Kenny Barker quartet - Aberdeen 1958

I played with Kenny on a 3 month gig at the Beach Ballroom, Aberdeen in 1959 (a place where semi-pro musicians could earn enough to survive a while). He was a very good musician, yes, having learned piano from his Cockney dad and he could busk almost anything... just sing him a few lines and he'd find something that sounded dead right. The other band members were Tommy Henderson (drums) from Glasgow and a dyed-in-the-wool Londoner on (real) double bass called Pete Marbin... also had a magical ear, always right spot on whatever the music that came up!

The Beach ballroom duties were mostly to play along on the beach stage and in a beach theatre/hall when weather demanded. There was an enterprising 'beach leader' who did Master of ceremony duties... hi-jacking people from the audience to sing or whatever (nobbly knee competition). It was the season of the limbo, and a competition ran for weeks - endless heats up to the big final. We also judged 'nicest grandmother' competitions and I had to hold a chimpanzee which I did so clumsily that it made it very nervous!

We most enjoyed playing at the jazz club or other venues and at the Music Festival at Elgin (nr. Inverness). Below is a newspaper report that survived from our spell in Aberdeen. Unfortunately I should report that Kenny, who was the leader (a Cockney), ripped us three off for a considerable amount of our pay (£3.- per week - we should have had eighteens, but got fifteens. He went out of his way to sheister us, and the other two found him out when they went on a Mecca residency with him in Leeds - he was doing the same tricks. They left the band and Kenny got some local lads on much lower pay than them, ut he was still taking the same contract sum from Mecca! The band was called Kenny and the Jets.

Kenny then owned an MGA sports car of which he was very proud (he was 26) but which had little luggage space, so I got the job of transporting bass, drums and Pete in my Hillman saloon. We found digs with breakfast and dinner in Aberdeen with a somewhat domineering lady who charged us plenty. We four had to sleep in one room, but it did at last have four beds. The other three fancied a future Mecca ballroom engagement which required all to sing. I was only a secret bathroom singer then, and I did not care for pop or even evergreen vocals. They joined up with Mecc as a trio whiIe went off to Norway on holiday and soon settled there. About a year later when revisiting London, I went up to Archer Street on a Monday, which was then the traditional gathering place for all non-classical musicians looking for gigs. There were Tommy and Pete, looking for a band. They told me the low down on Kenny's rip off... it was quite a shock as we had thought we were all mates. I never heard of Kenny again until the www came, when I found he had played piano in Chicago on several records with Willy Kent and his lot, but he mostly played with a drummer (Kenny Drew) at pubs and other music venues The Plough, Stockwell. (hear him here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTc_1aSyi3c) He had switched from piano to electric organ. He died in the 1970s from lung cancer.