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The 1950s and the rise of the teenager in the vibrant post-war Medway
towns is a neglected subject. The Beatles and the 1960s caused a revolution in music — but they by no means started it, as Roy Morgan recalls so vividly.
TWO GILLINGHAM DANCE HALLS were much
favoured by the young stuff of the day in the 1950s: the Pav and the Paget.
The Pav was at the lower end
Canterbury Street, almost opposite St Mark’s Church and the Paget was in Paget
Row off Paget Street not half a mile away.
The attraction of these two venues to
the young teens of the Medway towns was that they both presented, on a Saturday
evening, the top big bands, now called swing bands, of the day and also the very
best traditional and modern jazz groups to be found in the British Isles.
These bands played the latest and
best of British dance and jazz music of the time — you could listen to it, dance
to it or, more often as far as the majority of patrons were concerned, jive to
it.
The Pav was the more popular of the
two because it had a top-name band practically every Saturday night; the Paget’s
performances were much more infrequent.
The Pav was run by a Mr Squires, who
was always standing alongside the pay kiosk to make sure that all patrons were
suitably dressed and otherwise presentable. He was maybe in his forties with
dark, wavy hair and always very smartly, neatly dressed in a dark suit and tie.
The Paget was looked after by Reg
Adams who also provided the resident band to play at the start and in the
interval of the evening if there was a big name band on the programme. Reg was
the drummer. I don’t know if either of these two gentlemen were involved in the
ownership of the dance halls.
The resident band at the Pav was led
by Brian Jenner who was, I understand, a farmer of sorts near Maidstone. He
played trumpet very well and sang a bit. When he retired from the scene he was
replaced by Alan Ryder who led his band on alto sax. I believe that Alan is
still around and playing. He is/was a brilliant alto player in the modern jazz
style.
Brian Jenner always played what he
called the top 10 tunes of the day and this usually happened towards the end of
the evening. These tunes were played without stop, one after the other and it
was imperative that the lads had, by then, sorted out the girl most worthy of
their attention especially if the question “Can I see you home?” was to be
asked.
Some of the songs of the day were
jazzy or up-tempo and some were dreamy. The dreamy ones were called “bum
feelers”.
At 11.45 the dance ended and a fleet
of double-deckers waited outside to carry patrons to the four corners of the
Medway Towns and a little beyond. If you were going to see a girl home then you
walked her home if she lived nearby or got onto whichever bus she needed and
then walked back.
Very few of us lads had cars or
motorbikes in those days. A mate and I once bussed two girls home and then had
to walk back home in Strood from Tovil in Maidstone. And it was raining.
However it was normal, as far as I
was concerned, living in Strood and not having chatted up a bird, to take that
bus but to dismount at the Chatham station stop, one of several, and go to the
pie stall which was a caravan cafe just below the station.
This was a congregation point for
late-night revellers on their way home for a cup of tea or coffee but most of
all for a Humphries meat pie. They were delicious.
I think the little old guy that ran
the stall was named Syd. There was sometimes a disagreement between the more
antagonistic or drunk customers but it was easy enough to move away from the
fracas and get on with munching at your pie and sipping your tea.
All change: two nights for the price of one
IT WAS NORMAL FOR US
to get a pass-out for the interval at the Pav and go to
the British Queen on the opposite corner to St Mark’s Church and have a bottle
of brown ale but we sometimes went to the Sunny Cafe just above The Pav on the
corner of Lock Street and Canterbury Street for a cup of tea and perhaps egg and
chips. Very good egg and chips at The Sunny.
There were times when both The Pav and The
Paget had such great bands on the same Saturday night making it difficult for us
lads to chose which one to go to. The solution was for us to split more or less
50-50 for half to the Pav and half to the Paget.
At the interval we would all meet in the
British Queen with our pass-outs and swap so that we got to hear both bands. It
was obviously not in the best of interests to chat up a bird in the first half
if you weren’t going to be there for the second
Drainpipe trousers, and DA styling by Lance
DRESS CODES WERE SPECIFIC. If you
were into the modern jazz scene then you wore a suit, usually of a dark blue or
grey, shirt, maybe with a button-down collar and a narrow tie with two-colour
diagonal stripes.
These ties were to be found only in
Woolworths and it was our practice to go there, when possible, on Saturday
afternoon to see if they had a combination of colours that you hadn’t got.
Trousers were “pegged” or “drainpipe” with a circumference at the turn-up
usually of between 13 and 15 inches depending on choice. Suit jackets were
referred to as “drape jackets”.
Shoes were preferably with toecaps
and a heavy notched welt. Haircuts were “bop style duck’s arse” by the favourite
barber of the in crowd, Lance Onslow. His shop was opposite St Margaret’s Banks
in Rochester just along towards Star Hill from the North Foreland pub. If you
wanted a haircut by Lance on a Saturday afternoon you faced a wait of maybe two
hours but it was worth it to get it right.
The dress for girls in the “bop”
fashion was varied but most often they wore white blouses and a short,
waist-length jacket with long skirts to ankle length and flat shoes known as
pumps. Hairstyles varied from pageboy to beehive.
On Sunday evenings the jazz scene
with local musicians, including some off-duty Royal Marine bandsmen, moved to
the Piggeries Restaurant opposite Laveys gent’s outfitters. Down a flight of
stairs and you were in the back room of the restaurant which had an entrance on
to Medway Street.
It was usual, before going into the Piggeries
and during the half-time break, to have a half in the Sun Shades, which was the
lower bar of the Sun Hotel on the corner of High Street and Medway Street. It
was later the site of BBC Radio Kent.Changing bands at the Hammersmith Palais
DURING THE SUNDAY EVENING SESSION
we would often make arrangements, if there was nothing on at
the Pav or Paget, to go to one of several dance venues to hear the bands of the
day. One of the crowd was a guy named John Lytton (I think that’s how his name
was spelt). He was a bus driver for the Chatham Traction company and after we
had decided where we wanted to go, he would arrange for a coach and drive it to
the venue. And back of course, when he used to switch off all of the lights in
the coach.
We used to visit Hammersmith Palais
to hear Vic Lewis, Wimbledon Palais to hear Ken Mackintosh, we went to hear the
Oscar Rabin Band at the Old Opera House in London, Ted Heath, Johnny Dankworth,
Toni Anton, The Squadronaires, Harry Gold & his Pieces of Eight and other big
bands and smaller jazz groups. We went to the Star Hotel Ballroom in Maidstone,
to the Coronation Ballroom in Ramsgate, to Aylesford Paper Mills Social Club and
to the Orchid Ballroom in Purley.
Most of these bands came to the Pav
and Paget in any case but if there was nowt on at either then we went to
wherever the music was.
I can tell you from an old diary that
on Saturday 19 January 1952, Kenny Baker’s Dozen were playing at the Pav and
Johnny Dankworth was at the Paget. On 14 June the Kirchin Brothers band were at
the Pav. The 1 November saw The Ralph Sharon Quintet at the Pav. He subsequently
became Tony Bennett’s long -ime musical director.
From the same 1952 diary I can see
that Kit Tomkins was living at 5 Scott’s Terrace, Chatham, and Naomi Baker was
at 70 Darnley Road, Strood…
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