My father wanted me to be a mechanic. I
wanted to be a musician.It transpired I was not good at either.
Leaving school at 14 after being evacuated three times, I lasted out nearly a
week in a Wanstead garage the shortness being due to crossing the thread
while changing a spark plug on the Guvnor's Jaguar SS. An office job (post boy)
in the shipping world of Leadenhall Street followed.
When an air raid sounded, I often did fire watch duty on the roof. If a plane
was spotted approaching, an alarm bell was rang and the staff (and bell ringer)
would scurry down to the basement. A skylight on the roof gave access to the
telephone room where the office girls would meet for morning coffee. I couldn'tt
see them but could vaguely hear through a hole in the window frame woodwork.
Borrowing a large funnel from mum?s kitchen I jammed the pointed end into the
woodwork and was able to hear the girls through the horn end. I liked to think that this was my first
venture into sound amplification.
The
voluptuous Miss Gray (a dead ringer
for Jane Russell) told stories about how her GI boyfriend couldn'tt
keep his
hands off her, whilst a stunning beauty, Miss McDougal related tips on
how to
juggle two GI boyfriends and her Scots Guards fiancée. His name was
Hamish. Whenever this name crops up, Miss McDougal's image comes to
mind. When Miss
McDougal walked down Leadenhall Street, lamp posts
would wince as gentlemen walked into them. I had no experience of grown up
girls before and it was all heady stuff for a fourteen year old boy, my blood
temperature often soared. Once I was so engrossed I totally missed a Heinkel
bomber passing over. Of course, when the typists got back to their desks,
butter wouldn't melt in their mouths!
US Lines
(provider of Liberty Ships) was
situated at 38 Leadenhall Street. The
Managing Director was Clinton Hiram Kemp; I could forge his signature to this
day. He mysteriously came and went with a brief case chained to his wrist. Was
he CIA? Did the CIA exist then?
US Lines telephone number was Royal 6677. Funny, I remember that to this day
while not sure of my own mobile number.
When my dad was invalided out of the army in
1943, I reluctantly left the shipping industry to help dad who had found an
empty shop adjoining the Rex cinema in Leytonstone High Road. Here, Scott's Buffet was born. Dad and I
worked all night for (what seemed like) weeks decorating, making and fitting
counters and generally getting ready for the launch. When air raids subsided a
huge new window was installed without shatter glass strips. One morning, after
cleaning this beautiful window a V2 rocket fell nine hundred yards away and
blew the entire window outwards - my charmed life had begun. (See War. What is it Good For?)
The buffet was a great success and became
a haven of rest for American Air Force personnel, thanks largely to mum's
superb coffee and cuisine, which she insisted had to be of a standard as if
feeding her family. Being close to the Burghley Hall, a popular dance hall
hot spot of the time, the alternating bands would spend their break times in Scott's Buffet and in one of these breaks I fortuitously met boy
wonder drummer Kenny Clare, later to be voted 2nd best
drummer in the world by Metronome Magazine (it was always difficult to top
Buddy Rich).
Years earlier, I did two paper rounds and
a milk round on Saturdays to enable me to purchase a second hand John Grey drum
kit. Dad thought I was demented. I did gigs in a quartet most weekends, often
carrying my kit home from the bus station as anti-aircraft guns on the Wanstead
flats hammered at unseen German airplanes overhead. Later, I further
experimented with the clarinet and trombone. - both doomed. Dad would shake his
head in disgust, You should have learnt a trade boy. His opinion was that I
was constantly trying to dodge work and listen to stupid jazz music.
Mum and
dad always called me boy. I detested my given name Walter, choosing a middle
name Edward, shortened sometimes to Eddie, or Ted. No wonder they got confused
and kept to boy.
During National Service, I played in
bigger dance bands, where my drumming expertise was seriously exposed. (see This Is The Army Mr. Ted). Much
later I bought a Conn alto
saxophone and was tutored by Cecil Pressling the lead alto in the Oscar Rabin
band. Being an avid modern jazz fan, I tended to run long before I could walk
and the saxophone went the way of the previous instrumental aspirations.
Having moved from café to café several
times, mum and dad found the work arduous and tiring. Sixteen hour days were
not uncommon and it was no life for me or my sisters. Dad vainly sought
alternative means of a living before finishing up in a failing office furniture
business. Dad's exploits and hard work in trying to avoid 'hard work' would
fill a book.
