HISTORY
Some time in the early 1980s a group of school pals sat in a coffee bar in Walsall, planning the rhythm and blues band they were going to form. Normally a band is formed by, for instance, a guitarist meeting a piano-player, then they would recruit a bass player and so on. But not in this case. Rather on the lines of the Austin High School gang some sixty years previously and several thousand miles west, they allocated each other their instruments, went out to buy them and then set about learning to play them. Today the band they formed is one of the most popular jazz and swing bands in The World.
No one can remember quite how this 1986 photo came about, except that
it was taken at the famous Mitchells & Butlers Cape Hill Brewery in
Birmingham. The delectables were known as The Jazzettes, with an
impossibly young King, Dixie Prince on guitar and Bullmoose on double
bass.
If that sounds a bit like a fairytale, then it is difficult not to with
KING PLEASURE & THE BISCUIT BOYS, a band that has always defied
belief and blurred the fine line between fact and fiction.
The
lad who clicked for the tenor sax in that coffee bar conversation is
now notorious as KING PLEASURE. Still with the band is one of his
schoolfriends, now known as BULLMOOSE K. SHIRLEY, though one suspects
the school registers read a little differently. By 1986, together with
P. POPPS MARTIN and THE DIXIE PRINCE on guitar, they were operating
under the name of Some Like It Hot, busking on the streets of Walsall.
A busking competition in Birmingham brought success, a prize of £100
and the notice of Jim Simpson, one of the judges. Now Jim is well-known
for having a remarkable effect on young bands and by October 1986,
after playing a few gigs at the Birmingham Jazz Festival, Some Like It
Hot duly disbanded.
A year
later, operating under the name of The Satellites, the band was
confident enough to re-contact Jim with a view to management. This time
his influence was less dramatic: The Satellites didn’t disband, simply
changed their name, and from December 1987, it’s been impossible to
escape King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys. By then drummer BAM-BAM
BERESFORD had become a fixture with the band and the KPs settled down
to a line-up that was the nucleus of the band for many years: King
Pleasure and P. Popps Martin on saxes. Bullmoose K. Shirley (formerly
on bass) moving to guitar and replaced by SLAP HAPPY, with Bam-Bam
Beresford on drums.
Pure Hollywood, with Bullmoose, Sugar Lee, Piano Man Skan, The King, Bam-Bam, Happy and P. Popps.
Right
from the outset there was a deal of myth-making surrounding the KPs,
confusing to those who can’t see a good spoof when it nudges them in
the ribs. For instance, their first Big Bear long-player, 'KING
PLEASURE & THE BISCUIT BOYS', released in 1988, was in mono, with
the bland assertion, “These tracks have not previously been released on
long-playing record”, while the recording studio was credited as
‘Outlaw Studios, Wm’. Could that by Wyoming? Not really, try ‘West
Midlands’. The sleeve note was full of references to territory bands
and legendary sessions in the Mid-West. Despite the evocation of the
40s, the average age of the band at the time was about 21!
By
the time of the first album King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys had
become a 7-piece, with PIANO-MAN SKAN and vocalist LISA 'SUGAR' LEE
added. In fact the early changes in the band over the five-plus years
of its existence mostly consisted of additions: the central core hardly
changed and the band operated as a co-operative and democratic unit,
with the members even attending band meetings!
In
1989 King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys memorably shared the stage
with the venerable and legendary CAB CALLOWAY, an early influence and a
hero of the band. Surrounding Cab are Bullmoose, Bam-Bam, Sugar Lee, P.
Popps, The King, Skan and Slap Happy.
The
KPs’ follow-up album, 'THIS IS IT!', made in 1990, featured the same
line-up and the same spoof archaism, but by 1991, when their third
album 'BETTER BEWARE!' was released (also on Big Bear), changes had
occurred. The band had decided to dispense with a girl singer and had
boosted the horns by the addition of COOTIE ALEXANDER who was working
as a musical instrument repairer when he heard on the workshop radio
that the KPs were looking for a trumpet player. Two days and a
successful audition later, they found one. With Better Beware!, too,
the joke is up: the Mid-West is replaced by the West Midlands as the
boys’ point of origin and, despite sleeve photographs of crushing
absurdity, there’s a lot of seriously good music. Even as respected a
jazzer as Pete Strange contributed a handful of arrangements and put in
a chorus or two of trombone.
While
resident at House Of Blues, the band take time out to be photographed
in Harvard, made famous in 'Harvard Blues' by Jimmy Rushing and The
Basie Band.
