Intro and Quartet App

Geoff 0:19

And we're gonna talk about all things 'trad', guitar, singing, whatever comes up. So looking forward to having a nice chat with him. He'll play some guitar for us as well. So here we go.

Announcement 0:47

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Childhood Roots in Trad Jazz

Announcement 0:56

Denny, how are you doing?

Denny 0:57

I'm alright.

Geoff 0:58

It's hot today, isn't it?

Denny 0:59

Oh crazy. Oh Jesus.

Geoff 1:00

So so we're out in um in the country, we're doing a gig today. Yeah, where actually are we?

Denny 1:05

Hadley.

Geoff 1:06

Can we start by talking a little bit about your past? I mean we know each other a little bit, but we haven't played that much together. No. So can you briefly give me a sort of a summary of how you got into jazz?

Denny 1:15

How I got here, yeah.

Geoff 1:16

Yeah. Um the eight world.

Denny 1:19

Yeah, right. My dad was a trumpet player. He played mostly on the trad scene. He was one of the younger guys at the end of the trad boom of the 50s, 60s.

Geoff 1:30

What's your dad's name?

Denny 1:31

He was also Denny Ilett.

Geoff 1:32

Another one.

Denny 1:32

Yeah, so I'm technically I'm junior, although Denny Ilett Jr. this year, that's pushing it a bit. Although he always said that was your mother's fault. He said it wasn't me that named you. So as a result of that, I grew up with mostly the old, like Louis Armstrong is the big was the big towering thing in my childhood. Right. And and then all the other ones of that era, Fats Waller, Ellington, you know, lots of trumpet players, Roy Eldridge, Red Allen, you know, all these Bobby Hackett, Harry James, who remains one of my big heroes.

Geoff 2:03

Right, right.

Denny 2:04

So it's very was a very sort of brass leaning, you know, there was very little guitar around. But my dad did have a record of T-Bone Walker, and mostly because on it was a trumpet player called Teddy Buckner, a guy from New Orleans that my dad really liked his playing. I think he bought the record because he saw that name on there. And apart from Freddie Green or Allan Reuss, those guys that you'd hear in the big bands, you know, because I did listen to a lot of Basie and Benny Goodman. I didn't really wasn't exposed to any guitar until that record, and that was like, I just couldn't believe the sound of it. It was incredible. And then around about the same time, when I expressed an interest in that, my dad said, Well, you know, you why aren't you listening to Django Reinhardt? I said, Well, they haven't got any records of him, you know. That was the you had to buy a record, didn't you? Then, or have someone give you one. Um, so

Geoff 2:56

Go the library?

Denny 2:58

Well, I didn't even think about doing that. We grew up in a kind of very sort of like this is what you've got kind of environment. You know, there was there wasn't an awful lot of.

Geoff 3:07

Which which town did you grow up in?

Denny 3:09

I was born in Woodley, just outside Reading, on a council estate. We weren't very wealthy, let's put it that way. But my dad somehow managed to turn himself into a phenomenal trumpet player simply by listening to it. He never learned to read music, he never learned anything about chords or scales or any of that sort of stuff. He just learnt by listening. Like, I suppose, in much the same way that we as children learn to speak, don't we? Or yeah, we learn by copying. So I did play the trumpet as a kid. So I I could hear the music. You know, I had I could do all that, I could sing along to solos in when I was a child. But there wasn't a guitar. So as it happened, my older brother got one. He thought he'd have a go. And so when he used to go out with his girlfriend, I was still like 13, 14 at this stage. I used to sneak into his room when he'd gone out with his girlfriend and start mucking about on his guitar, and then couldn't work out why I couldn't sound like T-Bone Walker because it was a nylon strung Spanish guitar. You know, I didn't know anything about it. And then quite quickly after that, I started sort of thumbing through his records that he had, and there was one called Are You Experienced? And so I for some reason I it was the cover of it. I put that on, and I don't know if you know it, but it starts with that feedback note into Foxy Lady.

Geoff 4:28

That's the Jimi Hendrix. It's not the one with the lady, with all the ladies sitting on the

Denny 4:32

No, that's Electric Ladyland. It's the one where he's kind of like got a sort of cloak and he's got his arms over the other guys in the band.

Geoff 4:40

Right, right.

