Oral History Interview - Ray Carless
Object
Audio file
Object number
2018.73
Physical Description
Audio recording of an oral history interview with Ray Carless.
Associated Organisation
Material
Digital file (.wav)
Digital file (.mp3)
On display?
No
Inscription
Q. Okay, so it’s the 2nd of May 2018. This is Etienne Joseph interviewing Ray Carless. Ray, if you’d like to introduce yourself and let me know when you were born and where you were born please.
Ray Carless (RC). I was born in 1954 in a place called Spanish Town in Jamaica.
Q. How much of your childhood did you spend in Jamaica?
RC. I spent my first nine years in Jamaica.
Q. That’s quite a lot.
RC. Yeah. I came up here in 1963.
Q. What do you remember about Jamaica?
RC. I did a bit of schooling there. Just home life in the yard, we had a big yard with lots of space and trees and stuff and just running wild as you do! Getting into trouble and not doing as you’re told. Amazing what you can do at such a tender age in the environment out there. It used to be very, very safe. It’s not that now but back then you know…Jamaica was Jamaica and Spanish Town used to be a capital prior to Kingston. It was a lovely place but it’s not all that lovely anymore. There’s a lot of challenging things going on there. Just like they used to happen in Kingston, it’s happening in Spanish Town now.
[00:01:52]
Q. I’ve heard some things actually. So you moved, you came here in 1963, what do you remember about coming to England? What were your first impressions of England?
RC. 1963 was one of those historical years for being cold and ice and fog and everything. So that was probably the worst possible year to come to the UK. Terrible, terrible, terrible. When you walked down the road you couldn’t see ten yards in front of you. My mum used to get lost coming home from work because she couldn’t see where she was going and she only worked in Shoreditch, just down the road!
[00:02:37]
Q. So you moved straight to Hackney then?
RC. Yeah, not too far from here, just down in Stoke Newington. So, the cold thing was the most obvious thing. Then I found myself in a primary school and getting to fit in with the rest of the kids at school. I didn’t find it too difficult. I didn’t have any kind of heavy, heavy Caribbean accent. I’m not quite sure why but back in - my family, we weren’t allowed to carry the heavy Jamaican accent, the slang and all that. We had to pretty much speak the Queen’s English back then which is cool, it doesn’t mean that you can’t do it, you just know when.
So, I could communicate, people could understand what I was saying so I didn’t have too many issues. I just had to do what all new kids do when they come into school; find your place and make sure you can stand up for yourself so people don’t push you around.
I came in, my parents were working. My dad was a tailor and my mum was a seamstress and did other stuff, catering and stuff like that. Dad was also a musician; he was a saxophonist. You could say he was a semi professional because he used to do gigs. He would go to work in the factory during the day time and in the night time, mostly weekends; he would have a gig with a dance band.
[00:04:42]
Q. Like a jazz band kind of thing?
RC. Yeah I suppose. They weren’t a fully blown jazz band, they were a dance band for functions, what we call a function band.They’d play all the popular tunes and stuff like that.
[00:05:00]
Q. So at the time what is that? Is it ska? Is it funk? Is it soul?
RC. That jazz band thing, it was like a proper English band; an English dance band. It was almost like an orchestra. So that wasn’t anything to do with the Caribbean, they just played - you know when you watch [Strictly] Come Dancing on the television? That kind of music. He did mix with the ska musicians of the time. [Informal Talk]
[00:05:46]
Q. So he was playing, was that in Hackney?
RC. All around London. Just to track back, before he came to the UK he was a tailor in Jamaica and then he was introduced to, or encouraged to get a saxophone by…do you know Eddie Tan Tan [Thornton]? So Tan Tan was local to dad and Tan Tan said “George, get a saxophone, y’know”. I don’t know how he knew dad had any kind of musical ability at all but that’s what happened, so dad went and got a saxophone. So they used to play dances in Jamaica and play people like Laurel Aitkin and he knew Millie Small and definitely played with Millie and quite a few different bands; some of the jazz people out there in Jamaica. So he came up here with the saxophone and carried on.
[00:06:50]
Q. So he kind of, had the Jamaican popular music he had that down already? His gigging work here was more the dance bands kind of stuff?
RC. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Q. So was that your introduction to music?
RC. My introduction to music was through him. Because when I arrived he had a whole heap of music from say LPs; Quincy Jones, all the serious jazz collection, Coltrane, Sonny Rollins. That’s what I discovered at the age of nine or ten. So that was a blessing because having that stuff played in the house. On a Sunday you’d have the usual…well you’d call it rice and peas music; the ska, the reggae. He introduced me to music. Obviously he had a saxophone in the house and he’d be practising and I kind of knew quite early that I wanted to be able to do that.
[00:08:26]
Q. Is that something that you set on as a career? Or you set on it as something you were interested in?
RC. Yeah. I’m not sure when I thought about it as a career, but Dad got me a clarinet at first and then he got me a saxophone a little later. I really found it easy to get around the instrument. I think I realised I had an ear for music and could get around it.
He took me to a gig once, one of these dance band gigs and I took my clarinet I think. He said “come on, play a song” and I went up on stage and played a song. Everybody was very encouraging and at the end of the night I got five pounds and I thought ‘Wow!’. That kind of seduced me, shows how fickle I was! A fiver for doing nothing. I thought ‘Wow!’
[00:09:49]
Q. I don’t know if that is representative of when you really get into the industry. It’s the other way init?! [Laughs]
RC. I still get a fiver for playing at all. [Laughs] That along with at school we had a really good music department and I had access to loads of instruments and played all the instruments at school, all the brass instruments, trombone.
Q. So you were learning at school as well then?
RC. I started..yeah we had a school orchestra.
Q. What school did you go to? Was it a Hackney school?
RC. Brooke House.
Q. There’s a lot of musicians that seem to come out of Brook House! OK, interesting.
RC. I think I had some basic clarinet lessons there. They were quite basic, enough to get you to function within the orchestra. It was a good foundation.
Q. So it was mainly orchestra that you were learning? Was it more kind of classical?
RC. Yeah it was learning classical like brass band stuff and play hymns in assembly and stuff like that. You start learning how to read music and how to be a part of an orchestra and those kind of disciplines. After…later on you could hook up with other musicians who were more into playing whatever was going on at the time like the reggae and the funk.
[00:11:45]
Q. Was there any of that within the school? In terms of the people you were going to school with, were there other people that were involved in music in that way outside of school? Did you hook up with a band there?
RC. I wouldn’t say a band as such, but a small nucleus of musicians. Only two or three of us. Some of them went onto…we had a guy who played drums with us, he went on to play with Paul McCartney. Tony Beard.
Q. What was his name?
RC. Tony. Tony Beard. Then JJ Belle was a guitarist… I’m rubbish with names… He played with a lot…look it up - JJ Belle.
Q. Are they still around?
RC. JJ passed, about ten years ago. Tony could still be, I haven’t heard that he’s not around. I think he’s probably based in Los Angeles or something. You know, after school…am I moving too fast?
[00:13:00]
Q. No, it’s fine.
RC. After school, people like Alan Weekes, Cleveland Watkiss; I think Cleveland went [to] Brooke House as well.
Q. Wow it’s like an alpha school for boys or something! [Laughs]
RC. One of Bob Marley’s guitarists went to Brooke House.
Q. Yeah?
RC. Junior Murvin [sp. Junior Marvin]
Q. The vocalist as well is Junior Murvin.
RC. No. I think he was the guitarist.
Q. Is there a guitarist called Junior Murvin?
RC. It could be Marvin.
Q. Junior Marvin? [Overlapped] Is he late as well, has he passed also? Or is he around?
RC. I wouldn’t like to say. I don’t want to kill him off! [Laughs]
Q. Okay. So when did you meet up with - because you mentioned - Alan [Weekes], how did that come about?
RC: Ah didn’t he tell you?!
Q. Well he mentioned it. What was funny about that interview - we had a really good interview - but actually when everything stopped rolling we were talking and he’s coming out with all this other stuff! [Laughs] Because he mentioned Sir Collins and a few different things but some of it came after the actual interview. He mentioned what you call Knighty’s Basement.
RC. Knighty’s Barbershop. [Ugent Knight, All Nations Barbershop]
Q. On the corner of Sandringham Road which you had mentioned to me as well. Is that where we’re going?
RC. It was around about that time.
Q. It would be good to know about that in some detail because I think that seems quite important.
RC. Knighty’s. There were rehearsal rooms back in those days, not that were affordable for us anyways as youngsters coming out of school. So there were a few basements around the place where people would allow us to go and make noise and make music and learn our trade. Knighty's was one of the main ones on Sandringham Road in Stoke Newington.
[00:15:00]
So we’d form a little band and hire the room for maybe one night a week or something, and then people like Alan would have a band. I think Alan was part of a band called The Equators at the time.
Q. So what was your band? How did you meet these people and what was that story?
RC. Well our band… consisted of myself, a guy called Steve and Maurice, some guys from West London. I can’t remember how we met those guys.
Q. They’re from West London?
RC. Yeah those guys, but then myself and JJ Belle were from over these sides. I can’t remember how we met the others but we came together and we formed a band called Zami.
