An experience that was both musically rewarding as well as bringing back memories from my youth.
I was 15, had just left school and met a girl at a party who was three years older than me. She also worked in a local record shop. Yes, both Jarrow and Hebburn had record shops back then!
Needless to say, I called into the record shop on Victoria Rd. West in Hebburn the very next day. 'Do you like modern jazz?' she asked. Although, at the time, I was more into popular singers such as Guy Mitchell and Johnnie Ray, I replied, 'Yeah man' which is what I decided would be the expected reply even when addressing or (in my mind) undressing a girl!
'Then listen to this' she said and played Mulligan's Nights at the Turntable. It hit me from the off and I've still got the original Vogue 78 (backed by Frenesi) although the girl and the shop have long vanished from my life.
However, Nights at the Turntable stayed around longer and when I was conscripted into the RAF one of the camp's radio stations (it could have been Cardington, Hednesford, Yatesbury or Manby) had a nightly jazz programme which used the number as its signature tune. One of the barrack room poets (not me!) composed a lyric that went: Put him on a 252 sarge, he should have known better, should have used a French letter ... the rest of the lyrics are unprintable! A 252 was the form that had to be filled in prior to disciplinary action.
The next time around was, after demob, I wandered into Max Share's music shop in Newcastle (I'd bought a Martin alto there some months previous) and discovered to my delight some printed transcriptions of the Mulligan Quartet recordings including the aforementioned piece.
Along with my friend, the late Jim McDowell on trumpet and myself playing the baritone parts on alto we beavered away until we almost got it right - almost!
The late Bill Shaw who sometimes played brushes at our practices summed it up with: 'Perhaps it should be called Nightmares at the Turntable'. He was probably right. Lance
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