Denny 4:41

Um, so when that started, I just couldn't believe it. But I could hear how it related to the T-Bone Walker, or I mean, all the horn players are playing blues of the sort of jazz that I was listening to. It's all very blues, but it's just something I couldn't believe it. And so so that was it then. I wanted to play the guitar. So that's how I started to play the guitar. Yeah, and then I um I learned how to play Smoke on the Water, like you do, like from a kid at school, yeah, on the wrong strings. Yeah, my English teacher showed me the chords for House of the Rising Sun, and then I somehow managed to fathom out the first bit of the snooker theme. You know, the down now, now now down that. And then by the time I'd done that, my dad thought I was he he I should start going on gigs with him. Yeah, you know so he used to take

Geoff 5:29

that's like the old bass player joke, isn't it? First week the E-string, second week the A string, third week he can't have a lesson because he got a gig. Yeah.

Denny 5:38

And he and he pitched it to me in a way that I thought, all right, then. You know, he said, he'll be right. Don't worry about it. He said, if you don't know something, just don't play. Yeah. He said, but when you do, do. Right. You know.

Geoff 5:49

So you must have had a good ear for picking out melodies, right?

Denny 5:52

Well, I did know the tunes by ear because I listened to them since I was a kid. So I did know how the tunes went.

Geoff 5:58

And a lot of those traddy tunes are quite simple, quite sort of pentatonic-y kind of sounds good tunes, aren't they?

Denny 6:04

Yeah, and they harmonically they shift around in a very similar way. Once you've learned three or four of them, you've got enough stuff to get through all of them practically. So that's how I learned. I had to figure it out that there are these little things that happen in music, you know, the one to the four, you know, the five to the one, you know, and then the

Geoff 6:26

cadences basically.

Denny 6:27

Yeah, exactly. And then and then little like in those trad things, there's an awful lot of that sort of um one to the two dominant, yeah, you know, that sort of stuff.

Geoff 6:37

Like A-Train, for example.

Denny 6:38

Yeah, that, yeah, things like that. And so I don't really know how it worked out, but with my the fact that I could hear how these tunes went, I started to figure it out. And then and then I would go and see guitar players playing, and I'd and I would try to sort of take mental photographs of like snapshots in my mind of of a couple of little moves that sounded nice. Yeah, if I heard something that sounded nice, I'd I'd just look at what they were doing. And so I learned a few shapes like that, and then I thought, well, hang on, that goes five to one. Loads of tunes do that, you know, the tension, the release, you know, that and then I thought, well, that's actually music. That's all there is to music. There's this uh tension and there's this release. And so it it took about a year of being chucked in at the deep end, and I felt like my dad was torturing me as well. Really? Because he, you know, he'd say things like, Well, uh right, we're gonna play, I don't know what it would be, you know, like High Society, these old trad things, you know. Yeah, and I go, Oh, I don't know it. He'd say, It's in B flat, you'll be all right, and then and then he'd do the trad kick-off, you know.

Geoff 7:42

Yeah.

Denny 7:43

And then still look at it. And then, but you know, you do it's a sink or swim, isn't it? You you wow, you know.

Geoff 7:52

So you were very you were still a teenager, right? Very early. Yeah. So what happened when you got to school and when you did you study music after that?

Denny 7:59

No.

Geoff 7:59

Did you feel the urge to study music or not?

Denny 8:01

No, I I think I taught to f I I mean music lessons at school were were all based around Andrew Lloyd Weber.

Geoff 8:07

Yeah, there , was terrible. There were when I was a kid as well, you know, with the same thing.

Denny 8:10

There's nothing there to inspire me. When I'm I go home and Fats Waller's on.

Geoff 8:14

Yeah, absolutely.

Denny 8:14

You know, or Oscar Peterson or Dizzy.

Geoff 8:17

And this is this is before formal jazz education was even available, wasn't it?

Denny 8:22

Well, I I imagine so, yeah. Yeah. But I also, where I come from and that time as well, there wasn't an awful lot of pressure or expectation for kids like me to aspire to go to college or university.

Geoff 8:34

Right.

Denny 8:35

You got to 16, you did your CSE's or whatever, yeah, and then you and then you went out and

Learning Guitar on the Bandstand

Denny 8:40

got a job. Yeah. You know, and that was kind of what

Geoff 8:42

So did you get a job?

