Jazz.
To some it’s beautiful, to others it’s a dirty word. For Dan Markham, the main character in Dark Briggate Blues, it’s the staff of life.
He discovered the music in the late 1940s, thanks to an American PFC he met in Germany while performing his National Service, and it was love at first listen.
The angular piano of Thelonious Monk, the haunted voice of Billie Holiday, the kick of the Basie Band on “One O’Clock Jump,” the smoothness of Ella Fitzgerald; all the facets of the music resonate deep inside him.
In 1954, when the book is set, it was music that few in England knew. Even fewer cared. The country had its own jazz stars, like Ken Colyer, but their music looked back to the New Orleans birth of jazz with Dixieland or Trad Jazz (as it was often known). The newer stuff was simply for the strange. It was difficult to find. Nowhere in Leeds would have stocked more than a disc or two; for anything worthwhile, mail order from Dobell’s in London was the only way to buy. It was slow and it was expensive.
One thing Leeds did have, though, was a jazz club. The Studio 20 of Dark Briggate Blues did exist, in a cellar – and let’s face it, all the best music clubs are in cellars – at 20, New Briggate. It was run by a jazz aficionado called Bob Barclay and open seven nights a week. Some well-known names, like singer George Melly, did make appearances. Musicians who worked in the pit orchestras at City Varieties or the Grand, and others from local dance bands would have come to jam once their paying gigs were done for the evening.
In New York, jazz had been a staple of nightlife since the days of the speakeasies in the 1920s. The Cotton Club in Harlem had sophistication (and was, incidentally, owned by some born in Leeds, the gangster Owney Madden), which the clubs along 52nd Street in midtown Manhattan had style an ambience.
From photos of the place, Studio 20 had none of those things. No special lighting, no bandstand. No one in evening dress. It was simply a very provincial English jazz club, a place not only for faithful listeners, but for a jazz community, where the musical outsiders could feel at home. And in his love of jazz, Markham is an outsider.
So many, certainly in the mainstream, thought it was nothing more than noise, much the way they’d view rock’n’roll just a short time after this. It was never going to bother the pops charts, which had only begun two years before. And it was unlikely to be played on the Home Service, although they’d develop a taste for a few morsels of trad jazz. If you wanted jazz, or blues, on the radio, you had to find a Voice of America broadcast.
The music is vital to the book. It’s vital to Dan Markham. It defines him more than anything else. He enjoys his job, but work comes and goes. A case is a case; when it’s over, it’s time to move on to the next one. But jazz is always there in his life. It’s the constant. It’s home.
And Studio 20 is home away from home.
Dan’s music:
* Miles Davis – Round Midnight
* Ella Fitzgerald – Blues In The Night
* Bud Powell – Un Poco Loco
* Count Basie – One O’Clock Jump
* Billy Eckstine – Stormy Monday
* Charlie Parker – Donna Lee
* Sarah Vaughan – Someone To Watch Over Me
* Thelonious Monk – Blue Monk
* Duke Ellington – Prelude To A Kiss
* Tubby Hayes – Round About Midnight
* Ella Fitzgerald – Do Nothing ‘Til You Hear From Me
* Coleman Hawkins – Body And Soul
* Dexter Gordon – A Night In Tunisia
* Lester Young – A Foggy Day In London Town
* George Shearing – How High The Moon
* Art Tatum – I Got Rhythm
* Billie Holiday – God Bless The Child
* Thelonious Monk – Round About Midnight
The list is available to play on Spotify here and is also available on YouTube here.
Chris Nickson is the author of Dark Briggate Blues, which is set in Leeds 1954. When Joanna Hart came into his office, enquiry agent Dan Markham thought it would be an easy case. All the blonde with red lips and swinging hips wanted was to know if her husband was unfaithful. But when the man is killed, Markham’s involvement makes him suspect number one. As the evidence piles against him, he realises someone has set him up. In a deadly game, Markham has to battle to keep his client and himself alive. All he can rely on are his wits and the rusty skills he acquired during his National Service in military intelligence. But can he hope to be any match against a killer who has spies on every corner of Leeds and a reach that goes all the way to Whitehall?