Q. Zami?
RC. Zami. Basically we were more into funk then. We weren’t really reggae people at that time.
Q. Is this the 1970s, we’re in the 1970s now?
RC. Yeah. Then Alan would be in with his reggae band on another night of the week. We’d had our equipment there and they’d be using our equipment! Even when people went out of their way to lock down their equipment they were still using it! So I’m sure there’s a few frosty moments, a man getting his drums beat up by all and sundry, our drummer wasn’t happy. Because I could walk away with my saxophone but the heavier stuff was getting battered by all and sundry man.
[00:17:03]
[Informal talk]
But when we meet, it’s part of the memories isn’t it? Part of the journey.
Q. So you were playing funk at the time?
RC. Yeah.
Q. It’s funny because I probably heard of you through reggae more than funk. So the reggae came a bit later is that it?
RC. Yeah.
Q. In terms of thinking about that basement at Sandringham Road, what’s the importance of that area to music in Hackney? Was there a lot of music going on or what was happening?
RC. Yeah. It was one of the few places we had access and…so we all wanted to play music. We all needed to develop our skills and talents. So without places like that we wouldn’t be here talking now, we wouldn’t have so much influence in the music; I mean so much black music. Sometimes I look back and I think I’m…okay, if our generation didn’t come to the UK, we could still be playing ragtime. [Laughs] Because if it wasn’t for the input of the black music into what was going on already, god knows where we would be now!
The jazz bands from that era, those I didn’t engage with, with the…jazz music from America like bebop and stuff like that. It was pretty, quite cold. So if you take away what Charlie Parker and Coltrane and those people, our descendants brought to the table in music, it scares me to think you know. [Laughs] Because we wouldn’t have had those influences without that generation. My forefathers, my fore-parents in the Caribbean wouldn’t have had those influences.
Especially with all this Windrush story flying about the place, it’s kind of high in my mind now; the importance of our fore-parents and what we brought to the table here in the west.
I think that we should be very, very proud of what we’ve achieved. Because digging ourselves out of slavery; that was one thing. It sounds a bit simplistic but to come out of slavery and still survive and just to stand up to all of it and be proud of yourself and then to come to the UK when people just wanted people to do stuff that no one else wanted to do, to be almost nothing and to build up yourself and develop, grow up your family. Be on a par with people that didn’t really want you here but they wanted your blood, sweat…and everything else.
You bring up your children and send them to university on a par with the rest of society. I’m kind of very, very proud. Although there’s a long way to go still.
[00:22:15]
Q. That’s to be expected though isn’t it, I would have thought?
RC. Yeah, but I think people don’t think like that. People just see us… and when you see your culture being dragged left, right and centre and taken away and you talk about it, a lot of people don’t really understand what you’re on about. You’re just making noise.
It’s appropriation, I think, isn’t it? When you see it all the time and you go to places and you see it. You see ska music, reggae music and people forget where it comes from. It’s no longer ours, it’s everybody’s. I think we forget what it took our fore-parents musically or whatever to develop it and to hang onto it and to drop it.
[00:23:30
Q. I’ve two questions from that. One is what did it take? I mean, as you remember it because you were there building, developing sound I suppose. What did it take to create something that as you say has been appropriated now but what was so difficult about it?
RC. I think it needed certain people to come out and use the initiative. And say well, we’re in a compromised position because we’re here, but where you want to get to, we can’t see how you’re going to get there because we don’t have the resources.
I couldn’t see how my parents could find a way to send me to university because that’s where all the information is, before the internet and that. That’s where all the information was if you wanted to be a proper musician. If you wanted to be, put yourself in a place where you could be up for doing, playing music on television, for television shows, for feature films, for stage like West End shows and stuff, you needed to go to university to learn all those skills.
Our parents at that time weren’t really able to help us. They’re both doing full time jobs just to feed us. So we had to have the initiative to sort of say we have to educate ourselves. So that’s when I started to do the workshops. I started to do educational workshops. I started to find information myself and set up workshops, group workshops where we could practise reading music, practice playing the jazz music that we liked.
That was the initial stage. To get all the skills you need to be a musician and jazz is the best way through because it covers such a large scope; it covers everything that you need and all the information can be found within the genre of jazz.
So starting there and with influences from my dad like the Quincy Jones records and the John Coltrane things. I don’t know what was wrong with us, that’s where we set our cap to play like Coltrane, because that was it as far as we were concerned! We didn’t have the theoretical knowledge, we hadn’t learnt that in school so we had to invest in ourselves and go and learn it and go and experience playing that kind of music and teaching each other so that we provided a platform where we could learn these skills.
Because even at the time about seventeen, there were rehearsal bands in places like Goldsmith’s College and stuff. You couldn’t get into them! It was like a closed shop. Because you can only have X amount. If you’ve got an orchestra you can only X amount of people; you can only have four saxophones or five saxophones. If you’re not in the right clique you can’t get in there because as soon as that position becomes available whoever is there is going to bring them on their adventure. We didn’t stand a chance of getting into any of those bands. So we couldn’t get the opportunity to play [that] kind of music and to be part of an orchestra, a proper orchestra and learn the skills required.
So that’s why we started doing our own rehearsal bands and rehearsal workshops and that was the reason for the Jazz Warriors also.
[00:28:34]
Q. Just before we get to the Jazz Warriors, was that in London? Was that in Hackney specifically? Where were you running these things?
RC. It was pretty much in Hackney.
Q. Whereabouts?
RC. Knighty’s Barbershop.
Q. Wow. So you weren’t necessarily rehearsing just for gigs or for studio, you were actually teaching yourself?
RC. Yeah. Originally that’s how it started, we were teaching ourselves because we were learning stuff and learning songs and learning how to play through changes and learning how to read music. We’d bring music sheets and stumble through them…or fumble through them! I’m sure there were other places but I can only remember being around…
[00:29:23]
Q. I think Alan remembered…he mentioned, this might be later, he mentioned Jenako and Pyramid as places where workshops happened. But I don’t know if that was a bit later.
RC. Yeah that was a bit later. Afterwards Alan, he came to a few of our rehearsals, our workshops and then they went off, they bounced off and developed their own workshop things. So I think that’s kind of where it started on Sandringham Road and then afterwards Alan and Cleveland and other musicians would go off and do their own thing; Matthias Road, the community centre also that we had got some funding to do a workshop.
[00:30:12]
Q. I want to come back to what we were saying. This is for black people generally that you’re talking about?
RC. Yeah it was pretty much.
Q. Not exclusively.
RC. It didn’t say white people aren’t allowed! [Laughs] But it was our clique, I suppose our community, people that we knew. It was pretty much our local…although I know that people heard about it from all over London and people came from West London and stuff like that. It’s only a small place; I don’t know how we did it.
[00:30:53}
Q. The basement?
RC. Yeah.
Q. Don’t let me forget about the ‘appropriation thing’ because I’d like to come back to that. But you were about to mention Jazz Warriors. What’s the connection between the basement and Jazz Warriors and you? What’s important about the Jazz Warriors anyway?
RC. I suppose by the time of the Jazz Warriors, I think we’d come out of the workshop thing and we were playing with different bands and stuff like that so people knew who was who.
[00:31:36]
Q. What kind of band?
RC. For instance, Alan used to play with the reggae bands, some of the early jazz funk bands. I got friends from Hi Tension; they still talk about coming down to the workshop. When they were just starting they heard about the workshop and they needed somewhere they could go and practice and get a little flavour of the jazz thing because obviously, as far as everyone knew jazz was the highest form of music and the most difficult as well. So for people, there were lots of opportunities to engage in that sort of thing. I’m trying to name bands now…Alan would go out with…and Cleveland, La Famille, I suppose.
[00:32:48]
Q. You mentioned Light of the World.
RC. Light of the World. Yeah, some of those musicians would come down to the workshop.
Q. Did everybody pay you by the way? Was it a paying thing? How did you sustain it?
RC. It was probably like a fiver a night.
Q. Just to cover the costs.
RC. Yeah, nothing heavy. So I think by then a lot of us were gigging, whether they were backing up other artists or our own little band or I might have a little jazz quartet in Covent Garden or something. We all got to know each other anyway from being around, maybe sessioning and so there came a time when I think Courtney [Pine], myself and a couple of others met up and we said we need to make our own opportunities. We need to have our own thing because we didn’t see how to get through to get the experience that we wanted, we needed. We felt we had the talentedness and the musicality but we couldn’t find a way to exploit it so we had to do it for ourselves. So I think we got together.
[00:34:29]
Q. Courtney Pine, where was he based?
RC. He was based in Harrow or somewhere.
Q. So there’s an east/west connection?
RC. Yeah. I think even Courtney in early days, I think he had experience playing with some reggae bands. Eastwood and Saint [Clint Eastwood & General Saint] I think, possibly; you probably know more. So, and Steve Williamson and then there’s Benny Rose, Michael Rose…Phillip Bent. So anyway we got together and somehow we put something together and we got a little funding to secure a space.
