Here’s a thing – not many people these days seem to have heard of Mr Acker Bilk. He’s lost on today’s younger generation because he’s not really in the limelight any more, but he was once an international star whose credits include having a Number One hit in both the US and UK charts in 1962.

For those of you not in the know, Acker is a British jazz clarinettist who first emerged in the late 1950’s and took the British Trad Boom in the late 50’s/early 60’s by storm. He’s another musical hero of mine, but he also affords my general respect and admiration for just being a great bloke as well. I can sense you’re itching to know why, so I won’t disappoint.

Mr Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band were amongst the cream of the British Trad jazz bands around during the Trad Boom. Many of the hundreds of bands that were around at the time have come and gone, but – and with all due respect to those other bands - only the true stalwarts are still playing to this day. Acker is not only a great musician, something which I’ll come to shortly, he’s also a shrewd businessman. When the Trad Boom died out in 1963 due to the emergence of a certain four-man pop combo from Liverpool, all of the Trad bands disappeared from the public limelight and back into the relative obscurity of the jazz world, and thus their 15 minutes of worldwide fame and associated relatively high earnings disappeared with them. A lot of the bands went to the wall, but the best of the bunch, including the Paramount Jazz Band, continued by searching for work elsewhere, especially in Northern Europe where their particular style of music was still very popular.

But even this didn’t last forever. The other ‘big’ names in the field continued as they had done, playing the music which they’d always played and somehow struggling through those difficult years to survive to this day. Acker took a different route; he recognised an opportunity to continue to make a very good living through music, and capitalised on it. You’ll notice that on the cover of ‘Stranger On The Shore’ there’s the line, ‘With the splendid assistance of the Leon Young string chorale’, quoted in typical wry Bilk style, but what this information tells you is that his Number One hit was not by Mr Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band, it was by Acker and ‘His Strings’, as they would come to be know as.

If you searched further through your grandparents’ vinyl collection, you may well find other albums by Acker and His Strings, and again these are nothing to do with jazz in the slightest; they’re pure ‘easy listening’ and just about as cheesy as that particular genre of music can get. Songs from the shows, instrumental versions of pop hits (ironically, often to include famous Lennon & McCartney tunes), folk songs, spirituals – you name it, Acker and His Strings have recorded it. Purists would say that he was being too commercial and betraying his roots as a jazz musician just to make a fast buck. In a way they had a point; he was obviously trying to make money out of his diversification, but he wasn’t betraying his jazz roots at all. Throughout the 40-odd years that he’s been recording his cheesy string-laden albums, he’s always maintained the jazz side of his career, regularly playing, touring and recording not only with The Paramount Jazz Band, but as a guest artiste with many other jazz bands and musicians. But at the end of the day a man has to make a living, especially when he has a wife and family to support, so I for one salute Mr Bilk in his endeavours, and I can’t help but sense his underlying sense humour in his pursuit of such cheesy and corny music.

If there was a need to back up my argument that Acker has never betrayed his musical roots, then to listen to him playing jazz, either in the early days or in the 21^st century, would dispel any doubts as to his credibility. I know from personal experience that it’s particularly difficult to find a true musical ‘voice’ as one person in a world of thousands of musicians, but it’s no exaggeration to say that Acker’s clarinet playing is unique and instantly recognisable above all others. He also has a natural ability to swing, much in the same way as my Number One musical hero Oscar Peterson. But whilst Oscar is unarguably a virtuoso genius on the piano, I couldn’t make that claim about Acker, and indeed I can just imagine him being the first to admit this fact in his famously self-deprecating way. However, I’m certainly not wishing to do Acker an injustice; he is (also unarguably) an extremely competent and talented musician, and another of his shrewd trademarks over the years has been to always surround himself with top-notch musicians.

