ALL THAT JAZZ

For a brief moment in the early 1960s traditional jazz enjoyed a boom, and one of the places that experienced the excitement was Norwich's Studio Four, a converted terraced building at the rear of the Anglia TV headquarters. Fans would flock in, grab a drink, and force their way up a crowded staircase to one of the equally crowded upstairs rooms. It didn't really matter on which floor that night's band had set up their kit, because you could hear them all over the building. Thus a seat on a between-floors step was an adequate reward.
And what bands. I seem to remember The Riversiders, Alex Welsh, Ronnie Scott, The Collegians and the Mustard City Stompers. It was loud and it was exciting, and somehow it expressed the mood of the time, because the city was also in transition, throwing off some of its War-time dreariness and doffing its cap towards a new era.
Most of the bombsites had been repaired and re-utilised, the old cattle market (under the gaze of the castle) was being shifted to the city fringe, London Street was to be 'out of bounds' to traffic and re-invented as a foot street, and the city's first Chinese restaurant arrived to challenge the established eating orthodoxy, which by and large meant the Royal Hotel, the Lamb, the Castle Hotel and the Maid's Head.
Nevertheless, anyone passing by the former Studio Four building today would have very little idea that such ground-breaking things once happened inside. There is no commemorative plaque or brass plate. On the other hand, plaques are missing from a number of other sites, too.
It galls me that whereas the Sex Pistols are glorified at the West Runton Pavilion, it is hard to ascertain that musicians such as Humphrey Lyttelton, Jack Parnell, and the great Count Basie band all graced the old Samson & Hercules ballroom in Tombland. It is even claimed by some that Glenn Miller played there, too. 
Again, the Ray Ellington Quartet and Ivy Benson and her band played the former Norwood Rooms, in Aylsham Road, the same place and on the same rostrum that saw Hollywood great James Stewart - on this occasion a member of a party of 8th Air Force veterans - take to the stage and chat to the audience and then conduct a band through Moonlight Serenade, signature tune of the man he played in one of his best known films. Glenn Miller again.
As for the Orford Cellar, which in the early 1960s featured mainstream and modern jazz, it has so slipped from my conciousness - and nearly everyone else's, too, I wouldn't wonder - that I can't even recall where it was.
Why is this? Perhaps it is because more recent generations have such very short memories, or short information spans. Modern polls of 'favourite' or 'best ever' footballers or musicians or film stars are invariably top heavy with people from the last 30 years. Anything else is, more often than not, 'before my time.' Well, I switched off from pop music the first time I heard Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock. Ghastly, I thought. Awful. Not for me. So, having been brought up on swing bands and trad jazz, I turned instead to classical music. Therefore, and particularly at quiz nights, I tend to deem every question about pop music 'after my time.' It's a tit-for-tat thing, I suppose.
But you can't always win. I remember once talking to my editor and extolling the virtues of Norwich City's goalkeeper of the moment, Kevin Keelan. 'He must be the best Norwich have ever had,' I said. He looked at me kindly, and said, 'Ah, but you never saw Ken Nethercott at his peak, did you.'