[00:35:33]
Q. Is this GLC [Greater London Council] days?
RC. At the time I was one of the eldest amongst us and I used to be, my job was to run off to the GLC and the GLA, the Greater London Arts Board to beg for money. It’s funny because from those days, what are they called those jazz promoters? The people that do most of the big jazz things in London? John Cumming? John Cumming would be on there begging for money for his little project as well.
So my part of it was a lot to do with funding at the time. I used to end up on the Arts Council, one of the committees as advisor for funding. That’s kind of where it took me but you kind of had to be in there, stay within that to know what was available, so that you were visible. I was all around the funding bits of the GLA, the GLC, the Arts Council in the initial stages before we actually found management. I think Courtney’s wife was one of the first managers of the band and we had a space at the Yaa Asantewaa Centre' in the early days.
[00:37:34]
Q. So, was that Tahu time, Tahu Napata he used to run the Arts Centre for a bit in the 1980?
RC. Yeah, that’s probably before that I think.
Q. Interesting. What was the kind of ideology behind the Jazz Warriors?
RC. The purpose of the band was for us to skill ourselves and have a platform to skill ourselves and to teach each other and to develop the principles of playing in a big band scenario because none of us had done it before. Also to be creative. Courtney in particular was very creative and spontaneous and he used to spend a lot of time coming up, writing music and it was very experimental, a lot of it was very experimental and we were just cutting our teeth.
The reason, I mean long-term, we wanted to have our own platform, somewhere we could teach future generations. We wanted to set up something that was long-term. Go out there as a black band and develop and show what we can do. At the time it kind of suited us to be an all black band because it just gave us a lot of publicity.
[00:39:26]
Q. Oh really? Was that not the case…I wanted to come back to what you were saying about appropriation. Both in Hackney and more widely, who was playing jazz and why is it important that you were a black band at the time?
RC. I think it was important because it looked like we were outcast. We felt like outcasts because you couldn’t get a look in and all the other scenarios are totally white. So, we had to kind of do it for ourselves. As we formed, at the same time there was a white band called Loose Tubes which was totally white and it was kind of good for the press and everyone and the media, it was Jazz Warriors and Loose Tubes. We were friendly with quite a lot of them. It wasn’t anything antagonistic but it was good publicity.
But also I think at the time, we were drawing on the music of black musicians gone ahead of us. It seemed like Loose Tubes were drawing on the white musicians that went ahead of them. Although…the people who cut their teeth on Coltrane and Charlie Parker, they wanted to change up the t[h]ing to make it sound like, to disguise where they’re coming from. [Laughs] Do you know what I mean?
It sounds a bit radical but you know the same thing is going on now. Because people like Ed Sheeran who obviously listened to a lot of soul and stuff like that. And he’s quite a soulful brother but, the genre of music, Wikipedia tells you that they call it blue eyed soul so I rest my case.
So it was important for us to come together to do something because I think from then we knew that we had to be, we needed to come together to be able to achieve something.
[00:42:19]
Q. So this is in the 1980s? So is that the same time as, because you know you have this, what’s that place in Camden that Gilles Peterson is linked to? It will come back to me. In the market.
RC. Jazz Café?
Q. No in Camden Market. My mind’s just gone blank. But basically there’s this kind of…
RC. Dingwalls?
Q. Dingwalls exactly! Patrick Forge and…
[Interruption, interview paused and resumed].
Q. I was saying, sort of that whole Brit funk and jazz thing going on but then you were saying that you felt like you were outcast. Was that within that thing or are you talking about a different scene? I’m trying to understand.
RC. We felt we didn’t have access to the jazz side of things. So if you wanted to get experience playing in a jazz band, a big band, it wasn’t, the opportunities weren’t there for us.
[00:43:35]
Q. You’re talking about Ronnie Scott’s, 100 Club? Those sort of venues?
RC. Yeah, but also to play in an orchestra where you’re playing with…because a lot of the work, the secure work was West End shows; film soundtracks and that. If you didn’t have those kind of disciplines you stood no chance of getting or to apply for any of that kind of work.
So if you didn’t go to university, that’s where you could get the orchestral kind of experience at university and if you couldn’t get it from your night school, there were few places that had that kind of facility. It was a ‘No no you couldn’t get in there’ so we had to teach ourselves that so we formed Jazz Warriors where we could have five saxophones, four trumpets, four trombones, we had vibes, piano, percussion. We had to suss it out for ourselves from there because we didn’t have any teacher. We had to use our ears and listen and practice.
[00:45:07]
Q. So Alan mentioned Clifford Jarvis as being quite important because he was from the States and he was a blue note musician and all that stuff. Do you have any recollection of that or not really? You didn’t cross paths with him much?
RC. I did, yes. I mean Jarvis was very good for us. Because although we were playing what we considered to be jazz, but because we were playing here, and Jarvis came up there from playing with all the greats. So he helped to pull us up. We said we need to be up there on the same tip as Jarvis. So, I didn’t play very much with Clifford, it was maybe a handful of times but Alan was with Clifford quite a lot. His presence there was fantastic because it was like he made you know where you needed to be; he didn’t compromise at all.
So that experience…and a couple of times when we were able to bring in people from America to do workshops with us; that kind of gave us…it made us more aware of how much more work we needed to do.
[00:47:00]
Q. So an inspiration in a way?
RC. Yeah.
Q. Alright, so, if you Google Ray Carless online… is it Tarantula Walk pops up?
RC. Yeah.
Q. I suppose would you say that would fit into a Brit funk, is that what you would call it? Possibly I don’t know and I’m just wondering because it sounds like when you’re talking about jazz you’re talking about quite serious evolution of jazz. You mention Charlie Parker and Coltrane and Miles Davis and people like that and something like that is a little bit more popular so how does that fit in with this kind of ‘serious jazz’ thing that you’re doing?
RC. So the Tarantula Walk came in the early ‘80s, along with other UK musicians who were forming their own little bands to emulate the jazz funk that they were hearing coming from America. And not just the jazz but the funk.
People like Afternoon Five, people hearing them and Kool and the Gang, they were amazed. So we obviously wanted to do something that we could call our own. It was the jazz background, from the workshops and doing the jazz gigs. Because we did loads of jazz gigs in pubs and clubs and stuff like that.
[00:48:46]
Q. Again, around Hackney or just generally?
RC. All over the place; Hackney, West End, there’s a pub called the Three Crowns there in Church Street, there was a place called La Prison. Even Four Aces, I think we ended up playing jazz at the Four Aces a few times.
So, from our learning experience that we kind of wanted to utilise the jazz flavours that we’d incorporated in our beings but wanted obviously, we were young and we wanted music that people could dance to. So what came out was just from our, what we picked up and what was going on in America. So it was a fusion of the jazz harmony, the theory, the experience that we wrote, we’d been practising and trying to develop, and then the funk coming from America. So, we were there, call it limited amount of, I'd say, limited amount of schooling.
We just managed to mesh something that was sounding all right, and then people were accepting and loving it. So yeah, I think that's how the jazz-funk came about, because people wanted to dance. We wanted to dance. We wanted to play jazz but sometimes the jazz we were hearing, it wasn't very inspiring for dance. It was more like for your head, but then your feet. We wanted to play music that would make people move and feel, just like the men that made the ska back in the day. They wanted to play the jazz, but they wanted people to dance, as well. So, you had to make some kind of a compromise.
So that's where the jazz-funk came. If you imagine, Central Line, Hi Tension, and at the time, when I did Tarantula Walk, I think I had just come out of Incognito. I didn’t come out of Incognito, it was through the same record company and I had the option to do a single with them. It was all around the same time, Light of the World. Some of them were like Black Slate.
[00:52:02]
Q. I didn’t know Black Slate was from around here. Alan told me that.
RC. Yeah. So, they were all happening at the same time, but with the help of the DJ fraternity that there was at the time.
Q. Who was doing that?
RC. People like Greg Edwards, Chris Hill. Yeah, names don't come to me easily.
Q. No, but from that I understand. I kind of see what you’re talking about.
RC. Yeah. I suppose it was the funk mafia. The DJs, they knew us and they actually did us a good service. They came together and if I had a tune, like with Tarantula Walk, it was on Chris Hill's label and all the other DJs just jumped on the tune and started playing it. Before you knew it, it was like all of us, it was the lower end of the pop charts, which is, for us, no one had heard that. It was just the way that a good many played the scene (?).
But I don’t think we have that unity anymore between the DJs, because they just play the tunes that suit themselves, and there is no bigger picture. It's just their tune and they want nobody else to know what the tune is. They don’t want us to have the tune. [Laughs] It’s supposed to be the other way round! You want everybody to have the tune and make a hit. It’s gone now, if you give a man a tune now…he wants to have it first and doesn’t want anybody else to have it. [Laughs]
[00:53:59]
Q. I'm thinking about that style of music, and also the kind of more, I don’t know about the pure jazz, but you know, kind of more experimental sort of jazz we're talking about. Where within your locality were you able to, where were you gigging around there? I am interested to know which type of venues you could play those different styles of music.
RC. Right. Yeah, as I said, I can only remember the Three Crowns around here.
Q. That was more kind of straight jazz, not the jazz-funk?
RC. Yeah, it was more like a Sunday lunchtime jazz-jam.
