From left to right: "Sugar-Ray", "P", "St. Rummin'", "Two Dinners", "Maurice", "Wait", "Hot Lips", "Shirley"

Photo: Geoff Pearson, Purcell Room 2001, the A-list line-up, as featured on "Too Good to Miss".

The Sloane Square Syncopators

People sometimes ask, “Didn't you used to play jazz?” to which the reply is, “No, I made it all up”.

My first “serious” band-leading was at the RAM after founding the “Legendary Lounge Lizards”, which soon became the Sloane Square Syncopators in true “New Originals” style when it emerged there was already a band called the Lounge Lizards. You couldn’t just google it in those days. This was also my first venture into HIP of a sort, playing “authentic” 1920s Hot Syncopated Dance Music and Jazz. There are similar elements between this and Baroque music, such as improvisation, ornamentation, dance forms and the reliance on a driving rhythm section/continuo but the big difference is that we have recordings of how they played back then. So, we argued about different stuff instead.

To the Victor, the spoilt. After a couple of years, I acquired and played a Conn Victor cornet built in 1927 (but with a modern Vincent Bach mouthpiece) and Tommy’s drum kit was original, or near enough I think, but otherwise, we weren’t super “hardcore” except for the bass sax. For instance, we never had a C-melody sax but we did our best to stay in style. The best band I’ve heard for authenticity would be the “Bratislava Hot Serenaders”, with admirable attention to detail, although I suspect a similar mouthpiece anachronism in the brass.

This brings up an interesting - and mistreated - aspect of HIPP in general: Eddie Mordue once pointed out during a spat with the management of the Glenn Miller Memorial Orchestra that you can buy the original recordings for almost nothing, so why bother with the more expensive recordings of a modern tribute act? A couple of the Squares’ arrangements were transcribed from original recordings as exactly as possible; even down to the piano part. At best, you can sound the same as the original recording. Then what? Where’s the creativity? Or the “Jazz”?  What isn’t art? Nurse!

The foundation of the Squares was influenced by the Red Hot Syncopators, which was formed by Thomas Walton while at school in Maidstone. The connection was Thom’s schoolmate and tubist Jerry Traves, whom I knew from the KCYO. Another dual member was Tommy Pearson, who ventured up to London for his first gigs with us when he was just 14. The Squares subsequently bought most of Thom’s arrangements and commissioned several more before his untimely departure from this cosmic plane in 2004. Stephen Trainor joined our ranks after serving with Jerry in the Pasadena Stompers while well-up at Oxford.

 The Squares ran for around 18 years doing mainly balls, posh parties, some not-so-posh parties, the odd little festival and sit-down-and-shut-up concerts. These included appearances at/for: The 100 Club (London), the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), the Purcell Room, A.N Wilson (Writer), St Katherine’s Dock, somewhere in Jersey, THE Royal Academy (of Art), LSE, UCL, asssorted nobility, King’s College (UL), promotions for Audi and Lexus cars, the Rothschilds, some music societies, Hay’s Wharf, Tobacco Dock, the Orient Express (train), Regent’s College, some Universities, the SDP, etc etc.

These gathered reviews and comments from delighted clients over the years, of which my favourite was penned by Mr H****s of Che****ham, “...and complaints from the neighbours who said the music was not loud enough.”

Our ranks wound occasionally swell to a larger 11-piece line-up playing stock arrangements, A normal ten-piece with me trying to sing, a violin played by Guera Crockett, plus vocal trio “Nobody’s Sweethearts”, consisting of Samantha Lavender, Joanna Lansbury and Cathy Salmon. Err, so it was a 14-piece line-up. Plus Dan, when he arrived. You do the maths.

    (pic) Nobody's Sweethearts

We (the core 8-piece) appeared on telly a couple of times, including Carlton TV’s “The Warehouse” but I had two arguments with the producer/director of “Opportunity Knocks” within two minutes and our act was dropped from that show. Mea culpa; but sucking up to unpleasant people was never really my thing. Not me too.

The Squares’ recordings were played on the radio, including a week-long feature on “The Music Machine”, presented by our drummer, Tommy Pearson (by a completely non-cronyistic coincidence, honest) and Verity Sharpe, which was featured on BBC Radio 4’s “Pick of the Week” in the early nineties.

