Crane River Jazz Band

The band consisted of Ben Marshall (banjo), Ron Bowden (drums), Sonny Morris (trumpet) and Ken Colyer (trumpet). It was unusual for a band to have two trumpet players but Ben and Ron were friends with Sonny and didn’t want to kick him out of the band. So Ken had the choice to join a band that already had a trumpet player or not join the band. He joined the band and soon became the bandleader and took control of the songs they were playing. In March 1949 they found a place where they could rehearse, if only on Tuesdays. Behind a local pub in Cranford, The White Hart pub, was the British Legion Hut which was part of the pub's property. It had a stage and the band had more than enough space to rehearse without annoying neighbours and family members. It was perfect, the only problem was that they were only allowed to rehearse on Tuesdays. For the other days in the week the band had to find a different spot to rehearse and they found a very unlikely place to rehearse in peace. The four band members took their instruments to a field next to the Crane River and played there with only some cows as an audience. When local residents walked or cycle by they must have been wondering what these guys were doing playing music in a field.
Soon the question arose of what to call this new band, Ken wanted his name in the bandname but the other three didn’t agree and came up with the name The Crane River Jazz Band. This was of course a reference to their unusual rehearsals next to the river. Because of the river in their band name they decided to use Down By The River Side as their theme song and play it during each show. Not that they were already playing shows, they were only rehearsing by the river or behind the White Hart pub.
In May 1949 Ken asked multi-instrumentalist John R.T Davies to join the band, Davies was a schooled musician and he could play trombone, trumpet and alto saxophone. Davies only wanted to join the band if his younger brother Julian could play bass in the band. So the two brothers joined the Crane River Jazz Band and brought a lot of professionalism into the band.
For months The Crane River Jazz Band goes to the hall behind the White Hart pub to rehearse and after a while people from the pub decide to come in to listen to the band. More and more people take their beer and go and listen to the band playing, and word got around that there was a good jazz band playing for free every Tuesday evening. Soon also teenagers, who are not old enough to drink and enter a pub, go to see the band play. The band likes the fact that they are attracting a crowd but ignore them and will stop in the middle of a song because someone made a mistake, they also spend a lot of time talking with each other about the song onstage. The crowd doesn’t care, they dance when the music is playing and just wait when the band isn’t playing. On one Tuesday evening clarinet player Monty Sunshine walked into the rehearsal and without knowing anybody in the band, he was a member of The Crane River Jazz Band by the end of the night.
Having now rehearsed for a few months and attracting a nice crowd every Tuesday evening, they decide it’s time to start performing instead of rehearsing in front of a crowd. The band starts The Crane River Jazz Club on Tuesday evenings in their rehearsal place and starts asking an entrance fee. This means they play a full set without stopping during a song to talk to each other but really play a concert. Very soon they find out that Ken, as well as Monty and Sonny, don’t have the stamina to blow their instrument for a complete show. So they decide to play two sets with a thirty minute break in between sets. To entertain the audience during this break Bill Colyer is asked to play some records from his extensive collection and tell something about the artists. This was not something new, in jazz clubs around England there were people playing imported records and telling stories about the musicians that nobody had heard about in the UK.
After almost playing together for a year drummer Ron Bowden decided to leave the Crane River Jazz Band in September 1949. He is not crazy about the old jazz style the Crane River Jazz Band plays and rather plays modern jazz. The band is now without a drummer and is unable to find one, mostly because there were not many drummers around because it was an expensive instrument. So to help his little brother out Bill Colyer, who doesn’t have the money for a drumkit, joins the band on washboard. This reminds the two brothers of their days jamming during their boat trip and begin to think about a different kind of band that could play during the break. What if the two brothers, together with a bass player, play some old American roots music instead of Bill playing records. From October 1949 Bill, Ken and Julian Davies played a set during the interval of the Crane River Jazz Band and called this new band the Breakdown Group. As far as we know this is the first time a British band plays these old jazz and blues songs, and the Breakdown Group soon gets their own supporters. Talk about the Crane River Jazz Band and the Breakdown Group spread fast and from 1950 on the band also played shows outside of the Crane River Jazz Club. They play various venues in West London and sometimes perform at an Art School dance. Next to their Tuesday evenings in the Crane River Jazz Club the band now also plays on Monday evenings in the cellar of 11 Great Newport Street, which was the home of The Lincoln Gardens club (later Ken Colyer’s Jazz Club). Their performances soon caught the attention of the music press but they didn’t like the wild music these young kids were playing.
In 1951 the government organised a huge festival, with the intention to forget about the past and show what Britain had to offer for the future. The Crane River Jazz Band was also asked to perform during this ‘Festival of Britain’. On July 14, 1951 The Crane River Jazz Band performed at the new Royal Festival Hall in front of two princesses.
Ken Colyer later wrote: “The Cranes were grudgingly allowed to play although there was strong opposition from some quarters. We were a bunch of roughnecks playing a purposefully primitive music. We might dirty up the place and offend the ears of Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth.”
The show in the Festival Hall would be the last time Ken Colyer played with the Crane River Jazz Band as he was kicked out of the band shortly thereafter.
Around the same time trombonist Keith Christie and clarinet player Ian Christie had just left the very successful Humphrey Lyttelton Band and wanted to start their own band. The two brothers asked Ken to join them as well as Crane River Jazz Band Ben Marshall (banjo) and pianist Pat Hawes. They named the band The Christie Brothers Stompers and soon got a regular gig playing the 100 Club in Oxford Street, Soho. Ken is not the leader of the band anymore, the Christie brothers are the leaders of this band and Ken finds it difficult to be open minded about other styles of jazz. When the brothers suggest they play more modern style jazz, Ken leaves the band. He only played with the Christie Brothers Stompers for less than six months before walking away from it.