Q. What about Bass Clef , Vortex and those places?
RC. Yes. Bass Clef and the Vortex. I think gig wise, there’s a West End place called Main Squeeze.
Q. Some people mention places like All Nations, for example. It doesn’t sound like somewhere where you would be able to play experimental jazz, but in terms of the more jazz-funk thing, where are there places like that? Would you be able to play there or not really, or not on your radar?
RC. Yeah. A one-off thing at the All Nations, maybe. Nothing regular like that. All Nations was more of a reggae space.
Q. OK, oh really? Even though they had the three floors and all that?
RC. Yeah. It was reggae on three floors. [Laughs]
Q. Really?
RC. Yeah. You might get one floor where there'd be a live stage, but the three floors were like, DJ, DJ and DJ.
[00:56:13]
Q. Okay. Alan mentioned yesterday, Eddy Grant in his studio and stuff. Did you have any interaction, did you record anything around, not just in there, there, but just generally, did you do any recording in Hackney or any studios that you used to go to, or not really?
RC. Yeah, I did. We did some recordings for him and some other people like reggae artists there, Danny Ray, who I've met recently, after a long time. Yeah, there were lots of studios. Gooseberry [Studios] but that wasn't around here. Gooseberry was around like, West End, Shaftesbury Avenue. Shoreditch. There were studios in Shoreditch.
[00:57:10]
Q. Same with record shops. Were record shops important or not to you really? You were too busy making music to do that?
RC. No, record shops were important. In the days that I was first playing jazz and stuff like that. One of the bands I should mention is Cymande.
Q. Yeah. Wicked band that.
RC. Yes, because I'm playing with Cymande at the moment.
Q. Really?
RC. Yeah.
Q. Because I know that over the last few years, I've seen the name pop-up for just one-off gigs.
RC. Yeah. So, Cymande was one of my first influences as a band, as a black UK band, they were one of the first bands that I had heard that played music that sounded like…that I really liked. They sounded like people from where I come from, playing African…well most of the Caribbean musicians were coming out of Brixton.
[00:58:25]
Q. Brixton is that where they are based?
RC. Yeah.
Q. Okay, interesting.
RC. So, the first album I bought was probably Cymande and they had a bit of success. They went to America a couple of times, but came back broke. They got stitched up by management and then they came back a second time. They said, "It's not going to happen again," and the main guys, Patrick Patterson and Steve, they went off and did law degrees. They’re now both barristers in the Caribbean. They've done all what they needed to do and now they've got the time. They made time to get back to the music and in the last three or four years, they invited me to come and join the band. I've been with them for about three, four years now. We went to the States where we didn’t get ripped off.
[00:59:42]
Q. Okay, that's good.
RC. Yeah.
Q. They've got law degrees now!
RC. Exactly. Yeah. [Laughs]
Q. They are one of my favourite bands, actually. Very good band. Okay, interesting. So, you haven't talked about reggae really, at all. So, I'm interested to know what the reggae connection is and what goes on there, because people tell me that Hackney was a reggae stronghold. So then, did you manage to avoid it or were you into it, or what?
RC. I can't really say, apart from Jimmy Lindsay, because I was with Lindsay back in the way and I was part of Lindsay's band for a couple of years. Apart from that, my engagement with reggae was just like as a session man. So, if there was a reggae artist coming, maybe Bob Andy or Ken Boothe or somebody like that, then you did horns for…
[01:00:49]
Q. For a show or for a studio?
RC. Mostly for shows, although I did play a bit of studio work, but not necessarily for the Jamaicans coming over. Like Maxi Priest. Some recordings for Maxi. But my engagement with it was more like as a session guy. So, if someone wanted … If someone had a show, they wanted me to come play sax that was fine. But I didn’t set out to start at all my own reggae band or to be part of a reggae band as such. I would just duck and dive amongst different bands, and if there was a big show coming up. Also, with the calypso scene, as well.
[01:01:44]
Q. Was that more a West London thing or …?
RC. Yes, but any band that came from Trinidad would end up out at there at Dougies. Because Dougies was owned by a Trinidadian. It was called Palace Pavilion after Dougies.
Q. So I need to speak to somebody about that.
RC. Arrow, Sparrow. [Mighty Sparrow]
Q. They all played at Dougies?
RC. Arrow, Sparrow, were later. I played with all of them, but yeah, that’s it for me. Then there’s African bands like The Funkees. There was a band called Boombaya from Ghana. So, that was all kind of happening around the same time.
[01:02:50]
Q. Because the Funkees, I know there was some Hackney connection. Boombaya as well?
RC. Yeah. Alfred Bannerman.
Q. Alfred Bannerman, OK. Is he still around, or has he passed as well?
RC. No. He’s still around, yeah. Sonny passed from…
Q. Yeah. I need to check because it would be really good to connect with those.
Q. Have you got any connection with anyone that was involved with Dougies as well? Because I haven't even touched on that part.
RC. Yeah, I'll give you a couple.
Q. Cool. So, I think, for my part, mostly, I've asked you what I wanted to ask you. I'm just trying to check in my mind now, if I have missed out anything. I feel it was a little bit like we stopped in the ‘80s though, and then that's over 30 years ago. Because obviously, this is about Hackney, so, it sounds like there was a time where it was, kind of, quite formative happening, in terms of your musical experience but then has that continued to be… You are still living here. So, over that time, what else has been happening for you? And are there any local connections, or is it just global now?
RC. For me, I'd say the last 20 years, I've just been a musician for hire. Either doing lots of sessions and gigs with different people. Lots of African artists. I played on the Adele tune, a couple of years back, which was…y’know. But yeah, it's hard to think, what have I been doing?
[01:05:10]
Q. Well, I suppose what I'm saying is that before, it sounds like you had a band and specific projects that you were involved in from the beginning, and where it sounds like more now it's like you've been working. Other people have been calling you in.
RC. It’s freelancing, yeah. You know, as I said, anything tour wise, coming from Trinidad sometimes I get a call, sometimes to get a band together for the tour. If you can remember the Bhundu Boys, that used to be fun.
Q. You toured with the Bhundu Boys?
RC. No, I think I just did an album with them, but yeah. I don't think people know me for being all over the place, musically.
Q. That's a very global connection. Zimbabwe, Trinidad.
RC. Yeah.
Q. US connection.
RC. Ethiopia. Aster Aweke - he’s an Ethiopian singer. I went to Ethiopia not too long ago. I used to play with an Asian singer named Najma Akhtar. So, I think it's hard for me to put my finger on, because you know, you get that word ‘eclectic’ used with me a lot. I apologise because there’s not such a shape to it, because it's all over the place.
I'm kind of happy that I’ve had the opportunity to do so many different genres of music, so many different cultures, musically. When people say what kind of music you can play I can say “Everything! I’m not telling a lie”.
Yeah, the last few years, the last three or four years has basically been Cymande. Recently, this band called Brit Funk Association, I'm part of that now, where some of the Hi Tension, Light of the World and Central Line guys came together.
[01:07:50]
Q. So they come back together.
RC. Yeah, they formed one band, so they get to play all the hits. You know, so it's a powerful gig because it's hit after hit after hit. Yeah, I think I took a few years out with the cancer thing and when I came back I kind of started doing some like club, ska nights. I didn’t come back straight back into the music. It took me a while to get back into the music after the sickness, but I just kept my hand in.
Q. That's kind of what I was getting at. Talking about reggae, you never really mentioned that but then, so you started a ska event.
RC. Yes. I think around 2010, onwards, I think, I kind of felt I wanted to settle a bit. I wanted to go back to my roots. I wanted to play music that…I’d never but I grew up with it. I was nine years old, and came to the UK. Every now and again, you'd hear a very small one, but it was part of the record collection we'd be hearing on the radio on a Sunday.
There is something in me that just said, "This is what I want to do." Not being … and I’m still playing a bit of jazz and a bit of this, and a bit of that. I felt like I've done a fair bit of jazz but not satisfactory, because a lot of the music, a lot of the time you play with bands it goes over people’s heads and you can see that they don’t get it. We were playing more for ourselves. You know what, I’ll do something that reaches people. So, with the ska thing, the jazz thing, the reggae thing. It’s a powerful sound. You can express yourself, you can bring out jazz flavours over those rhythms and you know that you're reaching people. You can tell.
So, the last few years, I said to myself, ‘I wanna carry on the legacy of that music’ because I don’t really see too many people doing it or I see people doing it that shouldn't be doing it. [Laughs] They are doing it like…an appropriation thing, again. You think…sometimes you go to an event it's pure ska and you can't see one black man anywhere. It feels kind of wrong somehow. It's like the colour bar or something. [Laughs] Don't quote me on that!
But it is mixed feelings though because sometimes you see these people come out to show appreciation for our passion for our music, but I think a lot of them don't…I've been to places where it's just ska places and reggae places, and I felt out of place. It's such a strange feeling. People, they take your thing and it’s theirs, without a thought for the foundation, I think, and that kind of gets me a way.
[1:12:17]
Q. So you did something about it.
RC. I am doing something about it, because I'm making myself visible out there with some of these, playing this kind of music and I'm trying to drop it like how I feel the forefathers were dropping it, for it to live on.
