Full Description
Peter Deuchar (1933-88) was the biggest character on the
Tyneside jazz scene of the mid-50s - a fearless personality who made things
happen, a black sheep from the upper classes, a ladies man, a leader, an
adventurer, the heir to millions, the founder of a band that outlived him. On
the cusp of 40, in 1972/73, Deuchar cycled the world entirely solo, 'because
it's there' - a two-wheeled George Mallory breaking records and keeping his
demons at bay.
That same year, his protégé Mahavishnu John McLaughlin was
conquering America with a sound light years away from the music they'd once
played together in the Professors of Ragtime while still being some sort of
jazz. John would fondly recall his old band in interviews. The name, he said,
tells its own story. Deuchar's story has never been told before now - a
singular human interest tale, from Dickensian beginnings in a dysfunctional
mansion in deepest Northumberland to founding a jazz club on Newcastle's seediest
street and undertaking a pilgrimage to the source of the music, when it was
still possible to meet on the street people who had played with Buddy Bolden.
This volume brings to life a time and place at the edge of
memory, Britain in the 1950s, its youth curiously obsessed with the music of
New Orleans at the turn of the century. A time when the banjo was god.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1: Bringing Ales to Newcastle
Chapter 2: Schooldays and Road Racing
Chapter 3: Bringing Jazz to Newcastle
Chapter 4: The Vieux Carré Jazzmen - 1955
Chapter 5: The Vieux Carré Jazzmen - 1956-57
Chapter 6: New Orleans
Chapter 7: Germany 1958
Chapter 8: George Lewis in Britain 1959
Chapter 9: The Professors of Ragtime - the Trad Boom begins
Acknowledgements
Appendix 1: Big Pete Deuchar recordings 1956-59
Appendix 2: Peter Deuchar Family Tree
Appendix 3: The Vieux Carré Jazzmen / Club Chronology
Supplementary Appendix
Index
Endnotes