Denny 8:43

I did, yeah.

Geoff 8:44

Right. And what did you get? What did you do?

Denny 8:46

Right. I worked at a place called Inertia Switch, right? And it was it was a thing. They they they made this little thing that tripped when on impact. So it was to design to cut the fuel line of cars with a crash. So we used to have to test them with these pendulums ramming into things. So you can imagine what fun we I was like 16 years old.

Geoff 9:06

Oh my god. Oh wow.

Denny 9:08

So it didn't last very long. I got the sack from that. And then and then I thought, right, so but uh my mum and dad had split up when I was a kid. So I was my dad was my sort of weekend mate. Yeah, so I when I was around about that age, 16, 17, I got the sack from the job, and my mum said, Well, you can't stay here, you know, that sort of thing. Um

Geoff 9:32

Kicked you out?

Denny 9:33

Basically. So I asked my dad if I could go there, and he said, Yeah, of course you can. And and because I thought by then all I wanted to do was play, yeah, you know, and just be around him listening to music all the time.

Geoff 9:46

Right.

Denny 9:46

So that's what I did, you know. And uh so that was college for me, you know, because he did he my dad was comes from a sort of humble background, but he was very, very intelligent. He thought about everything, the way that one would play and phrase, breathing. He really did have a way, like a way into things like beyond of anyone else that I've ever met. Wow. The way that he would articulate.

Geoff 10:11

And you say he didn't read music or anything like that. So what kind of gigs did he do? Did he didn't do big bands then, did he?

Denny 10:16

He just did small games. No, he no, he did a lot of trad bands. Trad bands, yeah, okay. Yeah. So he was on that circuit. I mean, he was forever in Germany. That's where the you know, or uh Sweden and Denmark, that's where all that that was all happening then. I used to look at his gig list and it was like huge.

Geoff 10:32

Right.

Denny 10:32

You know, it was pinned to the wall. And I said, God, all these places, like it was exotic, sort of, you know, wouldn't it be amazing to do that?

Geoff 10:40

Yeah, you know, yeah.

Denny 10:41

So that was it. And then and then occasionally I would get I would get in the band bus and go with them, you know. They drove everywhere, they never flew.

Geoff 10:49

Yeah.

Denny 10:49

And they'd go around Europe for two weeks just listening to the

Geoff 10:54

Exciting, hanging out with your dad.

Denny 10:55

It was it was just incredible. Learning bad habits and it's a good thing. And just well, yeah, a lot of those. I think I never felt the need to study. And and of course, I wasn't with anybody my own age, so I didn't have any sort of peers to chat to about anything. Everybody, everybody that I knew and played with was were was my dad's generation.

Geoff 11:15

Right, okay.

First Residency and Career Breaks

Geoff 11:16

So, what's what stage did you start stepping out as a front man and and booking your own gigs?

Denny 11:22

I lived in Oxford for many years, and my car had broken down outside my flat, which was next door to a pub called The Cricketers on the Iffley Road. And as I was under the bonnet, you know, you know what it's like when you're a young jazz musician, you're constantly fixing your car, aren't you? You know, and so I was doing that for the umpteenth time. And a guy came out of the pub and said, You're alright, do you want a drink? And I went, Yeah, well, you're alright then. And he was the new landlord, his name was Mike, and he just moved in. And so we got chatting. I fixed my car. He said, Where are you off to that? I'm going to do a gig. Oh, musician. So then he said, Why don't you come and set up a gig? So that was my first gig under my name. It was there every Tuesday night. We moved up to another place, pub. He he took over another bigger place called the Bullingdon Arms. So, with the two of them together, it was about 15 years of my life. And then I met this lady called Lillian Boutté, who was from New Orleans. She lived in, on the continent, and she used to come over to Oxford and do a summer school thing with a gospel.

Geoff 12:22

On the continent. I haven't heard that for a while. Oh my god. I don't know, it's just a lovely phrase.

Denny 12:26

On the continent. Where are you going? I'm going on the continent. Yeah, she used to come to Oxford and do a summer school with a with a choir doing gospel harmonies and things. Right, right. And and at the end of that week, she would do a little gig in a garden. And the guy that organised that was a guy called Richard Speed. I don't know if you ever came across him.

