Yahoo News The secret history of Ronnie Scott’s: 60 years of bopping and blowing off steam
Ronnie Scott would regularly tell the same joke about his famous jazz club in the heart of Soho: “It’s just like home – filthy and full of strangers”.
Scott, an outstanding tenor saxophone player, died in 1996, but his club, which started in a small basement at 39 Gerrard Street, lives on, now refurbished, in Frith Street. Last year it celebrated its 60th anniversary with a gala concert at the Royal Albert Hall featuring Van Morrison, Kurt Elling, Imelda May, Georgie Fame and Madeline Bell. In 2020, like many live venues, it has been hit by the Covid pandemic, but it’s gamely battling on – and today a documentary, Ronnie’s, arrives in cinemas, celebrating the history of this British institution.
“Ronnie’s” is how it was always known to musicians. The club has hosted some of the greatest jazz stars of the past six decades in its once smoke-filled, dingy nightclub setting. It has been the scene of mesmerising performances, and has also had its fair share of wild behaviour, outlandish humour and drunken recording sessions. George Melly, Tom Waits and Nina Simone are just three artists who’ve shocked audiences there with their wild antics.
At the centre of all this, for decades, was Scott himself, a Jewish musician from London’s East End, who possessed the droll wit and timing of a stand-up comedian. “We want you to enjoy yourselves, so eat, drink and be merry. Pretend you’re on the Titanic,” he would tell the audience. Scott was skilled at dealing with rowdy hecklers. “I see you’re drinking on an empty head again sir,” was one regular put-down.
He would vary his comebacks, with other rejoinders such as, “If I could afford the wood, sir, I’d have your mouth boarded up”. Scott was a true one-off. His well-known quips – “why don’t you all hold hands and see if you can contact the living” – somehow remained funny no matter how many times you had heard them.
During a visit to New York in the late 1950s, Scott saw the potential for a late-night jazz club in Soho. He was told about a suitable basement room in Gerrard Street. During the Second World War, it had been a “bottle party” rendezvous (places where people could get round strict licensing laws and drink until the early hours), and later it became a social club where taxi drivers used to hang out and play billiards.
Scott and his friend Pete King, who was a musician from Bow, loaned £1,000 from Scott’s stepfather and took out a lease for £10 a week. They bought second-hand furniture and a small grand piano, and gave a lick of paint to what Melly described as “fairly squalid small headquarters”.
Scott’s humour was apparent from the beginning. He placed an advert in Melody Maker magazine advertising the Tubby Hayes Quartet and Eddie Thompson Trio, “and the first appearance in a jazz club since the Relief of Mafeking by Jack Parnell”. An annual membership was 10 shillings (50p).
Word about the club got round quickly, and the “all-nighters”, with music on Friday and Saturday running until 3am, were always sold out. The acclaimed American drummer and actor Shelly Manne dropped in one night and saw the potential for his own West Coast joint. “I’m pretty certain that it was Shelly’s enthusiasm for the club’s atmosphere that prompted him to open his Manne Hole Club in Hollywood in November 1960,” Scott wrote in his memoir, Some of My Best Friends are Blues.
From the beginning, Scott joked about the club’s culinary standards. “The food must be good – 3,000 flies can’t be wrong,” boasted another advert. The cuisine was a running gag Scott kept up for the next four decades. “We had a lavatory assistant who quit because he couldn’t stand the smell of the kitchen,” he was still joking in the 1990s. “The food in the club is untouched by human hands – the chef’s a gorilla,” was another perennial line.
Regular visitors to Frith Street, who knew Scott’s patter, would wait in eager anticipation for him to have fun at the expense of a customer who was being served food. “Enjoy your meal,” he would say from the stage. “And don’t worry, the chef’s rash has nearly cleared up”.
The vital step in the club’s fortunes was attracting top American musicians to play at Ronnie Scott’s. The trailblazer was saxophonist Zoot Sims, who was persuaded to come over in November 1961 for a month’s residency, by which time the club had gained its first official licence to sell alcohol. The events of Sims’s first week were memorable. “A cretinous passer-by hurled a smoke bomb into the club on Guy Fawkes Night – the club had to be evacuated for an hour,” recalled Scott, who said Sims remained cool. “I think Zoot thought it was some old English custom.”
His appearance eventually paved the way for a succession of truly world-class visitors, including Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt, Wes Montgomery, Art Farmer, Donald Byrd and Jimmy Witherspoon. When multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk played in 1963, the Beatles came down to see him play.
Although the venue’s reputation was growing, the high cost of booking American musicians and limited seating in Gerrard Street meant that the club was always on the verge of going bust. “We used to meet every Sunday at 3am to decide whether we could afford to open the following Monday – and that is not too far from the truth,” admitted Scott.
