During this period, I gave a review of clarinet and saxophone players from the Dixieland period to modern jazz.

I started with Johnnie Dodds and Sidney Bechet who played clarinet with the earliest jazz bands and made recordings from the early 1920’s. Both played with Louis Armstrong. I then moved to the 1930s and played tracks by Barney Bigard and Edmund Hall both played with Louis Armstrong All Stars. Edmund Hall played with the Louis Armstrong band which was in the film “High Society”.

There are four different types of saxophone played in jazz music, namely, soprano, alto, tenor and baritone and I played tracks by Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young on tenor saxophone who often played with singer Billie Holiday. He was often to be seen wearing a pork pie hat. I also played modern jazz tracks by Charlie Parker,  John Coltrane and Stan Getz. The group preferred the last player as we could understand the music better.

In September, I gave a more detailed talk on Sidney Bechet who was one of the most influential Dixieland jazz players from about 1910. He was self taught but could nor read music and started playing the clarinet and then changed to the soprano saxophone and played with most of the early jazz  bands and apart of Louis Armstrong, he played with Jelly Roll Morton, Joe “King” Oliver etc He came to the UK several times and was deported in the 1920s over a fight. In the 1950’s, he moved permanently to France.  He came back to the UK in later years and I saw him at a concert at the Festival Hall in 1956. He wrote many jazz songs and his most well- known song was “Petite Fleur” which became a world wild popular hit.