Geoff 12:42

The name sounds familiar

Denny 12:43

He used to run a gig at the Railway Inn at Culham in Oxfordshire. And he used to get everybody to play there. He was a really good guy, sadly, no longer with us. And so it he used to invite me along. So from that, I got to play with Spike Robinson and you know, I mean, whoever, Pete King, you know, I mean, it would have been the guest. It was amazing, all sorts of people. That's where I first met Dave Newton and you know, and and Dave Green and all these like legends. So he invited me to go and play with her, and so I did that, and that was great. And then she said to me, this was in the year 1996, she said, I if you're free for coffee tomorrow, come come and meet me. She said, and and bring your diary, I might have a couple of things for you. So I thought, oh, okay. So I went and took my diary, and I'm not joking, she put 150 gigs in my book.

Geoff 13:38

Wow.

Denny 13:39

Starting the week after in Copenhagen at Copenhagen Jazz Festival. So that was then the next 20 years of my life. Yeah. Until 2016. That's when she read she got early dementia and had to retire in turn. So I played with her for 20 years, yeah.

Geoff 13:55

Wow, that's quite unusual, isn't it?

Denny 13:57

Yeah, well, it was we're really busy.

Geoff 13:59

Amazing.

Denny 13:59

You know, it tailed off towards the last sort of few years, but but I was still, she was that was my job.

Geoff 14:04

Yeah.

Denny 14:05

So I spent most of those years out of the country.

Geoff 14:08

Wow.

Denny 14:09

And that's why sometimes I I I think you know, people go, Ah, you know, how long have you been around for? And I go, Well, I've been around a long time, but just not here.

Geoff 14:16

Yeah, sure.

Denny 14:17

You know, yeah, all my golden years were spent on the road with her, but we went all over the world. Amazing. It's amazing playing playing New Orleans music, which basically is anything.

Geoff 14:27

And playing presumably jazz standards as well, a lot.

Denny 14:30

Yeah, she played a lot of standards and a lot of blues and a lot of um the old school R&B stuff, like like the sort of thing Dr. John plays, yeah. Gospel tunes, I mean, all in the space of a 45-minute set.

Geoff 14:43

Wow, so that's 30 years ago, isn't it?

Denny 14:45

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. My son was only about a few weeks old when when I met, and then I was off, you know.

Geoff 14:52

Yeah, yeah. I know that my I have twin girls, yeah. 30 just turned 31, so yeah, 1995. That was a big year for me, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And that was your big break in some ways, wasn't it?

Denny 15:03

Well, kind of I mean, kind of. It didn't stop me from doing other things. I I I did lots of other things. But I mean, I still do a lot of stuff on the continent. And I I often sort of catch myself and go, well, I'm very lucky to, you know, I go to France, a lot of Germany, or Denmark, or Sweden, Switzerland, you know. They're all connections from Lillian, you know, still. I still, I mean, I've just been in Germany, I've been twice Germany in the last month, and doing these gigs, and I've you know, the connections are all everything goes back to her. Yeah, so it's amazing, really.

Geoff 15:35

It shows you the value, doesn't it, of establishing those connections as you go along, you know, as well.

Denny 15:39

I mean, I mean, you know as well as I do that an awful lot of being busy as a musician rests on mates, being mates with people, being comfortable with people and being friendly with people, and you know, because you know, 90% of your time is spent sitting about, isn't it?

Geoff 15:52

Yeah, sure. So uh you get paid for the travel, not for the gig, don't you? Do the gigs for free, yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Playing Tangerine on Guitar

Geoff 16:06

So I've I've made some apps um of which you are now a um owner. Yes. Um so I asked you to pick a tune.

Denny 16:15

Have you got Tangerine?

Geoff 16:16

Yeah, I do, yeah.

Denny 16:18

Tangerine then.

Geoff 16:19

Okay. Yeah. All right. I think it's the last eight as an intro. Okay. And then you're gonna play two choruses of Tangerine. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, Denny that was great.

Ear-Led Improvisation and Singing

Geoff 18:27

So so when you're improvising, you I mean, there's a lot of blues there, isn't there?

Denny 18:30

I mean, all my jazz roots are blues, uh very blues-based. There's blues in all of my early influence.

