This post is from an author we have worked with at Mumubl or an author who has recognised regular high quality posts.
What are featured authors?
One of the ballads on the [Easy Roller’s] album — called Maybe — is me trying to do that. When I first got a real book, a book of chords and lead sheets and jazz standards, I remember trying to learn God Bless the Child sketchily on the piano. Billie Holiday’s version is the defining one — she co-wrote it. Back when I was getting going, it was well-known artists like that — I guess that’s just where you start.
I remember having a lot of Billie Holiday CDs in the house as a kid. The CDs would have been my parents’ — there was always a CD on in the house, and some of them were taken from my grandparents’ house when they passed away, including a big 14-CD big-band jazz box set and lots of Billie Holiday compilations. I remember being 7, going on holiday to a little bungalow in France, and one of the CDs always left in the kitchen was an Ella Fitzgerald greatest hits. I wasn’t that aware at the time of her history with Chick Webb and the big-band scene, but from a young age I’d heard scat singing and drums and horn sounds and knew this music was called jazz. I think you could easily get to 7 without being exposed to that — it’s not the music that’s on in the background in shops or on Capital FM. I was always aware of how many different colours there could be, whether an Ella Fitzgerald CD or Peter and the Wolf in the car — not just pop tunes. Not that I don’t like pop tunes — I’ve been trying to get my two-year-old into Olivia Rodrigo, he’s having none of it at the minute.
A lot of my awareness of jazz would have come from home like that. My godfather was very into jazz, and once I started learning saxophone he used to buy me a jazz album every year — I remember having Saxophone Colossus by Sonny Rollins. These aren’t directly related to the Easy Rollers’ music, but they’re related to why I do what I do. Of course, a lot of the jazz standards on those later albums started as ’20s and ’30s Tin Pan Alley tunes in the first place — it’s all part of the same sphere.
It was probably about 16 when I first heard of Jelly Roll Morton, because I was bought a CD called Blues and Roots by Charles Mingus, which happened to be recorded in February 1959 on the actual day my godfather was born — he’s always had an affinity with that album. One of the tunes on it has a direct reference to Jelly Roll Morton in the title, and you end up Googling what the titles mean and piecing it together later. You can hear in Mingus’s writing that it’s obviously a deliberate homage to earlier stuff, but you don’t know that when you first hear it.
That route back is brilliant and I’d love it if people heard The Easy Roller’s and it lead them back to some of the stuff that influences us. That would be wonderful.
Taken from an interview with Jamie Stockbridge of The Easy Rollers in conjunction with Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot – You can get tickets for the band’s show there on the 15th July, along with their other upcoming gigs at https://www.theeasyrollers.co.uk/diary and you can view the other upcoming events at the Shakespeare North Playhouse at https://shakespearenorthplayhouse.co.uk/