He’s also made sure that the Paramount Jazz Band ‘sound’ has progressed musically over the years. Where their musical output was purely traditional in the late 50’s and early 60’s, towards the late 60’s it gradually became more relaxed and swinging in its feel, even to the point where in the mid-1970’s their repertoire encompassed several jazz-funk influenced numbers, mainly due to the band’s long-standing trombone player who was a devotee of this type of jazz. When he left the band in 1980, the jazz-funk influence all but disappeared from the band as they reverted to the relaxed and swinging style which they had from the late 60’s and early 70’s, a format which remains with the band to this day. Acker’s own musical style has also matured over the years. In the early days he would play with the vibrancy and enthusiasm naturally associated with New Orleans and Traditional Jazz, but over the years his style has mellowed to a point where the uninitiated listener could argue that he just doesn’t really bother any more. To those of us that know and love Acker’s style, however, this is clearly not the case. There’s no denying that his playing these days is extremely relaxed – mostly due to the fact that he suffered a heart attack in 1976 which necessitated his ‘slowing down’ in many aspects of his life - but there’s still an underlying enthusiasm in his playing which still gives it that all-important swinging feel. A fellow trumpet player once said to me that Acker Bilk ‘swings’ just by playing one note on his clarinet; I think that says it all.

Something which has been prevalent throughout this article so far is Acker’s sense of humour. He’s certainly the most self-deprecating man you could ever meet, a facet of his personality which is perfectly complimented by his wickedly dry and often silly wit. I’d like to think that my own sense of humour is very similar to Acker’s, something which many would argue is not necessarily a good thing, but this is something which automatically grants him a place in my affections. For instance, an example of how he’d introduce a fellow band member to the audience would be:

"Now we’re going to feature Colin Wood, the best piano player in the band!"

His stint in the army produces such lines as (when getting the band ready to play the next number):

"Stand by your boots with your bed in your hand!"

Another corny gem that comes to mind is where he’ll produce a tatty folded-up piece of paper from his pocket and pretend to read from it:

"We have a request from a lady in the audience who’s 111 today." He’ll then turn to a fellow musician and pretend to mutter something under his breath, only to return to the microphone to say: "Oh, sorry, I mean she’s ill today."

Or perhaps he’ll announce to the audience:

"We’re delighted to have in the audience today, the President of the United Dairies!"

or

"Now were gonna do a slow quickstep!"

Acker can also generate laughter from the audience with just a look or a grin. Occasionally, when he’s just completed a clarinet solo in his usual relaxed style, he’ll lean heavily on the piano and feign being out-of-breath, knocking his fist against his chest and coughing feebly.

If the band is playing a number in which Acker sings, he’ll often either substitute or supplement the existing lyrics with a few choice words of humorous intent, or repeat a line over an over again throughout the chorus instead of moving onto the next line. This is not only a particularly amusing thing to do (in my opinion at least), it’s also very difficult to achieve, and I say that from the experience of attempting it myself and failing miserably. A classic example of this is from an album which that band recorded in the studio in 1975. The track was called "Gee Baby, Aint I Good To You", and the lyrics to the middle eight section should be as follows:

I bought you a fur coat for Christmas

And a big diamond ring

A Cadillac car

Oh, I bought you everything

Acker’s version is as follows:

I bought you a fur coat for Xmas

And a big diamond ring

A Cadillac car, a Morris Marina

Ooooh, everything

At the end of the chorus he then chuckles to himself whilst the trumpet player starts his solo. As his career progressed, Acker was fortunate enough to command the authority to be able to incorporate his wit into studio recordings in this manner and get away with it, where others would never be allowed to be so frivolous with this ‘I’m not going to take this too seriously’ attitude.