Geoff 18:37

Uh, when you were learning your vocabulary, did you um transcribe? Did you learn from other people's solos?

Denny 18:44

No. One of my dad's pieces of advice was do the transcribing by ear. You know, learn how to sing it, and then see what of that comes out rather than copy it. It's it took a lot longer to learn things that way.

Geoff 18:57

But it goes in deeper, doesn't it?

Denny 18:58

But it but it was the it was the much more natural way of doing it. Like, like, you know, you would hear things and like learning another language, you have to hear it, don't you? Yeah, I mean, I still do. I I I'm always singing all the time. Yeah, I always I'm always blowing over changes. Um they always end up being some something really simple, like on the changes of Bill Bailey or Perdido. Yeah. Or you know, something like that. But they're the kind of things that I that my ear goes to those tunes.

Geoff 19:23

So speaking of singing, you you also sing, don't you, on gigs? When did that start?

Denny 19:27

That started in do you know what? That started in 1994, when I wanted to learn how to write big band charts, and so I started to write things on paper, and I bought some score paper, and I started, and I couldn't work out what to do at all, I didn't have a clue. All I had was in my head the Harry James Big Band or Basie or you know, and I just loved the sound of saxophones. I mean, in a way, in a way, the sound of a saxophone section is probably what drew me funnily enough to the guitar because I like I like the sound of chords, and of course I couldn't play them on the trumpet, and we didn't have the kind of money that we could get a piano. I loved Frank Sinatra, all that you know, Neal Hefti, Billy May, Nelson Riddle stuff, absolutely adored it. So I wanted to learn how to write, and I thought, well, those ones would be easier to do because there's not so much going on because there's a singer to be behind. I thought that would be easier. That I thought that would be an easy way in. And so then I ended up with these charts that were sort of based on the originals but just simplified. And then I thought, well, I've got to find I couldn't find a singer that that remotely made me think that they'd listen to Frank Sinatra at all.

Geoff 20:44

Yeah, yeah.

Denny 20:44

Do you know what I mean? It all sounded like they'd come from some cabaret club or Butlins or something. Yeah, yeah. So again, little nugget from the old man, he said, Why don't you do it? And I'd never thought about that. So, anyway, so I did I did, and I and then I found out that I really enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah. So I started doing it.

Geoff 21:05

Love examining, yeah, fantastic.

Quickfire Questions on Music Life

Geoff 21:08

I've got some questions that I'm ask everyone. Some of these will be easy to answer, some of them may not be. Okay. But let's see how we go. All right. So, question one is what's your favourite album?

Denny 21:19

Oh god, that depends on what day it is. Um, well, today, my favourite album is going to be a Harry James album. There's a Harry James album he did in the 1950s on Capitol called Wild About Harry with Ernie Wilkins charts and Buddy Rich is on drums. It sounds like awesome. It's in the Capitol Studio. Yeah. And those guys, young men like having it. That album. If you haven't heard that album, check it out. It's awesome.

Geoff 21:45

Okay.

Denny 21:46

Yeah.

Geoff 21:46

But you listen to lots of other music as well. Do you listen to you have a very broad taste in music?

Denny 21:51

I like to think so. Yeah. Yeah. I like to think.

Geoff 21:53

So give me a couple of other of your favourite albums.

Denny 21:55

Well, um, yeah, well, I mean, anything by Led Zeppelin, anything off the first five Black Sabbath records.

Geoff 22:02

Right. Wasn't expecting that.

Denny 22:04

Any Jimi Hendrix. I mean, I loved all the British rock bands. Yeah. I loved any rock band that had some loud guitar solos in. You know, which is funny enough, I that's why I didn't really listen much to the Stones or the Beatles when I was younger. Because the guitar. Because there were any burning guitar solos for me. Well, so I thought, you know, I mean, I listen to them now and I go, oh my god, I can't believe I, you know, but my ear's probably a bit more subtle now. Yeah, sure, yeah. So I got into all that stuff later. I have Italian-ish heritage, so there was a lot of opera in Italian opera, uh, particularly like um Caruso. My dad had a lot of those records. Mario Lanza. Yeah. He loved the tenors. He thought

Geoff 22:47

that the movie was on the TV last week. The Caruso

Denny 22:51

with Mario Lanza. Yeah. Yeah. See, that that's one of my Desert Island movies. Isn't it amazing? You know, because it's fantastic.