The next recruit to the band, in January 1992, replaced Piano Man Skan. At the tender age of 17, IVORY DAN McCORMACK came from Stockton-on-Tees and carried on the KP tradition of somehow always coming across the right person at the right time. By 1993, with the fourth album on the way, the solo power and section work was beefed up even more. BIG AL NICHOLLS (tenor) joined from the Big Town Playboys to make up a potent three-saxophone section.
Big Al contributed
an impressive array of new arrangements to the band and featured on the
acclaimed 'LIVE AT RONNIE SCOTT'S' CD. The band’s next recording
represented a significant career milestone. With venerated guests,
Charles Brown, Gene ‘The Mighty Flea’ Connors, Val Wiseman and Howard
McCrary the band cut the seminal 'BLUES & RHYTHM REVUE VOL. 1' CD
which once and for all dismissed any lingering doubts about the sheer
quality and importance of King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys.
This
is the King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys line-up that barnstormed
America. Seen here outside Dan Aykroyd's House of Blues in Cambridge,
Massachusetts are Bullmoose, Bam-Bam, Ivory Dan, The King, Slap Happy,
Johnny Boston, P. Popps and Cootie Alexander.
Tenor
saxophonist JOHNNY BOSTON replaced Al Nicholls in 1994, with the band
still clocking up more than 200 performances each and every year. March
1995 saw them return to the U.S.A. for the best tour yet, with dates in
San José, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Washington climaxing
with 4 sell-out shows at Dan Ackroyd’s House Of Blues in Boston. By the
autumn, the hectic tour schedule had taken its toll on Boston, he
stepped down to be replaced by the experienced BIG MART WINNING,
joining direct from The Ray Gelato Giants.
In
September 1996, feeling that the front line needed a shake-up, the band
released Cootie Alexander and reverted to the three horn, four rhythm
line-up.
This one's for you to caption and identify the vintage football stars.
In the grand tradition of The Basie Band, personnel adjustments rather
than changes became the order of the day over the subsequent years with
trumpet man BIG MALLY BAXTER stepping in on tenor and Johnny Boston
returning for six months to line-up alongside Big Mart Winning creating
an unsurpassable battling tenor team. Cutting the band back from nine
to eight, with Winning head-hunted to join Van Morrison and Boston
deciding to form his own band, JULIAN WEBSTER-GREAVES stepped in to
occupy the tenor saxophone chair. This is the band who recorded the
huge-selling 'SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE', recorded in 1998 and featuring
the now-famous, outrageous artwork from the hand of no less than King
Pleasure himself, clearly displaying yet another talent.
In
2001, again walking in the footsteps of The Basie Band, The King
decided that the band, who had been on the road by then, in one form or
another, for 15 years, were in danger of becoming a little staid, less
dangerous. Refusing to let the fire go out, he boldly released the
existing musicians, with the exception of Bullmoose K. Shirley, and
hired a virtually new young band, lining up as KING PLEASURE
(vocals/tenor/baritone saxes), BOYSIE BATTRUM (tenor/alto saxes),
CRAB-CLAW TROMANS (piano), BULLMOOSE K. SHIRLEY (guitar), SHARK VAN
SCHTOOP (double bass), DANGEROUS DAVE WILKES (drums).
The Band Now.
With
the fire now well and truly burning the New Testament Band has already
established itself as Numero Uno on the world's jazz and swing stage.
The mini-CD 'LET 'EM ROLL' was released in February 2002 featuring the
current line-up.
There is no
denying the KP’s popularity, the polish and the ability to assault,
involve and ultimately exhaust an audience, but, some would say, that
doesn’t make them a good jazz band ... or even a jazz band. Well, the
border between jazz and blues has plenty of traffic crossing it. It’s
true that King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys as warm-up band for the
Modern Jazz Quartet would not be the most appropriate choice. It is
also true that the crazy stage and zany visuals are still there (some
purists find it difficult to take seriously a diminutive bass player
who somehow plays the instrument wonderfully while taking it to two
submissions or a knock-out), but humour, the wilder the better, has an
honourable place in the story of jazz.
The
point is that the music is the real thing - and good! The City Limits
reviewer had it right when he referred to the KPs as “a respected
R&B combo whose levity makes a welcome respite to the knit-brows
ploughing the furrows of authenticity.” But the involvement in the
music of the likes of Louis Jordan is total, though by no means at the
loss of originality: the material includes an increasing number of
self-penned songs to go with those from Big Joe Turner or Buddy
Johnson. But the band are still fans! Steeped in the music way before
the West End made Louis Jordan fashionable, they can at least benefit
from the current cult ... but imitators? Never!
King
Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys are a difficult band to sum up, but
Dave Clarke did a pretty fair job in Now Dig This: “Superb, a stunning
range of instrumental ability ... classy stuff in the style of Louis
Jordan and Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, with nowt taken out! A band I’d
recommend ANYBODY to go and see.”