We made two CDs: “Too Good to Miss”, recorded in 1996, released in 1998; and “LIVE! At the Purcell Room” (recorded 2002/2004); which remains unreleased because I got pole-axed by a promoter and had no money to do so. Those that pre-bought copies at the last concert there have been compensated. Our third CD “Charlestoned” remained on paper in a pile of yet more arrangements by Mr McNutty. The plan was to do a whole album of rock-pop covers, which seem to go down well and might have led to better festival gigs and great videos. This was a reaction to requests we’d get at parties.

Faux do-de-oh. I refused to play “swing” from the 30s and 40s because that inevitably descended to “In the Mood” and the charm of the pre-hi-hat 20s is lost (we had a lo-hat and a splash cymbal). But ironically, our “style” did transfer in a way to later tunes, especially Rock and EDM, where a ride-cymbal/hi-hat “swing” is not necessary.  We were thwarted twice in a year by a certain major label. No names or space for the long story now but the second time was with the broken promise to release our video “When the Sun Goes In”.

Photo: Steve Currid

I’m so pleased we made this video. It took a bit of luck and lot of hard work to make it happen but was such fun to make, frolicking on Camber Sands on Midsummer’s day 1999. Spike Milligan was an all-time hero (and quite a trumpeter in his day) whom I had to meet after other projects with him had fallen through. Dan was amazing and watching Louise transform from a mere beauty into a goddess when the camera pointed at her was astounding. That’s not to forget the contribution of all the boys and girls in our period costumes from the BBC props department. I’m still very grateful to Christopher Swann, Frances Peters and the production boys for their generosity.

The concept: The previous solar eclipse in Britain had been in 1927. We had a song called “When the Sun Goes In” and so the logical thing to do was make a retro pop video relating to that event.

“Sun-Crazed Jazz Band Aims to Eclipse Eastenders in Ratings War” ran the press release, including “The girls using Italian “Iorona Corona” DIY eclipse-discs, for those too busy to see the real thing.”

As it turned out, although there was some hype in the months leading up to the first solar eclipse in the UK for 72 years, on the actual day, the powers that be decided it was better TV to point cameras at ever darkening rain clouds in the belief that this was somehow a novelty in the UK. No decent offer was made for showing our video and so it remains officially unreleased. There is a solar eclipse every year somewhere in the world, particularly over East Asia, so it’s not too late to make an offer for a contract to show a hi-res version! At the time of writing this, we just missed one in the US. D'oh!

 plus pic from Brochure (right)....

The band was always made up of good people who were great musicians and the whole was yet greater than the sum of its parts. Over the years, they included:

Vocals: Daniel P Gillingwater.

Sax/clarinet: Caroline Woodland, MarkO’Brien, Stephen Trainor.

Trombone: Justin Throrogood, Mark Bassey.

Piano: Paul Moylan (and occasionally double bass on small combo gigs)

Banjo/Guitar: Graham Roberts

Tuba/ Bass Sax: Jerry Traves, Graham Read.

Drums:  Tommy Pearson, Lev Parikian, Ken Reay, Tommy Pearson

They were not always available, so, over the years we had many guest players. It was nice to be able to invite those I really admired. These included such luminaries as Martin Wheatley, Tom Langham, Stuart Hall, Barak Schmool, Humphrey Carpenter, Mike Garrick, Keith Nichols, Dai Pritchard, Jonathan Rhodes and Norman Field, purveyor of Neovox; the amazing library of compilation tapes made from rare 78 rpm recordings. Without his work, finding repertoire and expanding our appreciation brilliant-but-almost-forgotten performers would have been significantly more difficult. What will hipsters do for a mid-life crisis?

Not with a bang but a wimple: After some sumptuous venues, the Squares’ last official appearance, in name at least, was in Dorking accompanying a choir performing Will Todd’s “Mass in Blue”, conducted by Justin Doyle. I don’t say this often but there’s an excellent conductor!

Once more unto the beach, dear friends. If you have any memories, or photos of the Squares, please get in touch.

Photo: Steve Currid