Before Beatlemania and all the lesser pop crazes that followed, there were the Stompers. The Clyde Valley Stompers. These Scottish sultans of trad jazz swing were, it seemed, everywhere, playing to packed houses from the Borders to the Orkney and Hebridean islands.
Trombonist Ian Menzies was the brains behind an enterprise which would come to see the Stompers hailed as ''the most travelled jazz band in Europe''- a tag which, according to singer Fionna Duncan, they could have earned on their days off during their summer seasons on Arran in the late 1950s.
Born in Glasgow, one of a family of six, Menzies began playing music in the Boys Brigade. In his late teens, while working in Rowan's foundry in Finnieston and then training as a draughtsman, he played in dance bands around the Govan area.
Then, excited by the first wave of trad jazz which brought Humphrey Lyttelton and Chris Barber to popular acclaim, Menzies took over the leadership of the Stompers when Jim McHarg, who had founded the band in 1952, called it a day. At the time, recalls clarinettist Forrie Cairns who joined in the late 1950s, the Stompers were just a ''wee local band''.
Menzies changed that. By the mid 1950s, they had made their first recordings for the Beltona label, home mostly to Scottish tenors and country dance bands, including one recorded live in St Andrew's Hall, Glasgow. Forrie Cairns, who was then studying law at Glasgow University, remembers that in short order
the Stompers had become ''a phenomenon''.
''There were Stompers fans everywhere,'' he says. ''They weren't jazz fans - they'd probably never heard of Humph or Chris Barber; they just loved the Stompers and they packed
every venue.''
Cairns remembers going to Sandyhills Tennis Club to see the Stompers and being unable to get in. As he watched through the window, he thought it would be great to play in a band like that. Soon he was.
''Ian wasn't the greatest trombonist - I don't think anyone would dispute that - but only certain people have the ability to run a band successfully and he certainly had that. He was actually very unassuming, quite introverted, but he was also very persuasive. I was in fifth year at Glasgow University, seconded to a law firm and playing in my spare time in a band with Jim McHarg, oddly enough, when Ian phoned me and asked if I'd like to join the Stompers. Within two days I was out of university and touring with them, playing seven nights a week.''
Cairns joined in time to experience the Arran summer seasons when for eight weeks the Stompers would play in village halls in Brodick, Whiting Bay, and Lamlash packed to the rafters with locals and holiday makers. Then, on their ''day off'', they'd travel to Wick for a gig, returning just in time for the next gig on Arran.
The Stompers played much bigger venues, much more prestigious dates than village hall dances, though.
They were the first jazz band to appear on the Royal Variety Performance, when it was held in Glasgow Empire, and they achieved UK-wide popularity through touring and appearing on television's Morecambe & Wise, Russ Conway, and Thank Your Lucky Stars shows. They even made the hit parade with records such as Peter and
the Wolf.
Then, in 1966, having left the band to run hotels, first in Jersey then in Rothesay, Menzies emigrated to Canada where he designed fire hydrants and continued to play around Vancouver.
It was while touring Canada in the early 1980s that Cairns, who had had a serious falling out with Menzies, met his ''arch enemy''.
''We were standing next to each other in a toilet when we turned and recognised each other - and instead of hitting each other, by the end of the night I'd agreed to reform the band.''
Menzies rounded up all the players from the band's late 1950s heyday, who had dispersed to Canada, Switzerland, and points in between. Reconvening in Glasgow, they rehearsed for all of 20 minutes and embarked on a successful reunion that produced three successful albums and lasted until 1988.
On two other occasions Menzies and Cairns also got together and toured far into Northern British Columbia, playing - as the Stompers had done in Scotland - to packed village halls to people who had never been to a jazz gig before. ''That was typical of Ian,'' says Cairns.
Until recently, Menzies continued to play with a quartet. Earlier this year on a trip to California he became ill, however, and was found to have a
brain tumour.
A fit and active man up to that point - he golfed regularly, swam, and loved playing football with his grandchildren - he had been planning another ''jazz evangelists'' trip with Cairns when his illness struck.
He is survived by his wife, Janet, daughter, Jacqueline, and son, Ian.
Ian Menzies, bandleader and draughtsman; born Glasgow, March 3, 1932, died Vancouver, November 25, 2001.
Rob Adams
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