Mention of Newcastle's "Change Is" nightclub brought to mind the guy who played piano there - Martin Blackwell. This would be in the 1970s and I was working in a music shop selling, among other things, jazz records. We held a large selection of Blue Note LPs and Martin was one of our best customers. The problem was he had to have literally everything on Blue Note that was jazz piano related which of course meant the whole catalogue!
Each week he'd buy a couple of LPs and reserve another couple. These we'd stash in a box for him until the following week when he'd return to buy them. Except he didn't! Some other discs would catch his eye and he'd buy them instead and so it went on...
He was a fine pianist then so I imagine he is a prodigious one now. I see his name in the listings quite often but never far enough north for me to get to hear him although I vagually recall him at The Corner House once in the dim and murky past.
If he chances to read this it's "Hello" from Lance, formerly of Windows Music Shop, Newcastle - perhaps he even got to accompany Susannah McCorkle - if she did appear at "Change Is".
The club, incidentally, was owned by Bob Monkhouse.
Lance.
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