regular varied playlist. Mike also comes up with new arrangements although all members of the band tend to have a say. This way they can present a changing programme that stops themselves, and the audiences, getting bored playing and hearing the same old tunes.
Here are the Sunset Cafe Stompers playing Blame It On The Blues.
Both Pete and Eddie have come a long way since the days of Kingston jazz. The years between have seen them playing alongside some of the top names in British Traditional Jazz and have given them the experience that, with other members of the Stompers ensures their regular programme of around 35 advance bookings. Pete says: 'Reflecting on some 60 years of playing jazz, I feel that I've had something of a charmed life - always able to keep the jazz going alongside the day job, and with my late wife being so understanding and tolerant.'
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© Sandy Brown Jazz 2015