Geoff 22:57

Yes.

Denny 22:57

And and he and he used to go, well, that's how Louis Armstrong plays, like an opera singer. Yeah. And he and he used to say that in our little house. And it was years later, a guy, I can't remember his name now, did a whole study on the relationship between Louis and an opera, like and got some sort of PhD out of it. Wow. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. My old man was way ahead of his time. So that sort of thing. I I love the Django sort of stuff, you know, that sort of um I love that. And yeah, there's there's no such thing as bad music, there's only badly played music.

Geoff 23:28

Yeah, sure. Okay, at least leads us on to question number two. Is there a musician alive or dead that you would like to play with?

Denny 23:35

Louis Armstrong.

Geoff 23:37

No hesitation.

Denny 23:38

No. Number one.

Geoff 23:40

Yeah.

Denny 23:41

Yeah.

Geoff 23:41

Okay. Question three. What would you say was is the highlight of your career?

Denny 23:48

I think um meeting and playing and touring with Lillian Boutté for all those years, we went all over the world. I mean, Europe was the thing. I mean, three weeks on, one week off, that type of thing for years. America two to twice a year, Australia, you know, like we went everywhere. And it was just the best. And she always had a great band with great people. It was just the freest I've ever felt musically. Because she really just let you play. She encouraged you just to be yourself.

Geoff 24:20

Yeah.

Denny 24:21

She never asked you to play a certain way or oh, on that bit can you play that? No, it was never that. Yeah. Just get up there and have a good time. Fantastic.

Geoff 24:30

That's great. Um, what would you say is your musical weakness?

Denny 24:35

Oh Christ. Um, well, um, yeah, well, as a guitar player, my I don't practice enough. So yeah, I I have a technique that would be described probably as sloppy by this in this day and age, but it was pretty cool 30 years ago, you know, to play like that. Everyone has to be so accurate now. So yeah, I mean I feel like that, but I mean, probably by I there are lots of gaps in my harmonic knowledge.

Geoff 25:00

Right.

Denny 25:00

You know, I mean, my my ear gets about as far as Bebop and it doesn't go beyond that. I just don't hear.

Geoff 25:07

Yeah.

Denny 25:07

I mean, I hear it and I appreciate it, but it doesn't come into me and come out the other end as something that I can use.

Geoff 25:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

Denny 25:15

I don't know if that's a flaw or not. Well, no, it's just what it is.

Geoff 25:18

Uh, question five. Do you ever get nervous on stage?

Denny 25:21

No. The one thing my dad did teach me by chucking me in at the deep-end like that, whether he meant to or not, was that I don't fear music.

Geoff 25:27

No.

Denny 25:28

I don't, I don't know such thing as a wrong note. I don't, it doesn't bother me if I don't know something, I'll find it.

Geoff 25:33

Yeah.

Denny 25:33

I'll find and I'm happy to find it. I don't I never have to panic to look for a chord sheet or ask anyone. Yeah. I'd I yeah.

Geoff 25:41

Yeah, use your ears, yeah.

Denny 25:42

Yeah, so I don't get nervous.

Geoff 25:43

No, play and play a note and just adjust it to see if it fits with what's going on behind you. Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to be, actually. Uh next question have you ever been starstruck?

Denny 25:53

Yes.

Geoff 25:55

Meet some of your heroes?

Denny 25:56

Right. Jim Mullen. I didn't meet Louie Armstrong or Frank Sinatra or , Jim. I was starstruck by Jim Mullen, to an extent I still am. Because to me, he's the best.

Geoff 26:07

Yeah.

Denny 26:07

He's just the best. So yeah, I he to me, he's a he's a star.

Geoff 26:12

Yeah. You know.

Denny 26:12

Um do you know do you know him though to talk to him? Oh, yeah, yeah, I know really well. Yeah, I've got to know him very well, you know. Yeah, okay. Obviously, don't see him as much as I'd like, but I remember meeting him for the first time. I used to go and sit find him because I wanted to, I was trying to learn.

Geoff 26:25

Yeah.

Denny 26:25

And I I I remembered asking him for lessons once, and he said he'd turn me down. Yeah.

