Memories of the Kelly Pub.

The Kelly, on Hedgeley Road in Hebburn is now up for sale (£295k). Named after the Hebburn built WWll destroyer that was immortalised in the film In Which we Serve it was never a jazz pub although I do recall Ray Brown's Tyne Valley Stompers playing there - once!

However, back in the 1980s it was very much a 'jazz pub'. Not because of the music but because of the assortment of jazz/jazz related musicians who would congregate there on Wednesday afternoons and attempt to drink the bar dry.

Apart from myself, Bill Shaw, Charlie Carmichael, the brothers Schofield and George Moon  were but some of those to whom the Kelly on a Wednesday afternoon was like going to church on a Sunday.

When Bill Shaw died, Geoff Schofield summed up those afternoons perfectly. "The education I received from Bill, Charlie Carmichael, Lance, and my brother Graham on Wednesday afternoons in the Kelly was quite different but in many ways superior to the one I got from Sunderland Poly on the other days of the week."

Of course the carousing didn't end at the, then, 3:00pm closing time. There was an off-licence next door and I just lived around the corner so bottles/cans were purchased and duly opened. Basie or Dizzy was on the record player with the volume turned up and, according to my wife returning from work, the music could be heard several streets away! Fond memories. Lance