OCTOBER 1982, and one of Scotland’s best-known jazz outfits could be excused for, as it were, blowing their own trumpet.
The George McGowan Orchestra, pictured above, had just returned from London, where they had taken part in a nationwide jazz competition.
They had failed to win the championships, losing out to a London outfit named Brass Impact, but they managed to win four individual awards.Bruce Adams was voted best musician and best trumpeter; George himself won best drummer, and Jimmy Armstrong was voted best trumpet player.
George told the Evening Times: “We nearly made it but as a consolation we’ve won about £500 from the individual awards and from the second place in the championship.”
“The big bands really came back in the seventies,” said an affectionate, nostalgia-tinged article about the genre in the Herald in August 2001. “There was the Amphora in Sauchiehall Street, where the Bill Fanning Big Band blew your head off. That was the days of 2.30am closing and you went off to the Third Eye Centre just down the road to attempt some kind of aural equilibrium.
“The George McGowan band guested at a place in Bath Street called Shadows and then again on Sundays in the then Communist party-owned Star Club, with singer Cathy Brawley. Back then, the big band sound was part of pop music too.”
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