We here at BMA have been gathering information on Birmingham’s own Ronnie Scott’s now for some years. As with everything, there’s never enough time to gather our thoughts, so on that note, we thought if we could at least set the seed for those jazz lovers in Birmingham, they too could start contributing. We kick off proceedings with a beautiful photo of drummer Elvin Ray Jones – famed for many albums and the all-important ‘A Love Supreme’, alongside John Coltrane. Elvin sadly passed away in May of 2004, so it felt fitting in May of 2019 for us to jazz it up a little. Huge thanks to Christian Payne for this glorious image. We have more photos, magazine scans, gig listings and clippings on the way, so do remember to pop back from time to time.
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I worked at ronnies 20 plus years ago.
All i remember from that time was Cleo lane, Jhonny Dankworth and the brilliant Jim Bowen!! He was the the only man that moaned about the price of beer!!
I was a member at Ronnie Scotts for a few years and I still have my membership card. It was really good value for a years membership and you could get a guest in on the membership. We used to go to Ronnie’s a lot after closing time regardless of who was on. It wasn’t just strictly a Jazz club and I remember seeing the likes of Brian Kennedy and Lou Dalgleish who was a regular. Also remember a great night seeing Shuggie Otis and more obvious jazz acts like Georgie Fame and Martin Taylor. It was a nice atmospheric club with lots of dark corners and they even had a table for two that was practically on the stage and we sat there one night. I do remember being in the gents one night and doing what you do and looking to my left and seeing none other than Robert Plant.
I was Lou Dalgleish’s drummer manager and partner!
I loved my time at Ronnie’s, it was full on.
For the record, I was responsible for getting Brian Kennedy at the club. It was a bet with the owner Barry Sherwin.
Barry didn’t know I had met him, while tour managing Francis Black!
He was represented by the legendary 19 management, with whom I arranged, firstly a month of Sundays, as our guest, then his own week, with us guesting.
Brian also did a guest appearance on Lou’s first album, which I also organised
Nice one. Brian played there around the same time he was singing in Van Morrison’s band if I remember and didn’t he have some of Van’s band with him, seem to remember the bass player being the one I had seen with Van. Great to see people like him playing there. It really was a special place and there was nothing quite like it before in Birmingham and there has been nothing like it since. Incidentally, I remember seeing Frances Black at The Chapel at Birmingham Great Park and that was a good night.