Q. That’s probably a good place. You've done a full circle, back to the ska. All right, thank you very much, Ray Carless.
RC. You're welcome. Thank you.
Ray Carless (RC). I was born in 1954 in a place called Spanish Town in Jamaica.
Q. How much of your childhood did you spend in Jamaica?
RC. I spent my first nine years in Jamaica.
Q. That’s quite a lot.
RC. Yeah. I came up here in 1963.
Q. What do you remember about Jamaica?
RC. I did a bit of schooling there. Just home life in the yard, we had a big yard with lots of space and trees and stuff and just running wild as you do! Getting into trouble and not doing as you’re told. Amazing what you can do at such a tender age in the environment out there. It used to be very, very safe. It’s not that now but back then you know…Jamaica was Jamaica and Spanish Town used to be a capital prior to Kingston. It was a lovely place but it’s not all that lovely anymore. There’s a lot of challenging things going on there. Just like they used to happen in Kingston, it’s happening in Spanish Town now.
[00:01:52]
Q. I’ve heard some things actually. So you moved, you came here in 1963, what do you remember about coming to England? What were your first impressions of England?
RC. 1963 was one of those historical years for being cold and ice and fog and everything. So that was probably the worst possible year to come to the UK. Terrible, terrible, terrible. When you walked down the road you couldn’t see ten yards in front of you. My mum used to get lost coming home from work because she couldn’t see where she was going and she only worked in Shoreditch, just down the road!
[00:02:37]
Q. So you moved straight to Hackney then?
RC. Yeah, not too far from here, just down in Stoke Newington. So, the cold thing was the most obvious thing. Then I found myself in a primary school and getting to fit in with the rest of the kids at school. I didn’t find it too difficult. I didn’t have any kind of heavy, heavy Caribbean accent. I’m not quite sure why but back in - my family, we weren’t allowed to carry the heavy Jamaican accent, the slang and all that. We had to pretty much speak the Queen’s English back then which is cool, it doesn’t mean that you can’t do it, you just know when.
So, I could communicate, people could understand what I was saying so I didn’t have too many issues. I just had to do what all new kids do when they come into school; find your place and make sure you can stand up for yourself so people don’t push you around.
I came in, my parents were working. My dad was a tailor and my mum was a seamstress and did other stuff, catering and stuff like that. Dad was also a musician; he was a saxophonist. You could say he was a semi professional because he used to do gigs. He would go to work in the factory during the day time and in the night time, mostly weekends; he would have a gig with a dance band.
[00:04:42]
Q. Like a jazz band kind of thing?
RC. Yeah I suppose. They weren’t a fully blown jazz band, they were a dance band for functions, what we call a function band.They’d play all the popular tunes and stuff like that.
[00:05:00]
Q. So at the time what is that? Is it ska? Is it funk? Is it soul?
RC. That jazz band thing, it was like a proper English band; an English dance band. It was almost like an orchestra. So that wasn’t anything to do with the Caribbean, they just played - you know when you watch [Strictly] Come Dancing on the television? That kind of music. He did mix with the ska musicians of the time. [Informal Talk]
[00:05:46]
Q. So he was playing, was that in Hackney?
RC. All around London. Just to track back, before he came to the UK he was a tailor in Jamaica and then he was introduced to, or encouraged to get a saxophone by…do you know Eddie Tan Tan [Thornton]? So Tan Tan was local to dad and Tan Tan said “George, get a saxophone, y’know”. I don’t know how he knew dad had any kind of musical ability at all but that’s what happened, so dad went and got a saxophone. So they used to play dances in Jamaica and play people like Laurel Aitkin and he knew Millie Small and definitely played with Millie and quite a few different bands; some of the jazz people out there in Jamaica. So he came up here with the saxophone and carried on.
[00:06:50]
Q. So he kind of, had the Jamaican popular music he had that down already? His gigging work here was more the dance bands kind of stuff?
RC. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Q. So was that your introduction to music?
RC. My introduction to music was through him. Because when I arrived he had a whole heap of music from say LPs; Quincy Jones, all the serious jazz collection, Coltrane, Sonny Rollins. That’s what I discovered at the age of nine or ten. So that was a blessing because having that stuff played in the house. On a Sunday you’d have the usual…well you’d call it rice and peas music; the ska, the reggae. He introduced me to music. Obviously he had a saxophone in the house and he’d be practising and I kind of knew quite early that I wanted to be able to do that.
[00:08:26]
Q. Is that something that you set on as a career? Or you set on it as something you were interested in?
RC. Yeah. I’m not sure when I thought about it as a career, but Dad got me a clarinet at first and then he got me a saxophone a little later. I really found it easy to get around the instrument. I think I realised I had an ear for music and could get around it.
He took me to a gig once, one of these dance band gigs and I took my clarinet I think. He said “come on, play a song” and I went up on stage and played a song. Everybody was very encouraging and at the end of the night I got five pounds and I thought ‘Wow!’. That kind of seduced me, shows how fickle I was! A fiver for doing nothing. I thought ‘Wow!’
[00:09:49]
Q. I don’t know if that is representative of when you really get into the industry. It’s the other way init?! [Laughs]
RC. I still get a fiver for playing at all. [Laughs] That along with at school we had a really good music department and I had access to loads of instruments and played all the instruments at school, all the brass instruments, trombone.
Q. So you were learning at school as well then?
RC. I started..yeah we had a school orchestra.
Q. What school did you go to? Was it a Hackney school?
RC. Brooke House.
Q. There’s a lot of musicians that seem to come out of Brook House! OK, interesting.
RC. I think I had some basic clarinet lessons there. They were quite basic, enough to get you to function within the orchestra. It was a good foundation.
Q. So it was mainly orchestra that you were learning? Was it more kind of classical?
RC. Yeah it was learning classical like brass band stuff and play hymns in assembly and stuff like that. You start learning how to read music and how to be a part of an orchestra and those kind of disciplines. After…later on you could hook up with other musicians who were more into playing whatever was going on at the time like the reggae and the funk.
[00:11:45]
Q. Was there any of that within the school? In terms of the people you were going to school with, were there other people that were involved in music in that way outside of school? Did you hook up with a band there?
RC. I wouldn’t say a band as such, but a small nucleus of musicians. Only two or three of us. Some of them went onto…we had a guy who played drums with us, he went on to play with Paul McCartney. Tony Beard.
Q. What was his name?
RC. Tony. Tony Beard. Then JJ Belle was a guitarist… I’m rubbish with names… He played with a lot…look it up - JJ Belle.
Q. Are they still around?
RC. JJ passed, about ten years ago. Tony could still be, I haven’t heard that he’s not around. I think he’s probably based in Los Angeles or something. You know, after school…am I moving too fast?
[00:13:00]
Q. No, it’s fine.
RC. After school, people like Alan Weekes, Cleveland Watkiss; I think Cleveland went [to] Brooke House as well.
Q. Wow it’s like an alpha school for boys or something! [Laughs]
RC. One of Bob Marley’s guitarists went to Brooke House.
Q. Yeah?
RC. Junior Murvin [sp. Junior Marvin]
Q. The vocalist as well is Junior Murvin.
RC. No. I think he was the guitarist.
Q. Is there a guitarist called Junior Murvin?
RC. It could be Marvin.
Q. Junior Marvin? [Overlapped] Is he late as well, has he passed also? Or is he around?
RC. I wouldn’t like to say. I don’t want to kill him off! [Laughs]
Q. Okay. So when did you meet up with - because you mentioned - Alan [Weekes], how did that come about?
RC: Ah didn’t he tell you?!
Q. Well he mentioned it. What was funny about that interview - we had a really good interview - but actually when everything stopped rolling we were talking and he’s coming out with all this other stuff! [Laughs] Because he mentioned Sir Collins and a few different things but some of it came after the actual interview. He mentioned what you call Knighty’s Basement.
RC. Knighty’s Barbershop. [Ugent Knight, All Nations Barbershop]
Q. On the corner of Sandringham Road which you had mentioned to me as well. Is that where we’re going?
RC. It was around about that time.
Q. It would be good to know about that in some detail because I think that seems quite important.
RC. Knighty’s. There were rehearsal rooms back in those days, not that were affordable for us anyways as youngsters coming out of school. So there were a few basements around the place where people would allow us to go and make noise and make music and learn our trade. Knighty's was one of the main ones on Sandringham Road in Stoke Newington.
[00:15:00]
So we’d form a little band and hire the room for maybe one night a week or something, and then people like Alan would have a band. I think Alan was part of a band called The Equators at the time.
Q. So what was your band? How did you meet these people and what was that story?
RC. Well our band… consisted of myself, a guy called Steve and Maurice, some guys from West London. I can’t remember how we met those guys.
Q. They’re from West London?
RC. Yeah those guys, but then myself and JJ Belle were from over these sides. I can’t remember how we met the others but we came together and we formed a band called Zami.
Q. Zami?
RC. Zami. Basically we were more into funk then. We weren’t really reggae people at that time.
