In my book I have explained how the sons of immigrants
became some of the best known bandleaders in the Golden Age of Dance Bands.
Growing up in tight knit communities, those who took up a
musical instrument would have had the opportunity laid out in front of them to
form small bands with their co-religionists, and even earn good money
accompanying silent films at their local cinema. It is likely that their
contacts within the communities would have helped them make their first steps
beyond the environs of Bethnal Green and similar ‘shtetls’.
For those living in London, especially East London, there
was a further route that many could go down. Ronnie Scott (Ronald Schatt) said
that Jews who wanted to play music travelled from the East End to the West End,
and for many of them, Jew and non-Jew the place they gravitated to was Archer
Street.
Here is an abridged story of Archer Street from John
Williamson of the University of Glasgow in an article he co-wrote for the
Musicians Union archive:
Archer Street in London is a narrow back street in Soho
which became known as a meeting point for the West End musicians during the
1920s and the days of mass unemployment in the 1930s.
The reasons that Archer Street became the hub for musicians
(rather than, for example, nearby Denmark Street which was the home of music
shops and music publishers) was down to its proximity to work places (nearby
theatres and clubs) and places to drink and socialise.
While the abundance of tea rooms, pubs and members’ clubs in
the area undoubtedly contributed to its popularity with musicians, its
popularity as a gathering point with musicians stemmed from the 1920s, when the
number of musicians working in nearby theatres (The Apollo and The Lyric both
had the stage doors which opened into Archer Street) made it an obvious
congregation point.
London Orchestral Organisation
While the London Orchestral Association had been absorbed
into the Musicians’ Union in the 1921 merger, it had retained both its premises
and identity as well as retaining a considerable influence on the London Branch
of the Union. Its (LOA) headquarters was in Archer Street in the West End of
London and was generally referred to as ‘the Club’, because this is where
musicians would go between a matinee and an evening performance in the many
theatres nearby, or to find a deputy, or just to meet friends and colleagues.
In the main meeting room there was a bar where tea, coffee
and snacks could be bought. It also had a licence to sell alcohol which
attracted a good deal more custom in the first decades of the 20th century when
many musicians, particularly woodwind, brass and percussion players, were quite
heavy drinkers. Downstairs there were washing facilities and changing rooms. On
the walls there were racks where members requiring a deputy could leave a
request, perhaps, ‘Joe Bloggs needs 2nd clarinet for evening performance,
Tuesday 23rd, 7.30 Her Majesties
However, it was perhaps the exclusive nature of the LOA and
their initial reluctance to admit members of the jazz/ dance bands that were
becoming popular in the 1920s that meant these musicians were forced to meet
outside or nearby. It was primarily for these musicians that Archer Street
became what Bill Kirkpatrick, writing in the Musician (June 1993) describes as
“a sort of dance band musicians’ Labour Exchange.”
Labour Exchange
“All the smart hotels, restaurants and clubs were bringing
in new style jazz/dance bands. Where there was a firm business investment,
regular bands were employed on a full time basis but there was also a great
deal of part-time promotion which used players on a casual basis. The old music
hall players were not, on the whole, well suited to the new style of music and
in London, the new school learned by word of mouth that there was a place where
musicians gathered in the West End.”
Kirkpatrick notes that the “class of the gigs varied widely”
with the top end comprising “high society coming out seasons, annual Hunt
balls, end of year Oxford functions and the like,” which were largely
monopolised by the “big household name band leaders,” who had their own fixers
who organised replacements if they could not do the shows themselves.”
By the 1940s Archer Street was “where anyone would go if
they wanted to book musicians for a ‘gig’, or to play on the big liners, which
all employed musicians to play at meal times and for dancing, or for the summer
seasons in the Holiday Camps,” and while Kirkpatrick reveals that while the
actual gig booking were often made by phone, the payments were made on Monday
afternoons in Archer Street:
“The offices for that process were the doorways of the few
shops in the street or one of the scores of cafes in the are. Further down the
scale, lots of gigs were booked in the street, with cash paid at the finish of
the job.”
George Green, a member of the London branch of the Musicians
Union who later died as part of the International Brigade during the Spanish
Civil War, painted a grim picture in a letter to the Daily Worker in December
1935:
“Archer Street lies within a stone’s throw of Piccadilly, at
the back of the Lyric Theatre. Here, every day, gather four or five hundred
musicians, many employed today but anxious for tomorrow. This is not the
Rhondda. Poverty does not show its access so openly. Sometimes a passerby
seeing a thronged pavement, will ask if this is a branch of the Stock Exchange.
Stranger! This is no Stock Exchange but a slave market, and here the slave who
finds no master starves.”