Scott and King went for broke and decided to expand into a bigger base. Agent and promoter Harold Davison, who brought Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland over to play in the UK, loaned them £35,000 and they rented a new home at 47 Frith Street, leaving their old one on November 27 1965, after a final gig by Benny Golson. They were in a rush to re-open. They hired Irish labourers to work round the clock and Scott even went to one of his old East End haunts to buy drugs to pep up the tired workers. He bought them back a giant bag of “black bomber” pills. These “uppers” did the trick and the new Frith Street venue was ready by Friday 17 December, albeit without a front door.
The opening was marked by the gift of jeroboam of champagne from Albert “Italian Al” Dimes, a notorious Holborn gangster, who ran a criminal empire throughout central London. Jazz and the underworld have been closely tied since the speakeasy days of the Twenties. Although Soho in the Sixties was home to plenty of villains – the Kray twins once took Scott and King “for a little drive” to talk about the club remaining “neutral” in turf wars – they never caused trouble for Ronnie’s. “It was always part of their code never to give musicians a hard time,” said Scott.
Scott and King soon acquired the premises next door, turning the upstairs floor into a discotheque. The bands played on during the extension work. Drummer Buddy Rich joked that it was the first time he had “played on a building site”. The American musicians kept coming, with bebop giants such as Sonny Rollin, Horace Silver, Lee Konitz, Freddie Hubbard, Dexter Gordon, Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman gracing the venue. In August 1969, the BBC filmed shows at Ronnie Scott’s, including gigs by Miles Davis, Lionel Hampton and Oscar Peterson.
Even rock musicians wanted to get in on the act. Jimi Hendrix, who used to visit the club to watch jazz, sat in with Eric Burdon and War the night before he died, jamming on a version of Memphis Slim’s song Mother Earth on September 16 1970. Musicians used to do their session work in central London’s recording studios and then call in to socialise and hear good music. “Ronnie’s was the kind of place you dropped into for a chat or a drink or whatever,” said pianist Laurie Holloway, an accompanist for Ella Fitzgerald and later the first musical director of the BBC show Strictly Come Dancing.
The club had its own distinct, cool atmosphere. If you could navigate the steep steps to the downstairs bar, you would often find musicians there laughing and telling anecdotes. On the main floor, the small stage sat at the heart of a club whose distinctive pink lampshades hung low over tables covered in red cloths. The club was so dark that the serving staff had to use torches. Black-and-white portrait shots of the great visiting players adorned the walls.
Although the prestige of the club could not have been higher by the early 1970s, Ronnie Scott’s was still walking a financial tightrope at a time when modern jazz was sometimes struggling to bring in punters. Scott, of course, dealt with it by making deadpan jokes about attendance figures. “You should have been at the club last Monday,” he would say. “Somebody should have been here last Monday. We had the bouncers chucking them in. A guy rang up to ask what time the show started and we said, ‘What time can you get here?’”
One answer was to allow in some very unlikely interlopers. In June 1972, George Melly and John Chilton’s Feetwarmers made their debut at what Melly called “bop’s holy shrine”. They were managed at the time by Warner Brothers executive Derek Taylor, the man who had been the press manager for The Beatles during the 1960s, and he booked the club as the venue to record the band’s debut LP. “At the time the news that we were playing the bastion of bebop was greeted with general amazement,” the late Chilton recalled.
Their debut was near anarchy. By the time the band arrived at Ronnie’s, they had already played their usual boozy lunchtime session at Merlin’s Cave near King’s Cross. Warner Brothers spared no expense for the recording session in front of a packed house at Scott’s. All the drinks for the audience and musicians, a band which included cartoonist Wally Fawkes on clarinet and Bruce Turner on saxophone, were free. What followed was a spectacularly drunken recording session.
“It was drink-induced chaos,” recalled Melly in his memoir Slowing Down. “The club was packed and drink in huge amounts consumed. Behaviour was both wild and appreciative. It was also uninhibited. Perhaps the most memorable moment was when a friend of mine, one of a pair of attractive American twins, stripped to the waist, unheard of since the days of Storyville, New Orleans, and put into practice the old blues injunction to ‘shake ’em but don’t break ’em’.”
“It was a close run thing as to who was the more drunk, the band or the listeners,” said Chilton. At one point, Melly fell into the audience and was too sozzled to get back on stage. “One afternoon, a few weeks later, we sheepishly crept back into an empty Ronnie Scott’s and re-recorded enough numbers to make up an album, which was issued under the defiant title Nuts,” recalled Chilton. The audience reaction was dubbed in and none of the listeners or reviewers realised at the time. The sleeve notes joked that it was “a night to remember for those who can. Some can’t”.