Kenny Clare had served his National
Service in the RAF and we had always kept in touch. One weekend I stayed with
Kenny and told him the future, for me, looked bleak. In terror, I told him I might have to
actually find a job. After much speculation he suggested I go into the disc-cutting
business. He recounted the success of someone he had met in the States. Kenny by this
time was drumming aboard the QE1 the New York/Southampton 'ferry' bringing
back priceless jazz albums unavailable in the UK. Why didn't
I get a recording outfit and bootleg these albums for hungry modern jazz
addicts. It sounded like a lifeline to me and exciting to boot.
My father was down to his last few
hundred pounds and after scouring the phone books we went to the MSS Recording
Company in Colnbrook, near Heathrow and spent nearly £600 on equipment that,
despite a lengthy demonstration by a charming Mr. Pemberton, I retained only the haziest idea of the
four hours tuition. £600 in 1951 was a lot of dosh, had I wasted dad's
money. In retrospect, considering his
total inability to comprehend the mysterious equipment he had paid for, his
faith in me was astounding probably tinged with desperation! After much experimentation, I discovered
I had knack for the art of acetate disc cutting and even more so an ear for
sound mixing.
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| It all began in the back room |
Within a year, the backroom of our house
on the Bypass in East Ham was a mass of wires and machinery. The business was
going so well I up-graded to a professional disc cutting lathe. The original
cutter only recorded at 78 rpm. Now, with the new lathe, I had 3-speed
capability with varigroove. An LP could now be cut with considerably more
grooves than the old one, offering a longer recording. However, if the grooves
were too close, louder passages infiltrating into each other ruined the disc.
Thus a varigroove method meant that the sound level from the tape recorder was
monitored prior to cutting, changing the width of the groove. However, the
nearer the centre of the disc, with less land to cover, hiss got unacceptably
louder.
After hearing a 1950 LP of The Duke
Ellington Orchestra, which was the finest quality I had ever heard. (Masterpieces
By Ellington ? released Columbia Records
1950 - re-released 2004 Sony - CK 87043.) I decided to write to Columbia Records in New York
outlining my
problem. I was stunned two months later to receive
a package from their technical department advising me to use 'hot cut'.
Technical details to achieve this were enclosed. It involved wrapping
DC heated
ultra thin SWG wire around the cutting styli enabling the needle to cut
through
the acetate like a hot knife through butter. A method of collecting the
swarf
was also fitted using a miniature vacuum cleaner. Before, if often
rounded back
to clog the styli - another blank ruined. Fitting both of these
innovations
often took lots of candle burning; involving dozens of cutting styli
shrivelled
with too much heat, not to mention probably sixty, or so, ruined blank
acetates.
With my new set-up intact, I was
recording groups, singers and amateur shows on a regular basis (and a bit of
bootlegging on the side). Dad was the business brain; I was the boffin in the
backroom, from which my sisters were strictly banned, although Cindy recollects
(at the age of ten) watching the swarf swirling into the vacuum tube as a
record was being cut, having been instructed to 'sit down, shut up and above
all, don't touch anything . She also remembers my finally giving in, allowing
her to make a record of 'I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Klaus' for her mummy. So, I
wasn't t such an ogre, after all?
Kenny Clare was now playing with Johnny
Dankworth and after a live broadcast; both Johnny and Cleo Laine would trek out
to East Ham, where mum would make them a cup of tea while they listened to a playback
of their broadcast on one of my tape machines. Today's iPod generation would be
astounded to learn that there were only a handful of tape recorders around in
those days. Presumably the BBC was not in the business of playing back live
broadcasts to mere musicians.
One gig that came from my adverts was to
record an end-of-term Sub-Lieutenants show at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. There were
forty or fifty subs of both sexes in the show which was cleverly written by
Ronnie Baker and Don Styles with a heavy nautical vein. The standard of
performance was quite high. For a whole day, I recorded the musical rehearsals
using close microphone technique, then 'on the night' with the audience
present, just footlight microphones. Later, I edited the close up stuff into
the evening performance. The show was then edited down to fifty minutes
allowing it to be transferred to a 12' acetate. To my astonishment we had
orders from the cast and audience for over 140 LP's. I think this quantity was
due to dad telling the Subs that he would post the LP out to their home address
COD, so that their parents would pay (brilliant move dad). Before this order was completed, the next
sub-show was ready to record. In all, six sub-shows. I was often cutting well
into the early hours.