Geoff 26:31

But he comes from the the the same generation as your dad, though.

Denny 26:33

I mean, that's exactly. He said, I he said that he said the last thing I want to do is pass on my bad habits to you.

Geoff 26:38

Yeah, yeah.

Denny 26:39

You know, and I said, What should I be practicing then? Tunes. That's what he said. Yeah. One word.

Geoff 26:45

That's all you need, isn't it? Right. What's your favourite sandwich?

Denny 26:50

Cheese and pickle. God, that didn't take long to do it.

Geoff 26:58

What about a favourite movie? You may have already said this actually, you've already talked about The Great Caruso.

Denny 27:02

Well, I do like that one, yeah. I really like the High Society movie. Oh. I get a massive emotional trigger when that comes on.

Geoff 27:10

Yeah.

Denny 27:11

And of course that's what it's all about, in it. Yeah, all something happened to us when we were kids, yeah. We carry it forever, don't we?

Geoff 27:17

Well, that's the perfect collision of trad music and Sinatra and all that sort of 1950s stuff.

Denny 27:24

Cole Porter's sophistication. Brilliant. You know, it's just brilliant, isn't it? I mean, then I don't really think about it as a story. I just think every single musical interlude is brilliant. There isn't a duff one there.

Geoff 27:37

Especially the Now You Has Jazz. They come in one by one, it's just so cool, isn't it? Yeah. Everything about it.

Denny 27:43

It's amazing, yeah.

Geoff 27:44

Wow.

Denny 27:44

The opening scene on the when they're on when Louis and the band are on the bus doing the calypso. Yeah. Just brilliant. Yeah. When he says end of song, beginning of story. So good. When when you know, a lot of people have said this before, but you know, when Louis talks, there's more jazz than most musicians, you know.

Geoff 28:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Incredible, incredible. Uh, do you have a favourite venue that you like to play? Or a favourite type of venue?

Denny 28:08

Um, well, uh, type of venue. Uh I I I will never not love playing in a pub where there's no PA system, there's no stage. You know, that was the thing I learned from Lillian, you know, said in New Orleans, we didn't grow up on stage, we grew up in the street. Yeah, you know, the audience is next to you, you know.

Geoff 28:26

Yeah.

Denny 28:26

So I I I think that might be why I I love, I always love, used to love doing the pub gigs. And there were there were millions of them around when I was I used to make a living doing pub gigs. Yeah. Amazing. So I'll always love those. You know, of course, uh everybody loves playing at Ronnie Scott's. Yeah, you know,

Hendrix Big Band Plus Farewell

Denny 28:43

I love doing that.

Geoff 28:43

You have a you have a big band gig coming up, haven't you? At Ronnie's?

Denny 28:46

Yeah.

Geoff 28:47

Uh tell us about your big big band.

Denny 28:49

I've got a thing called The Electric Lady Big Band, and it's a 16-piece band. Electric Lady Band. Yeah, I can get it. Electric Lady Big Band.

Geoff 28:58

Land.

Denny 29:01

You wouldn't believe the amount of people that don't sort of see, get some sort of like confusion when they see it. Um, anyway, it's a it's a big band that plays the music of Jimi Hendrix. So it satisfies all of my thing, the big band harmonies with Jimi.

Geoff 29:19

Fantastic, yeah. And you sing and play guitar and pretty loud.

Denny 29:22

And I do I write the charts as well. Wow. Yeah, that's really good fun. Great players in it as well. You know, like all everyone up for it.

Geoff 29:30

Amazing.

Denny 29:30

You know, yeah. So that's fun.

Geoff 29:31

I'm gonna come to that for sure. Sure. Uh you travel a lot, obviously. So would you would you say you had a favourite city?

Denny 29:38

Not really. No, no, it's it's more about people for me. Right. You know, I used to do a lot, quite a lot of sightseeing on the road, but don't I don't not so much. I mean, going to Athens tomorrow. That's a nice city. But I don't know if I have a favourite. No, just but I do like to go to and see nice places. I mean, I was in some little town in Germany a couple of weeks ago that I can't even pronounce the name of. It was absolutely stunning. You know.

Geoff 30:03

Um, window or aisle?

Denny 30:07

Aisle

Geoff 30:08

yeah. Why?