Williamson noted that “In the end in 1961 Melody Maker
reported that the Police had stopped allowing musicians to gather on Archer
Street on Mondays between 2pm and 5pm. By the end of the decade, the Orchestral
Association had closed its doors and the number of musicians employed declined
as yet another sea-change in music employment and the music business took place
in the 1960s. And, though Archer Street survived as a musical hub through the
musical changes of the 1920s and 1930s and the societal ones of World War II
and its aftermath, the 1960s were a change too far: musical and social changes
combined to change the face of not just Archer Street, but Soho more generally.”
King Street Blues: Jazz and the Left in Britain in the
1930s – 1940s mentioned Archer Street: “Just before the war a young
Mass-Observer, Hugh Clegg, was mingling with London’s dance band players at
their Archer Street meeting ground. As usual the street was buzzing, for, with
its cafés, pubs, Musicians’ Union office and scores of nearby clubs and
theatres, it provided the capital’s musicians with both an out-of-hours
rendezvous and an informal labour exchange. “
An article published in the Melody Maker in 1935 labelled
Archer Street as the “Street of Hope”. In many other instances this informal
network allowed musicians to find employment, thus it could significantly help
those entering into London’s music scene from outside. For instance, in 1929
Leslie Thompson arrived in London, he was out of work and so he went to Archer
Street. The first thing that surprised him was that the street was so crowded
that it was almost impossible to walk. Thompson did not know anybody, and was
the only black person there. He was even more stupefied when a man came to him
asking where he was from and what instrument he played. Eventually, that day he
found his first job in London playing in a band that performed at a Jewish
wedding.
Hanging Out
A further description of Archer Street was written by Ben Aaronovitch.
Back in the old days, my dad and his mates used to hang out
on Archer Street , where the Musicians Union used to be, in the hope of getting
work. I’d always imagined it as little knots of musicians dotted along the
pavement .
Then I saw a photograph which showed the street awash with
men in pork-pie hats and Burton suits toting their instruments around like
unemployed Mafiosi. It got so crowded and competitive, my dad said, that bands
would have secret hand gestures to communicate across the crowd, sliding fist
for a trombonist, flat hand, palm down, for a drummer, fluttering fingers for a
cornet or a trumpet .
That way you could stay friendly with your mates in the
crowd even while undercutting them for a gig at the Savoy or the Café de Paris.
My dad said you could have walked down Archer Street and assembled two full
orchestras, a big band and still have enough bodies left for a couple of
quartets.
An Indiscreet Side to Soho by Stanley Jackson further
backs up this informal even anarchic side to the street. Jackson stated “Your
music professional has little sense of time. He will stand about Archer Street
for hours on end and then adjourn to the little club or café for a chat or a
drink. […] It is not time wasted, however. The musician’s grapevine in Archer
Street grows just as energetically as that of the waiters in Old Compton
Street. He hears that there may be an opening for a sax with Jack Payne or that
a new bottle party is opening in Kingly Street on Thursday and that the piano
player has let them down. He is in no hurry to tie himself down to regular
work. A “gig” suits him better because he will not pay income tax on it. It is
impossible to stand about for more than an hour without hearing some hard-luck
story from a fellow-pro who has had a streak of ill-fortune. Big talk
Anti-Semitism
It is interesting to note that that with this competition
for jobs anti-Semitism showed its face as suggested in A Weapon in the
Struggle The Cultural History of Jazz and the Left in Britain in the 1930s
1940s.
This states that “the Jewish
presence was strongly marked in the British dance bands, where among the
Ambrose sidemen alone there was a trumpeter son of a Canadian rabbi, a drummer
specialising in ‘Yiddisher’ comedy numbers and a saxophonist who later recorded
an album of Jewish party tunes. On Archer Street that presence met with a
certain amount of anti-Semitic feeling and it may be that the hostility of some
conventional musicians for dance-band players was similarly affected.
Summary
There can be no doubt that
Archer Street played its part in Jewish History, if only a bit part. At a time
when the sons of immigrants were looking to find their place in British
Society, it will have been a place where they coud make new contacts outside
their ethnicity. It has also now become a mostly forgotten chapter in British History.
Bibliography
https://www.muhistory.com/from-the-archive-4-archer-street-london/
Moon Over Soho: The Second Rivers of London novel By Ben Aaronovitch
A Weapon in the Struggle The Cultural
History of t... 7 King Street Blues Jazz and the Left in Britain in the 1930s 1940s
These books are available from Amazon:
Kosher Foxtrot
Jews and the SeaThe Definitive Guide to Jewish Miscellany and Trivia
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