Q. Is this the 1970s, we’re in the 1970s now?
RC. Yeah. Then Alan would be in with his reggae band on another night of the week. We’d had our equipment there and they’d be using our equipment! Even when people went out of their way to lock down their equipment they were still using it! So I’m sure there’s a few frosty moments, a man getting his drums beat up by all and sundry, our drummer wasn’t happy. Because I could walk away with my saxophone but the heavier stuff was getting battered by all and sundry man.
[00:17:03]
[Informal talk]
But when we meet, it’s part of the memories isn’t it? Part of the journey.
Q. So you were playing funk at the time?
RC. Yeah.
Q. It’s funny because I probably heard of you through reggae more than funk. So the reggae came a bit later is that it?
RC. Yeah.
Q. In terms of thinking about that basement at Sandringham Road, what’s the importance of that area to music in Hackney? Was there a lot of music going on or what was happening?
RC. Yeah. It was one of the few places we had access and…so we all wanted to play music. We all needed to develop our skills and talents. So without places like that we wouldn’t be here talking now, we wouldn’t have so much influence in the music; I mean so much black music. Sometimes I look back and I think I’m…okay, if our generation didn’t come to the UK, we could still be playing ragtime. [Laughs] Because if it wasn’t for the input of the black music into what was going on already, god knows where we would be now!
The jazz bands from that era, those I didn’t engage with, with the…jazz music from America like bebop and stuff like that. It was pretty, quite cold. So if you take away what Charlie Parker and Coltrane and those people, our descendants brought to the table in music, it scares me to think you know. [Laughs] Because we wouldn’t have had those influences without that generation. My forefathers, my fore-parents in the Caribbean wouldn’t have had those influences.
Especially with all this Windrush story flying about the place, it’s kind of high in my mind now; the importance of our fore-parents and what we brought to the table here in the west.
I think that we should be very, very proud of what we’ve achieved. Because digging ourselves out of slavery; that was one thing. It sounds a bit simplistic but to come out of slavery and still survive and just to stand up to all of it and be proud of yourself and then to come to the UK when people just wanted people to do stuff that no one else wanted to do, to be almost nothing and to build up yourself and develop, grow up your family. Be on a par with people that didn’t really want you here but they wanted your blood, sweat…and everything else.
You bring up your children and send them to university on a par with the rest of society. I’m kind of very, very proud. Although there’s a long way to go still.
[00:22:15]
Q. That’s to be expected though isn’t it, I would have thought?
RC. Yeah, but I think people don’t think like that. People just see us… and when you see your culture being dragged left, right and centre and taken away and you talk about it, a lot of people don’t really understand what you’re on about. You’re just making noise.
It’s appropriation, I think, isn’t it? When you see it all the time and you go to places and you see it. You see ska music, reggae music and people forget where it comes from. It’s no longer ours, it’s everybody’s. I think we forget what it took our fore-parents musically or whatever to develop it and to hang onto it and to drop it.
[00:23:30
Q. I’ve two questions from that. One is what did it take? I mean, as you remember it because you were there building, developing sound I suppose. What did it take to create something that as you say has been appropriated now but what was so difficult about it?
RC. I think it needed certain people to come out and use the initiative. And say well, we’re in a compromised position because we’re here, but where you want to get to, we can’t see how you’re going to get there because we don’t have the resources.
I couldn’t see how my parents could find a way to send me to university because that’s where all the information is, before the internet and that. That’s where all the information was if you wanted to be a proper musician. If you wanted to be, put yourself in a place where you could be up for doing, playing music on television, for television shows, for feature films, for stage like West End shows and stuff, you needed to go to university to learn all those skills.
Our parents at that time weren’t really able to help us. They’re both doing full time jobs just to feed us. So we had to have the initiative to sort of say we have to educate ourselves. So that’s when I started to do the workshops. I started to do educational workshops. I started to find information myself and set up workshops, group workshops where we could practise reading music, practice playing the jazz music that we liked.
That was the initial stage. To get all the skills you need to be a musician and jazz is the best way through because it covers such a large scope; it covers everything that you need and all the information can be found within the genre of jazz.
So starting there and with influences from my dad like the Quincy Jones records and the John Coltrane things. I don’t know what was wrong with us, that’s where we set our cap to play like Coltrane, because that was it as far as we were concerned! We didn’t have the theoretical knowledge, we hadn’t learnt that in school so we had to invest in ourselves and go and learn it and go and experience playing that kind of music and teaching each other so that we provided a platform where we could learn these skills.
Because even at the time about seventeen, there were rehearsal bands in places like Goldsmith’s College and stuff. You couldn’t get into them! It was like a closed shop. Because you can only have X amount. If you’ve got an orchestra you can only X amount of people; you can only have four saxophones or five saxophones. If you’re not in the right clique you can’t get in there because as soon as that position becomes available whoever is there is going to bring them on their adventure. We didn’t stand a chance of getting into any of those bands. So we couldn’t get the opportunity to play [that] kind of music and to be part of an orchestra, a proper orchestra and learn the skills required.
So that’s why we started doing our own rehearsal bands and rehearsal workshops and that was the reason for the Jazz Warriors also.
[00:28:34]
Q. Just before we get to the Jazz Warriors, was that in London? Was that in Hackney specifically? Where were you running these things?
RC. It was pretty much in Hackney.
Q. Whereabouts?
RC. Knighty’s Barbershop.
Q. Wow. So you weren’t necessarily rehearsing just for gigs or for studio, you were actually teaching yourself?
RC. Yeah. Originally that’s how it started, we were teaching ourselves because we were learning stuff and learning songs and learning how to play through changes and learning how to read music. We’d bring music sheets and stumble through them…or fumble through them! I’m sure there were other places but I can only remember being around…
[00:29:23]
Q. I think Alan remembered…he mentioned, this might be later, he mentioned Jenako and Pyramid as places where workshops happened. But I don’t know if that was a bit later.
RC. Yeah that was a bit later. Afterwards Alan, he came to a few of our rehearsals, our workshops and then they went off, they bounced off and developed their own workshop things. So I think that’s kind of where it started on Sandringham Road and then afterwards Alan and Cleveland and other musicians would go off and do their own thing; Matthias Road, the community centre also that we had got some funding to do a workshop.
[00:30:12]
Q. I want to come back to what we were saying. This is for black people generally that you’re talking about?
RC. Yeah it was pretty much.
Q. Not exclusively.
RC. It didn’t say white people aren’t allowed! [Laughs] But it was our clique, I suppose our community, people that we knew. It was pretty much our local…although I know that people heard about it from all over London and people came from West London and stuff like that. It’s only a small place; I don’t know how we did it.
[00:30:53}
Q. The basement?
RC. Yeah.
Q. Don’t let me forget about the ‘appropriation thing’ because I’d like to come back to that. But you were about to mention Jazz Warriors. What’s the connection between the basement and Jazz Warriors and you? What’s important about the Jazz Warriors anyway?
RC. I suppose by the time of the Jazz Warriors, I think we’d come out of the workshop thing and we were playing with different bands and stuff like that so people knew who was who.
[00:31:36]
Q. What kind of band?
RC. For instance, Alan used to play with the reggae bands, some of the early jazz funk bands. I got friends from Hi Tension; they still talk about coming down to the workshop. When they were just starting they heard about the workshop and they needed somewhere they could go and practice and get a little flavour of the jazz thing because obviously, as far as everyone knew jazz was the highest form of music and the most difficult as well. So for people, there were lots of opportunities to engage in that sort of thing. I’m trying to name bands now…Alan would go out with…and Cleveland, La Famille, I suppose.
[00:32:48]
Q. You mentioned Light of the World.
RC. Light of the World. Yeah, some of those musicians would come down to the workshop.
Q. Did everybody pay you by the way? Was it a paying thing? How did you sustain it?
RC. It was probably like a fiver a night.
Q. Just to cover the costs.
RC. Yeah, nothing heavy. So I think by then a lot of us were gigging, whether they were backing up other artists or our own little band or I might have a little jazz quartet in Covent Garden or something. We all got to know each other anyway from being around, maybe sessioning and so there came a time when I think Courtney [Pine], myself and a couple of others met up and we said we need to make our own opportunities. We need to have our own thing because we didn’t see how to get through to get the experience that we wanted, we needed. We felt we had the talentedness and the musicality but we couldn’t find a way to exploit it so we had to do it for ourselves. So I think we got together.
[00:34:29]
Q. Courtney Pine, where was he based?
RC. He was based in Harrow or somewhere.
Q. So there’s an east/west connection?
RC. Yeah. I think even Courtney in early days, I think he had experience playing with some reggae bands. Eastwood and Saint [Clint Eastwood & General Saint] I think, possibly; you probably know more. So, and Steve Williamson and then there’s Benny Rose, Michael Rose…Phillip Bent. So anyway we got together and somehow we put something together and we got a little funding to secure a space.
[00:35:33]
Q. Is this GLC [Greater London Council] days?
RC. At the time I was one of the eldest amongst us and I used to be, my job was to run off to the GLC and the GLA, the Greater London Arts Board to beg for money. It’s funny because from those days, what are they called those jazz promoters? The people that do most of the big jazz things in London? John Cumming? John Cumming would be on there begging for money for his little project as well.