Acker Bilk is also a very generous and considerate man. I mentioned earlier that his long-standing trombone player left the band in 1980. The trombonist’s name was John Mortimer (no relation to the creator of Rumpole Of The Bailey, I might add), and for many years he was an alcoholic, often being completely out of his head during concerts and recording sessions. Acker was very patient with John over the years, also being well aware of his huge talent as a musician and composer, so he kept John in the band for over twenty years even though he was not always in the best frame of mind to be performing live or recording in the studio, but the situation came to a head in 1980 when the band was on tour in Australia. John was in a particularly drunken state during one concert that Acker had no choice but to relieve him of his duty and bundle him on a plane back to the UK. As much as Acker’s patience with John had finally run out, he not only paid for his impromptu return flight to London, he also largely paid for John’s eventual rehabilitation in the Priory Clinic, something which was obviously not cheap.

Acker has a general reputation for always treating his band members with congeniality and respect, and always paying them a good wage. He always made sure that they had decent digs when they were away on tour and all their expenses were paid.

About 10 years ago, Acker was a guest at the little jazz club in Surrey that my friends and I used to go to on a Sunday night. We knew the resident club pianist quite well, as he also ran the club, and so he arranged for the youngest of my friends, also a clarinet player, to get up on stage with the great man and play a number with him. Stephen was only about 16 at the time, and although a fairly accomplished player by that point, Acker had no idea if he was good or bad. However, he graciously accepted the request, and immediately after the interval Stephen joined him on stage, where Acker asked him what he wanted to play. Stephen cheekily picked a number called High Society, a traditional jazz tune which is renowned for its very difficult clarinet feature in the middle which lasts for a couple of choruses, a fact which Mr Bilk was well aware of, and it’s a piece which is often used by music teachers as an exercise in jazz clarinet playing for students. Upon hearing Stephen’s suggestion, Acker turned wide-eyed to the audience (who were also aware of the relevance of the tune) and said over the microphone, "Bloody hell!" Nevertheless, they played the tune together superbly, as if they’d rehearsed it only moments beforehand, with Stephen playing the lead on the clarinet feature and Acker playing the 3^rd harmony above throughout with consummate ease.

I’ve never had the pleasure of ‘sitting in’ with Acker myself, though I did boldly ask him on one occasion when the Paramount Jazz Band were playing at the 100 Club in London’s Oxford Street. As far as I can remember, he said something like "We’ll see how it goes…….." but I never got to play with him. I was disappointed but not annoyed; there were a number of other musicians there at the time who he knew well, so they got first refusal for a sit in. However, I’m very fortunate to have played with a few of the musicians in the Paramount Jazz Band. Acker’s now ex-trumpet player, Mike Cotton, has been my all-time trumpet-playing icon for the last 15 years or so, and I’m lucky enough to have sat in with him a few times and also employed his services on a gig where I was playing bass guitar. Acker’s current pianist, the aforementioned Colin Wood, has been a real musical acquaintance for several years, as my former bandleader used him on a number of occasions as a guest pianist when our regular piano man was unavailable. Colin doesn’t drive, so it was usually me who would go and collect him and his keyboard from his home in Wimbledon and drive on to the gig. On one particular occasion we were playing in Portsmouth, and I had borrowed my flatmate’s car as mine was off the road being repaired. On the way back up the A3 after the gig the car broke down, and not being a member of any breakdown service at the time meant that we sat on the hard shoulder from about 1.30am until around 6am, when my unofficial callout request to the RAC was finally answered. The word ‘embarrassed’ would be something of an understatement to describe my feelings on that particular occasion, but fortunately Colin is a sterling chap and was very understanding. A few years earlier, we scored a coup by employing the services of Acker’s bass player on a gig with the band I played in with my friends, and again, he was most gracious and enthusiastic about it even though it meant him driving down to Surrey from his home in Hampstead for not much money. All this has little to do with Acker himself, but it does at least show that he always picks decent people to play with him, regardless of their ability as musicians.

countryside scenes at his home in Somerset. He doesn’t really need to play any more; after all he has Stranger On The Shore ("My pension", as he calls it) in its many guises to live off for the rest of his life. He still plays because he enjoys it. "I can’t believe people pay me for doing something I love", is what he often says.

Mr Acker Bilk MBE – a great musician, a great bloke, and a bona-fide British Institution.