Denny 30:12

I'd rather have somebody ask me to move than ask someone to move.

Geoff 30:17

Okay. Yeah. Fair enough. Cats or dogs?

Denny 30:23

Neither.

Geoff 30:24

Neither?

Denny 30:25

No, I'm not, I'm not a pets person.

Geoff 30:27

Oh, alright. No. Okay.

Denny 30:29

No. If I lived in 50 acres of land, I'd yeah, I would.

Geoff 30:33

And you weren't travelling quite as much.

Denny 30:34

Yeah, but yeah, exactly. Where where I live and what I do, I I wouldn't put a pet through that.

Geoff 30:39

Yeah.

Denny 30:39

So so neither.

Geoff 30:40

Yeah. Um couple more.

Denny 30:42

But but hang on, if I had to choose, dog.

Geoff 30:43

Yeah.

Denny 30:44

Yeah.

Geoff 30:44

Okay.

Denny 30:44

Yeah. Um Mainly because I'm allergic to cats.

Geoff 30:48

Okay. What's your most used app on your phone?

Denny 30:51

WhatsApp, probably, or Facebook.

Geoff 30:52

I know what you're going to be using now though, Quartet.

Denny 30:55

Yeah, Quartet though. That's that's going to be up there. There you go. Yeah. Um finally eBay. I use that quite a lot of. Oh, do you? Yeah.

Geoff 31:02

Tom Cawley said that. That was his most used.

Denny 31:04

Yeah, maybe it's probably a toss-up between Facebook and eBay.

Geoff 31:08

Do you buy you buy a lot of guitars? Do you have a lot of guitars?

Denny 31:10

I no, I've got rid of them all now. Have you? Um, yeah, I I used to have about 10, which isn't that many by guitar standards. Yeah. But I'm down to three, four now. And I don't really need three of those. So I'm not a collector. I I I like these at really great quality but inexpensive Japanese guitars from the 70s and 80s. I have those. I'm not somebody that thinks that there's any inherent mojo in what is effectively a tool, you know. So yeah, I'm not I'm not that into gear at all.

Geoff 31:44

That's fine. So we're on the stage at the uh the Hadleigh Jazz Club, yeah. Uh run by fantastic George Double, and we've got to stop now because the punters are waiting to come in. We're on the stage and they're just supposed to come in. But before we do, yeah, what's your favourite chord?

Denny 32:03

Well, oh God, it's so weird. I know. Well, I'll tell you what, on the guitar, there was uh do you know Andy Crowdy, a wonderful bass player, he's a very dear mate of mine. He plays guitar as well. Yep. And we were talking about when we were teenagers learning this chord.

Geoff 32:19

Okay.

Denny 32:20

And I said, Do you remember when you learnt that? He went, Yeah, I wrote about 17 pounds. Yeah, so I like that one, and I love this one.

Geoff 32:26

And that was just just just an A minor, is it? A minor, yeah. But it's got that lovely open open B in it.

Denny 32:32

It's got a ninth, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I like this one as well for an E minor. I like that one.

Geoff 32:41

Nice.

Denny 32:41

Yeah.

Geoff 32:42

Give me the notes, tell me the notes of that.

Denny 32:43

Um, well, E, B, G, A, D, F sharp. Yeah. Lovely. Split. Yeah. Then you can start I wrote about 17 songs just with that shape.

Geoff 32:57

Did you?

Denny 33:00

Lovely, yeah. Yeah. And and give me one of your favourite licks. Oh god, I don't have any licks. Um, but I'll tell you what, I did one thing that I've I teach this a lot is this thing on the G and B string, where you can get all those. You can get all that chromatic stuff without having to go anywhere.

Geoff 33:23

You know, that sort of just play that slowly. Play that slowly. Okay.

Denny 33:35

Not sure if that's how it was originally, but but you get three-quarters of a chromatic scale without having to go anywhere.

Geoff 33:41

Yeah.

Denny 33:42

You know.

Geoff 33:43

Yeah. I like that. Nice, yeah. Fabulous, yeah. Well, I think on that we should banging and clattering in the background here, so I think we should probably stop. Yeah. Denny, thanks so much. Pleasure, Geoff. Thank you, mate. Amazing. Look forward to the gig tonight.

Announcement 34:00

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