A Book For All Jazz, Blues And Rock Fans

Big Bear Music recently clocked up its half century. Its founder, Jim Simpson, clearly a wonderfully-gifted, multi-talented individual, seems to have done the lot in Britain’s music business, as promoter, record producer, festival director and manager of a famous Rock Band, Black Sabbath .

This musical autobiography, written with his brother Ron, makes fascinating reading for a wide variety of people, fans of Jazz, Blues and Heavy Metal – and, not least, those who specifically take an interest in the Midlands’ Jazz and Blues scene who may remember Jim, still active in his eighties, as the PR-man for Ronnie Scott’s short-lived Birmingham branch and the ubiquitous promoter of music.

Actually, the chapters devoted to the discovery and early management of Black Sabbath, a heady period of about two years, seem almost out of kilter with the other sixty or so years. Jim’s musical background is clearly Jazz and kindred genres. It was a part of his family. Uncle Jack, as it turns out, was the name given to American trombonist Jack Teagarden by the father - and the young lad was eleven before discovering there was no agnatic relationship or likelihood of meeting the great man.

In the 1960s, he played trumpet in local jazz bands such as the Kansas City Seven but quickly discovered greater entrepreneurial tendencies. He began running a Rock club, Henry’s Blueshouse, in the heart of Birmingham, which led to managing a Blues-Rock outfit Bakerloo, and, indirectly, to editing Brum Beat, the guide to the music scene in the second city. One of the supporting bands was Earth, later known as Black Sabbath. He saw their potential and went on to manage them to great chart success.

But the Jazz story really starts with the foundation of Big Bear Music, in the early 1970s, to promote the British and European tours of American Blues legends, many of whom he also recorded, often live, accumulating a treasure trove of material for release by his own label.

The biggest name, for my money, is the great Champion Jack Dupree, who it is easy to argue was the real founder of Rock’n’Roll. (When I interviewed him when - scarcely believably - he was a council house tenant in Mixenden, Halifax, he certainly had no doubt of his progenitive place in the history of this genre.) Another great (sadly unrecorded) New Orleans’ singer and pianist brought over was Cousin Joe, who had made some legendary recordings with Sydney Bechet and Mezz Mezzrow back in 1945. Incidentally, his band contained Jack Bruce of Cream and a certain Charlie Watt. A new name to me is that of Lancastrian, Justin Randall (q.v.), apparently one of the finest New Orleans’ piano professors who ever lived.

Jim collaborated with Humphrey Lyttelton to get the Birmingham International Jazz Festival off the ground and, more than 30 years later, it continues to thrive. Some stellar names have appeared, not least Miles Davis, BB King, Dizzy Gillespie and Illinois Jacquet. The principles behind the original concept, expressed when putting on an explanatory jam session make interesting reading: it was to be ‘a positive gesture against the introspective, self-indulgent, over-intricate music that, masquerading as jazz, often threatens to obscure the true spirit of the music.’

Speaking of Humph, after recording his radio shows, Best Of Jazz, at Pebble Mill, he and Jim would go for a Chinese meal and discuss not so much Jazz … as the respective merits of the Chung Ying and Lychee garden restaurants. They agreed to disagree about Bechet, whom Humph adored and Jim ‘hated for his insensitive playing … trampl[ing] over trumpet players’ melody lines …’ I have to say, I’m with Humph on this one.

Teaming with insight and anecdote about so many names known in so many different households, Buck Clayton, Muddy Waters, Little Richard, John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, Benny Green, Val Wiseman, Digby Fairweather, John Peel, Nina Simone, Chuck Berry, the Moody Blues and Stevie Winwood, to name but a few, there are also fascinating references to some of the lesser lights, Lightnin’ Slim, for example, ‘the undisputed king of the Lousiana Swamp Blues’, who ought to be known better.

Jim was both a perfectionist and facilitator (a rare combination) as a record producer, as is illustrated by an anecdote about how he managed to ‘bully’ Kansas City drummer, Richard Ross, into doing the vocals how he (Jim) wanted. He confesses he could have wrapped the recording up in a couple of days but ‘wanted it to be a perfect’, so much so that the sessions ran to a week and involved rigging up a series of sound shields between Richard’s mouth and his drumkit.

Don't Worry 'Bout The Bear is a book to read in detail and then take as a vade-mecum, for endless browsing. It’s apparently loose chronology is actually a thing of great technical skill and beauty, allowing instructive diversions and perambulations through musical highways and byways unknown to, and unsuspected by, most general readers.

Clearly, however, nothing comes easy in the music business. Jim is occasionally waspish about ‘cloth-eared clots’ who made him ‘blazingly angry’ when he ventured to London, always glad to return to the ‘sanity’ of Brum. Not the least of the book’s appeal comes from the photographs of figures, major and minor, that Jim had the talent and foresight to take when meeting, promoting recording and befriending.

If only there had been others around in the business with this man’s talents and understanding that the apparently transitory would be of greater interest to the future and should be preserved. The BBC who threw away priceless hours of Jazz recordings would do well to order a copy for all their executives.

What amazes me above all is Jim Simpson’s incredible powers of recall, his ability to bring to life in vivid detail incidents that happened decades ago.

This is the best book on British music I’ve read for a very long time.

Don’t Worry 'Bout The Bear: From the Blues To Jazz, Rock & Roll and Black Sabbath, by Jim Simpson with Ron Simpson, is published by Brewin Books at £17.95.
Also obtainable from www.bigbearmusic.com