I'm wondering if I'm the only person who remembers The Foolscap Club? Situated at the top end of Gateshead High Street it was, as I remember, a club for, but not exclusively, journalists. I say, not exclusively, as I was an occasional visitor and any journalistic ambitions I may have had didn't surface until many years later.
However, the main reason I frequented the club - late 1960s/early 1970s - was because Roy Marsh played organ.
Marsh was one of the first outstanding British vibes player having recorded and broadcast with Harry Parry, Eric Winstone and other British bands in the 1940s and 1950s. Although he never topped the MM polls, from 1944 until 1959 he was always in the shake-up running second to Victor Feldman in 1950.
I don't think he stayed at The Foolscap very long and I don't think the club itself lasted very long, but I do, rather vaguely, remember his playing rising above the smoke-filled, incessant chatter that was so atmospheric of clubs at that time.
Amazingly, I have yet to meet many musicians who remember Roy Marsh playing up here and none at all who can remember the club. Someone tell me I wasn't dreaming!
Lance.
Vibes
1 Victor Feldman
2 Roy Marsh
3 Tommy Pollard
4 Martin Slavin
2 comments :
Rest easy, Lance, you didn't dream it. I first came across the Fool's Cap Club in an old copy of The Stage from November 1964 when Wee Georgie Wood told them that he had travelled north for the grand opening. He said it featured Midgeley and Hawks who were very much in the style of Bob and Alf Pearson and it was run by Mr. and Mrs. Knox-Crichton. It was described in an ad thus: "Many amenities and a warm welcome to THE PROFESSION living in or visiting the North East". It didn't last long under the Knox-Crichtons and was under new management in May 1965 when Roy Marsh first seems to have appeared on the scene. It was at 91 High West Street, Gateshead which along with most of the area was demolished in the early 1970s. It had previously been what was claimed to be Gateshead's first night club and called The Coffee Pot.
Douglas-Knox Crichton appeared in a handful of films in the 1940s under the name of Knox Crichton but he was born Douglas Stewart Williams.
Thanks Alf. I recall a Knox-Crichton contributing an article to The World's Fair the magazine of The Showman's Guild. It was about the Sunday lunchtime jazz gigs at the Bluebell in Felling. This too would be in the 1960s and was probably the same guy. I still have the cutting somewhere. I guess it would be the same guy.
I recall The Coffee Pot although I don't think I was ever there when it was called that.
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