So my part of it was a lot to do with funding at the time. I used to end up on the Arts Council, one of the committees as advisor for funding. That’s kind of where it took me but you kind of had to be in there, stay within that to know what was available, so that you were visible. I was all around the funding bits of the GLA, the GLC, the Arts Council in the initial stages before we actually found management. I think Courtney’s wife was one of the first managers of the band and we had a space at the Yaa Asantewaa Centre' in the early days.
[00:37:34]
Q. So, was that Tahu time, Tahu Napata he used to run the Arts Centre for a bit in the 1980?
RC. Yeah, that’s probably before that I think.
Q. Interesting. What was the kind of ideology behind the Jazz Warriors?
RC. The purpose of the band was for us to skill ourselves and have a platform to skill ourselves and to teach each other and to develop the principles of playing in a big band scenario because none of us had done it before. Also to be creative. Courtney in particular was very creative and spontaneous and he used to spend a lot of time coming up, writing music and it was very experimental, a lot of it was very experimental and we were just cutting our teeth.
The reason, I mean long-term, we wanted to have our own platform, somewhere we could teach future generations. We wanted to set up something that was long-term. Go out there as a black band and develop and show what we can do. At the time it kind of suited us to be an all black band because it just gave us a lot of publicity.
[00:39:26]
Q. Oh really? Was that not the case…I wanted to come back to what you were saying about appropriation. Both in Hackney and more widely, who was playing jazz and why is it important that you were a black band at the time?
RC. I think it was important because it looked like we were outcast. We felt like outcasts because you couldn’t get a look in and all the other scenarios are totally white. So, we had to kind of do it for ourselves. As we formed, at the same time there was a white band called Loose Tubes which was totally white and it was kind of good for the press and everyone and the media, it was Jazz Warriors and Loose Tubes. We were friendly with quite a lot of them. It wasn’t anything antagonistic but it was good publicity.
But also I think at the time, we were drawing on the music of black musicians gone ahead of us. It seemed like Loose Tubes were drawing on the white musicians that went ahead of them. Although…the people who cut their teeth on Coltrane and Charlie Parker, they wanted to change up the t[h]ing to make it sound like, to disguise where they’re coming from. [Laughs] Do you know what I mean?
It sounds a bit radical but you know the same thing is going on now. Because people like Ed Sheeran who obviously listened to a lot of soul and stuff like that. And he’s quite a soulful brother but, the genre of music, Wikipedia tells you that they call it blue eyed soul so I rest my case.
So it was important for us to come together to do something because I think from then we knew that we had to be, we needed to come together to be able to achieve something.
[00:42:19]
Q. So this is in the 1980s? So is that the same time as, because you know you have this, what’s that place in Camden that Gilles Peterson is linked to? It will come back to me. In the market.
RC. Jazz Café?
Q. No in Camden Market. My mind’s just gone blank. But basically there’s this kind of…
RC. Dingwalls?
Q. Dingwalls exactly! Patrick Forge and…
[Interruption, interview paused and resumed].
Q. I was saying, sort of that whole Brit funk and jazz thing going on but then you were saying that you felt like you were outcast. Was that within that thing or are you talking about a different scene? I’m trying to understand.
RC. We felt we didn’t have access to the jazz side of things. So if you wanted to get experience playing in a jazz band, a big band, it wasn’t, the opportunities weren’t there for us.
[00:43:35]
Q. You’re talking about Ronnie Scott’s, 100 Club? Those sort of venues?
RC. Yeah, but also to play in an orchestra where you’re playing with…because a lot of the work, the secure work was West End shows; film soundtracks and that. If you didn’t have those kind of disciplines you stood no chance of getting or to apply for any of that kind of work.
So if you didn’t go to university, that’s where you could get the orchestral kind of experience at university and if you couldn’t get it from your night school, there were few places that had that kind of facility. It was a ‘No no you couldn’t get in there’ so we had to teach ourselves that so we formed Jazz Warriors where we could have five saxophones, four trumpets, four trombones, we had vibes, piano, percussion. We had to suss it out for ourselves from there because we didn’t have any teacher. We had to use our ears and listen and practice.
[00:45:07]
Q. So Alan mentioned Clifford Jarvis as being quite important because he was from the States and he was a blue note musician and all that stuff. Do you have any recollection of that or not really? You didn’t cross paths with him much?
RC. I did, yes. I mean Jarvis was very good for us. Because although we were playing what we considered to be jazz, but because we were playing here, and Jarvis came up there from playing with all the greats. So he helped to pull us up. We said we need to be up there on the same tip as Jarvis. So, I didn’t play very much with Clifford, it was maybe a handful of times but Alan was with Clifford quite a lot. His presence there was fantastic because it was like he made you know where you needed to be; he didn’t compromise at all.
So that experience…and a couple of times when we were able to bring in people from America to do workshops with us; that kind of gave us…it made us more aware of how much more work we needed to do.
[00:47:00]
Q. So an inspiration in a way?
RC. Yeah.
Q. Alright, so, if you Google Ray Carless online… is it Tarantula Walk pops up?
RC. Yeah.
Q. I suppose would you say that would fit into a Brit funk, is that what you would call it? Possibly I don’t know and I’m just wondering because it sounds like when you’re talking about jazz you’re talking about quite serious evolution of jazz. You mention Charlie Parker and Coltrane and Miles Davis and people like that and something like that is a little bit more popular so how does that fit in with this kind of ‘serious jazz’ thing that you’re doing?
RC. So the Tarantula Walk came in the early ‘80s, along with other UK musicians who were forming their own little bands to emulate the jazz funk that they were hearing coming from America. And not just the jazz but the funk.
People like Afternoon Five, people hearing them and Kool and the Gang, they were amazed. So we obviously wanted to do something that we could call our own. It was the jazz background, from the workshops and doing the jazz gigs. Because we did loads of jazz gigs in pubs and clubs and stuff like that.
[00:48:46]
Q. Again, around Hackney or just generally?
RC. All over the place; Hackney, West End, there’s a pub called the Three Crowns there in Church Street, there was a place called La Prison. Even Four Aces, I think we ended up playing jazz at the Four Aces a few times.
So, from our learning experience that we kind of wanted to utilise the jazz flavours that we’d incorporated in our beings but wanted obviously, we were young and we wanted music that people could dance to. So what came out was just from our, what we picked up and what was going on in America. So it was a fusion of the jazz harmony, the theory, the experience that we wrote, we’d been practising and trying to develop, and then the funk coming from America. So, we were there, call it limited amount of, I'd say, limited amount of schooling.
We just managed to mesh something that was sounding all right, and then people were accepting and loving it. So yeah, I think that's how the jazz-funk came about, because people wanted to dance. We wanted to dance. We wanted to play jazz but sometimes the jazz we were hearing, it wasn't very inspiring for dance. It was more like for your head, but then your feet. We wanted to play music that would make people move and feel, just like the men that made the ska back in the day. They wanted to play the jazz, but they wanted people to dance, as well. So, you had to make some kind of a compromise.
So that's where the jazz-funk came. If you imagine, Central Line, Hi Tension, and at the time, when I did Tarantula Walk, I think I had just come out of Incognito. I didn’t come out of Incognito, it was through the same record company and I had the option to do a single with them. It was all around the same time, Light of the World. Some of them were like Black Slate.
[00:52:02]
Q. I didn’t know Black Slate was from around here. Alan told me that.
RC. Yeah. So, they were all happening at the same time, but with the help of the DJ fraternity that there was at the time.
Q. Who was doing that?
RC. People like Greg Edwards, Chris Hill. Yeah, names don't come to me easily.
Q. No, but from that I understand. I kind of see what you’re talking about.
RC. Yeah. I suppose it was the funk mafia. The DJs, they knew us and they actually did us a good service. They came together and if I had a tune, like with Tarantula Walk, it was on Chris Hill's label and all the other DJs just jumped on the tune and started playing it. Before you knew it, it was like all of us, it was the lower end of the pop charts, which is, for us, no one had heard that. It was just the way that a good many played the scene (?).
But I don’t think we have that unity anymore between the DJs, because they just play the tunes that suit themselves, and there is no bigger picture. It's just their tune and they want nobody else to know what the tune is. They don’t want us to have the tune. [Laughs] It’s supposed to be the other way round! You want everybody to have the tune and make a hit. It’s gone now, if you give a man a tune now…he wants to have it first and doesn’t want anybody else to have it. [Laughs]
[00:53:59]
Q. I'm thinking about that style of music, and also the kind of more, I don’t know about the pure jazz, but you know, kind of more experimental sort of jazz we're talking about. Where within your locality were you able to, where were you gigging around there? I am interested to know which type of venues you could play those different styles of music.
RC. Right. Yeah, as I said, I can only remember the Three Crowns around here.
Q. That was more kind of straight jazz, not the jazz-funk?
RC. Yeah, it was more like a Sunday lunchtime jazz-jam.
Q. What about Bass Clef , Vortex and those places?
RC. Yes. Bass Clef and the Vortex. I think gig wise, there’s a West End place called Main Squeeze.
