Humph (right) in action in the London Jazz Club, Piccadilly, 1948, with American visitor Jimmy McPartland
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Humph, revered by both young and old
Jazz trumpeter, band leader, cartoonist and broadcaster Humphrey Lyttelton has written a freewheeling memoir, writes Alan Plater
It Just Occurred to Me by Humphrey Lyttelton - published by Robson Books at £12.99 order this book
LAST autumn three of our grandchildren – healthy young lads from Yorkshire – came to London on a visit. We organised a couple of educational outings: to hear the nation’s finest jazz guitarist, Martin Taylor, at the Pizza Express, and to see the 20th century’s greatest stage musical, Guys and Dolls, at the Piccadilly Theatre.
During the daylight hours we sent them off on the usual tourist gigs, including a trip on the London Eye and a boat-ride along the river.
But, unknown to us, the boys initiated an outing totally of their own devising. It was an official visit to Mornington Crescent, a way of paying homage to I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, the funniest show on radio and its peerless chairman, Humphrey Lyttelton.
This means that Humph has been playing havoc with my family for three generations. When in the fifth form I went with a gang of mates to hear the 1950s Lyttelton band at the City Hall in Hull.
It was the first live jazz I’d ever heard and it burned its way into my psyche and never went away. I was also much impressed by his bohemian looks, notably his long sideboards – admittedly very modest by the standards of later generations of big-haired footballers.
I behaved like any self-respecting adolescent and grew mine to look as much like Humph’s as possible. My sideboards and my love of jazz were the sum total of my teenage rebellion in a very happy childhood.
One of the many rewards in later life has been to meet Humph, generally at jazz awards ceremonies.
I get trawled into these every time Alan Barnes – my song-writing partner and himself a former member of the Lyttelton band – wins a prize. My job is to present Alan’s award to him and if he can’t make it because he’s working, I frequently accept it as well.
Jazz award ceremonies are miles ahead of the more high-profile showbiz prizegivings. The winners never cry, nor do they make long emotional speeches.
Instead there’s a genial mix of sour musician jokes, mostly about drummers and banjo players, and explosive disbelief in the principle of awards in the first place.
We all agree it’s just an amiable charade, so let’s have another drink and, hey, does anybody remember that wonderful story about Bruce Turner...? Turner was a clarinet and saxophone player and a much-loved eccentric. According to legend, he lived on apple pie and chocolate cake and once wrote a letter to his landlord, complaining there was a dry patch on one of his walls.
This story isn’t in Humph’s amiable memoir; I’m not one of those reviewers who simply lists all the best bits in the book and calls it work. If you want to know Humph’s take on Bruce Turner, and how he became known forever as The Dirty Bopper, you’ll have to read the book.
You won’t be disappointed. You’ll spend quality time with a genuine renaissance man: jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, journalist, cartoonist, broadcaster and stalwart defender of the English language.
Aside from Clue his weekly jazz programme on Radio 2 is a fixed point in many lives and it’s an open question whether it would have survived the BBC’s constant passion for reform and reorganisation without its presenter’s personality, range of knowledge and enduring passion for the music.
All this comes from a surprisingly posh background, embracing Eton, Sandhurst and the Guards.
The Lyttelton family goes back centuries and an earlier Humphrey was hanged for his part in the Gunpowder Plot, having providing a safe house for the conspirators.
As a result the name Humphrey was banned from family use until Humph’s father, a legendary housemaster at Eton, broke with tradition.
With a symmetry as elegant as the blues itself, Wally Fawkes, who played clarinet in the early Lyttelton band, turned out to be a descendant of the Guy who caused all the trouble in the first place.
The book is a lovely freewheeling composition of anecdotes, observations and passions, with a cast of characters from Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong to Radiohead, the vicar Humph inadvertently set on fire and, of course, the beautiful Samantha, who is listed in the index.
If you don’t know who Samantha is – to paraphrase Louis – you wouldn’t understand anyway.
The one thing you won’t find is much in the way of in-depth confession or brooding self-analysis. Too much psycho-babble – to paraphrase The Duke – stinks up the place.
Humph is an intensely private man, even shy – a quality not unknown among performers – and a man of principle.
In a world of two-bit celebrities and instant fame, Humph is the real thing: a national treasure revered by young and old alike, enduringly and uncompromisingly himself.
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