After continually cutting the same disc over and over it
is little wonder that now, many years later, I still have those songs and
lyrics swirling around in my head. Modern jazz addict Alan Shillum designed
beautiful sleeves for the albums, in return for jazz records. Al (later my
brother-in-law) after an exciting career as a jobbing journalist rose to the
heady heights of Managing Editor of the Daily Mirror. He was (and still is) a
very good artist.
I never
considered my boot legging career to be illegal or offensive. In my mind I was
even providing a public service. Modern Jazz albums were totally unavailable in
the UK. I had a
customer base of 5-600 modern jazz fans. Christmas 1952 our front room was
swamped with over 500 Christmas cards.
That Christmas Eve, an avid fan named Eddie
Barton (from oooop north) suddenly arrived on the doorstep with a friend who
appeared to be a mute! They were totally uninvited but welcomed none-the-less.
They were both tee total and we were badly stocked with lemonade. Mum also had
to provide vegetarian meals for them, not easy in those days, let alone
Christmas Eve.
Eddie spotted an old upright piano in the front room and asked
whether he could play it. Dad (always game for a knees up) willingly gave
permission. Eddie sat down and started playing obscure Bartok music very loudly. At one point I think dad
was considering a house ejection.
Eddie often jumped in on conversations
obscurely reciting jazz criticisms that I used to make on my blurb sheets, verbatim. They kipped on the capacious
sofa in the front room, surrounded by hundreds of Christmas cards, turkey left
overs, lots of empty glasses and, if memory serves, two slightly intoxicated
budgies. With your Mr. Memory tricks and instantaneous Bartok brilliant recital
capabilities. Where are you now Eddie
Barton?
The modern
jazz blurb sheets I sent out would contain truthful warts-and-all reviews of
the albums available. Later I began to accept six 78-rpm records (good
condition only) in exchange for one of my jazz albums. I amassed many hundreds
of 78's and opened a small record shop to dispose of them. The shop in Romford
Road, Manor Park (east London) also became
the disc cutting centre. All the equipment from mum and dad's house in East Ham
was transferred to the shop's back room. It was here that my experimentations
with hot-cut formulated.
All night cutting sessions were the norm and many
friends (including the aforementioned Dennis Sullivan and Al Shillum) would
congregate there to yap and listen, even occasionally to buy. Drink or drugs (virtually
unknown in those days) were NEVER involved just music music music. The profit
ratio connected with the 78rpm record exchanges was quite poor, especially,
after postage and the inevitable breakages, but the enterprise generated many
friends and brought many fans together.
I advertised my
recording services regularly in The Musical Express. My ads were always
'unusual' i.e., IS THAT A FLYING SAUCER?
NO IT 'S A TED SCOTT 'S DISC BEING EXPRESSLY DELIVERED. Advertising Manager
Percy Dickens foresaw the advent of
commercial television years before it came and wanted to set me up in a Soho studio
recording jingles and suchlike. Regretfully I never went down that road.
With
the record shop now well established, run by mum and dad, the bootleg side of
the business was (ahem) curtailed after a
not very friendly visit by a representative of Esquire Records who had
just started releasing some modern jazz stuff in 1958. The amateur recording
stuff was beginning to bore me slightly. Recording a singer or group who were
well below par musically embarrassed me greatly.
Dad was terrific with
amateurs; he would have made a great impresario. Sometimes, during a playback
of something recorded the night before, I had to leave the room whilst dad
extolled the (almost non-existent) virtues of the performer(s) - it nearly
always transpired that the more amateur the performer, the more records they
would order. The seemingly prestigious job of recording the Oscar Rabin band so
they could hear their performance was almost always pro bono work. Around that
time I did a regular acetate cutting service for Radio Luxembourg.
Pre-released tracks were sent to me on acetate; I would do several copies and
distribute them to the Luxembourg in-house
DJs.
After a harrowing
session in an east London pub
recording a tacky Dixieland band and then replaying it all the following
morning with the band present was too much for me. On top of that dad kept
asking for tracks to be replayed because he 'really liked it ' - I had learned
that Radio Luxembourg had a vacancy for a sound assistant. I decided to take
the bull by horns and join the professional world. Mum and dad still had the
record shop to play with and (stupidly) I allowed all the equipment to be sold
off.
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