Q. Some people mention places like All Nations, for example. It doesn’t sound like somewhere where you would be able to play experimental jazz, but in terms of the more jazz-funk thing, where are there places like that? Would you be able to play there or not really, or not on your radar?
RC. Yeah. A one-off thing at the All Nations, maybe. Nothing regular like that. All Nations was more of a reggae space.
Q. OK, oh really? Even though they had the three floors and all that?
RC. Yeah. It was reggae on three floors. [Laughs]
Q. Really?
RC. Yeah. You might get one floor where there'd be a live stage, but the three floors were like, DJ, DJ and DJ.
[00:56:13]
Q. Okay. Alan mentioned yesterday, Eddy Grant in his studio and stuff. Did you have any interaction, did you record anything around, not just in there, there, but just generally, did you do any recording in Hackney or any studios that you used to go to, or not really?
RC. Yeah, I did. We did some recordings for him and some other people like reggae artists there, Danny Ray, who I've met recently, after a long time. Yeah, there were lots of studios. Gooseberry [Studios] but that wasn't around here. Gooseberry was around like, West End, Shaftesbury Avenue. Shoreditch. There were studios in Shoreditch.
[00:57:10]
Q. Same with record shops. Were record shops important or not to you really? You were too busy making music to do that?
RC. No, record shops were important. In the days that I was first playing jazz and stuff like that. One of the bands I should mention is Cymande.
Q. Yeah. Wicked band that.
RC. Yes, because I'm playing with Cymande at the moment.
Q. Really?
RC. Yeah.
Q. Because I know that over the last few years, I've seen the name pop-up for just one-off gigs.
RC. Yeah. So, Cymande was one of my first influences as a band, as a black UK band, they were one of the first bands that I had heard that played music that sounded like…that I really liked. They sounded like people from where I come from, playing African…well most of the Caribbean musicians were coming out of Brixton.
[00:58:25]
Q. Brixton is that where they are based?
RC. Yeah.
Q. Okay, interesting.
RC. So, the first album I bought was probably Cymande and they had a bit of success. They went to America a couple of times, but came back broke. They got stitched up by management and then they came back a second time. They said, "It's not going to happen again," and the main guys, Patrick Patterson and Steve, they went off and did law degrees. They’re now both barristers in the Caribbean. They've done all what they needed to do and now they've got the time. They made time to get back to the music and in the last three or four years, they invited me to come and join the band. I've been with them for about three, four years now. We went to the States where we didn’t get ripped off.
[00:59:42]
Q. Okay, that's good.
RC. Yeah.
Q. They've got law degrees now!
RC. Exactly. Yeah. [Laughs]
Q. They are one of my favourite bands, actually. Very good band. Okay, interesting. So, you haven't talked about reggae really, at all. So, I'm interested to know what the reggae connection is and what goes on there, because people tell me that Hackney was a reggae stronghold. So then, did you manage to avoid it or were you into it, or what?
RC. I can't really say, apart from Jimmy Lindsay, because I was with Lindsay back in the way and I was part of Lindsay's band for a couple of years. Apart from that, my engagement with reggae was just like as a session man. So, if there was a reggae artist coming, maybe Bob Andy or Ken Boothe or somebody like that, then you did horns for…
[01:00:49]
Q. For a show or for a studio?
RC. Mostly for shows, although I did play a bit of studio work, but not necessarily for the Jamaicans coming over. Like Maxi Priest. Some recordings for Maxi. But my engagement with it was more like as a session guy. So, if someone wanted … If someone had a show, they wanted me to come play sax that was fine. But I didn’t set out to start at all my own reggae band or to be part of a reggae band as such. I would just duck and dive amongst different bands, and if there was a big show coming up. Also, with the calypso scene, as well.
[01:01:44]
Q. Was that more a West London thing or …?
RC. Yes, but any band that came from Trinidad would end up out at there at Dougies. Because Dougies was owned by a Trinidadian. It was called Palace Pavilion after Dougies.
Q. So I need to speak to somebody about that.
RC. Arrow, Sparrow. [Mighty Sparrow]
Q. They all played at Dougies?
RC. Arrow, Sparrow, were later. I played with all of them, but yeah, that’s it for me. Then there’s African bands like The Funkees. There was a band called Boombaya from Ghana. So, that was all kind of happening around the same time.
[01:02:50]
Q. Because the Funkees, I know there was some Hackney connection. Boombaya as well?
RC. Yeah. Alfred Bannerman.
Q. Alfred Bannerman, OK. Is he still around, or has he passed as well?
RC. No. He’s still around, yeah. Sonny passed from…
Q. Yeah. I need to check because it would be really good to connect with those.
Q. Have you got any connection with anyone that was involved with Dougies as well? Because I haven't even touched on that part.
RC. Yeah, I'll give you a couple.
Q. Cool. So, I think, for my part, mostly, I've asked you what I wanted to ask you. I'm just trying to check in my mind now, if I have missed out anything. I feel it was a little bit like we stopped in the ‘80s though, and then that's over 30 years ago. Because obviously, this is about Hackney, so, it sounds like there was a time where it was, kind of, quite formative happening, in terms of your musical experience but then has that continued to be… You are still living here. So, over that time, what else has been happening for you? And are there any local connections, or is it just global now?
RC. For me, I'd say the last 20 years, I've just been a musician for hire. Either doing lots of sessions and gigs with different people. Lots of African artists. I played on the Adele tune, a couple of years back, which was…y’know. But yeah, it's hard to think, what have I been doing?
[01:05:10]
Q. Well, I suppose what I'm saying is that before, it sounds like you had a band and specific projects that you were involved in from the beginning, and where it sounds like more now it's like you've been working. Other people have been calling you in.
RC. It’s freelancing, yeah. You know, as I said, anything tour wise, coming from Trinidad sometimes I get a call, sometimes to get a band together for the tour. If you can remember the Bhundu Boys, that used to be fun.
Q. You toured with the Bhundu Boys?
RC. No, I think I just did an album with them, but yeah. I don't think people know me for being all over the place, musically.
Q. That's a very global connection. Zimbabwe, Trinidad.
RC. Yeah.
Q. US connection.
RC. Ethiopia. Aster Aweke - he’s an Ethiopian singer. I went to Ethiopia not too long ago. I used to play with an Asian singer named Najma Akhtar. So, I think it's hard for me to put my finger on, because you know, you get that word ‘eclectic’ used with me a lot. I apologise because there’s not such a shape to it, because it's all over the place.
I'm kind of happy that I’ve had the opportunity to do so many different genres of music, so many different cultures, musically. When people say what kind of music you can play I can say “Everything! I’m not telling a lie”.
Yeah, the last few years, the last three or four years has basically been Cymande. Recently, this band called Brit Funk Association, I'm part of that now, where some of the Hi Tension, Light of the World and Central Line guys came together.
[01:07:50]
Q. So they come back together.
RC. Yeah, they formed one band, so they get to play all the hits. You know, so it's a powerful gig because it's hit after hit after hit. Yeah, I think I took a few years out with the cancer thing and when I came back I kind of started doing some like club, ska nights. I didn’t come back straight back into the music. It took me a while to get back into the music after the sickness, but I just kept my hand in.
Q. That's kind of what I was getting at. Talking about reggae, you never really mentioned that but then, so you started a ska event.
RC. Yes. I think around 2010, onwards, I think, I kind of felt I wanted to settle a bit. I wanted to go back to my roots. I wanted to play music that…I’d never but I grew up with it. I was nine years old, and came to the UK. Every now and again, you'd hear a very small one, but it was part of the record collection we'd be hearing on the radio on a Sunday.
There is something in me that just said, "This is what I want to do." Not being … and I’m still playing a bit of jazz and a bit of this, and a bit of that. I felt like I've done a fair bit of jazz but not satisfactory, because a lot of the music, a lot of the time you play with bands it goes over people’s heads and you can see that they don’t get it. We were playing more for ourselves. You know what, I’ll do something that reaches people. So, with the ska thing, the jazz thing, the reggae thing. It’s a powerful sound. You can express yourself, you can bring out jazz flavours over those rhythms and you know that you're reaching people. You can tell.
So, the last few years, I said to myself, ‘I wanna carry on the legacy of that music’ because I don’t really see too many people doing it or I see people doing it that shouldn't be doing it. [Laughs] They are doing it like…an appropriation thing, again. You think…sometimes you go to an event it's pure ska and you can't see one black man anywhere. It feels kind of wrong somehow. It's like the colour bar or something. [Laughs] Don't quote me on that!
But it is mixed feelings though because sometimes you see these people come out to show appreciation for our passion for our music, but I think a lot of them don't…I've been to places where it's just ska places and reggae places, and I felt out of place. It's such a strange feeling. People, they take your thing and it’s theirs, without a thought for the foundation, I think, and that kind of gets me a way.
[1:12:17]
Q. So you did something about it.
RC. I am doing something about it, because I'm making myself visible out there with some of these, playing this kind of music and I'm trying to drop it like how I feel the forefathers were dropping it, for it to live on.
Q. That’s probably a good place. You've done a full circle, back to the ska. All right, thank you very much, Ray Carless.
RC. You're welcome. Thank you.