Just thought this might be of interest to the group. Some of you might know that I bought a big pile of cassettes a few weeks ago, with the majority being live recordings of concerts in London. Amongst the pile is some oddities of recorded radio shows. This one, which I believe is from 1997 is 2 hours long, with the first hour being interviews and a documentary on the club and the second being Ronnie Scotts last live performance for the BBC before he died.
Its a fascinating documentary which im sure some of you would really enjoy, I bet there will be a stream on youtube or somewhere similar. A few interesting anecdotes include an interview with the house pianist, Stan Tracey (I coincidentally bought his album 'Jazz Suite' a few days ago). He had to be extremely versatile as he played with every single performer, regardless of their style, every night for many years. He was so 'broken' at the end of it that for 3 years he struggled even to climb a staircase (after he recorded he was fully fit again).
Another fantastic anecdote centers around Ronald Kirks performance. At the beginning of the gig he handed out whistles to the audience for them to play at a specific number. After performing a song for several minutes without stopping (he was circular breathing - the clip is included in the doc) the crowd began to blow their whistles. Unbeknownst to Kirk, a group of police were raiding the club and blowing their whistles to get attention, but the sound was lost in the crowd of whistles. The police told Scott to stop Kirk playing to which he replied "You stop him, I cant".
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