For all their doubts about the suitability of the flamboyant singer, the club’s hierarchy realised that a Melly audience would spend a lot on drink and his singing and humour went down well. Although their first official gig at Ronnie’s was as second on the bill to drummer Elvin Jones, Melly and the Feetwarmers soon had their own long solo runs and went on to play month-long Christmas residencies for the following three decades (two sets a night, at 10.45pm and 1.30am) and became such a Christmas tradition that they were jokingly referred as the “jazz pantomime”. “And next is George Melly, God help us,” Scott would drolly announce.
Melly, dressed in outlandish striped suits and sporting a fedora, was usually the centre of drama. His Telegraph obituary captured the mood of some of his early shows: “Melly went through periods of colossal excess and his performances had a uniquely erratic quality. ‘The captain is no longer in command of the ship,’ was one of John Chilton’s more diplomatic announcements as Melly, one night, slumped down the microphone stand on to the deck.”
Famous visitors were a regular feature of the club in the Melly era, whether it was actors such as Adam West, Lee Marvin, Robert Wagner, Peter Sellers or Jack Nicholson, or comedians such as Graham Chapman and Spike Milligan. Princess Margaret was a regular guest. Cassius Clay came in with his entourage. Politicians of all different hues – including Conservative Kenneth Clark, Labour man John Prescott or Liberal Charles Kennedy – would forget their political differences and socialise together over a common love of jazz.
Fellow musicians such as Paul McCartney and Van Morrison called in to see Melly at Ronnie’s, as did Liza Minnelli. “‘Momma would have loved your numbers!’ Could Liza have told me anything more calculated to please?” said Melly, a fan of Judy Garland. Melly even fulfilled an ambition one night to play one set in full drag, wig, padded bra, frock and high-heeled shoes. Scott played along, announcing that Melly was ill but his aunt Georgina was valiantly standing in.
Ronnie Scott’s always had its own special atmosphere, whether it was the wise-cracking door staff – who were happy to banter about football – or the down-to-earth way that even the most famous guests were treated. When Miles Davis visited the club with an entourage that included his dentist, hairdresser and several female friends, he was treated with remarkable deference by the audience. At the end of the evening, though, Larry the cleaner shouted to Davis and his party, “Come on you lot – time to get out. I’ve got to sweep up here, come on, out of it!” The famous trumpeter and his acolytes rose to their feet and drifted quietly into the night.
Melly was not alone in his outlandish behaviour. An inebriated Nina Simone arrived on stage once dressed raggedly, carrying her shopping bags with her to the piano. She sang a couple of numbers before haranguing the audience and leaving mid-song. Ella Fitzgerald disliked the smoky atmosphere and insisted that the audience were not allowed to smoke during her show. Singer Blossom Dearie was annoyed by the chatter of the crowd. “If you go on talking, I’m heading straight back to New York,” she told them.
The staff of the 1970s would sometimes recall the disastrous brief stay by Tom Waits in June 1976. The 26-year-old American singer was writing songs for his Small Change album during a two-week residency at the club. He was irritated by the small crowds who turned out and he did not like being heckled. “Your opinions are like assholes, buddy… everybody’s got one,” he shouted at a customer.
He was drinking heavily and even flicked a lit cigarette at another spectator. He rowed with co-owner King, who told him to pack his bags after three nights. The debacle prompted Waits to write the witty song The Piano Has Been Drinking, Not Me (An Evening with Pete King), which included the lines “the carpet needs a haircut, and the spotlight looks like a prison break”.
Although the club’s financial ups and downs continued in the 1980s – when Chris Blackwell, head of Island Records, helped come to the rescue with a donation – the big-names kept coming, with stars such as Stephane Grappelli, Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie, Chick Corea and Wynton Marsalis playing at the club.
There were also concerts by rock and pop musicians, including Snarky Puppy, Chaka Khan, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck and Lady Gaga. Prince even played a memorable sold-out show that fans queued all night to attend. Curtis Mayfield, Taj Mahal, Norah Jones and Lisa Stanfield are among the musicians to have recorded live albums at the venue. In October 1991, things were going well enough for the club to open a branch in Birmingham.
In his final years, Scott grew nostalgic about the club and his life in music. Chilton said that they would often spend hours each night talking about the past and the world of jazz. Scott, who suffered from depression and had gambling problems, was fulsome in his praise of other musicians as he told funny anecdotes. Sadly, the 69-year-old overdosed on barbiturates on December 23 1996, with the coroner later giving a verdict of death by misadventure. Melly and the band were told of their friend’s death just before going on. “That was the hardest gig we ever played,” added Chilton.
Scott and King can be proud of their part in British music history. They created an institution that is still thriving 60 years on. It is now under the care of Sally Green, owner of the Old Vic, who bought the club from the late King in 2005. “Ronnie Scott’s grew from its tentative beginnings in a grimy basement to become the most respected jazz venue in the world, the place where it was considered an honour to be booked,” Melly said.
