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Ronnie Scott - Clubs Before The Clubs |
Born Ronald Schatt in Aldgate, East London, in 1927, saxophonist and famous jazz club owner Ronnie Scott was a teenager during World War II. Ronnie's daughter looks back .....
'Grandma Cissie had asked Grandfather Jock to recommend a saxophone tutor for Dad, and this resulted in him going once a week after school for six months to Jack Lewis ..... Dad had an excellent ear and was already a terrific mimic, and consequently he picked things up very fast. Other nights after school and on weekends Dad used to go to the Jewish youth clubs in the East End. He was a member of the Oxford and St George's Club which was on Berner Street at Commercial Road. There he met up with a group of boys who were also budding musicians and were to remain friends for the rest of his life. ....... The Oxford and St George's Club was known as the Settlement, with a basement that was actually an air raid shelter .... here they learned how to play their instruments.....'
'Harry Morris was a real character, small in stature, of slight physique, with thick dark hair that he wore slicked back with a distinct widow's 
peak and a very wide smile..... As a young boy he already had a great knack for putting the right people together. He used to travel between the Oxford and St George's Club and the Stepney Jewish Boys Club, which was in Mile End and where he met Tony Crombie, a young drummer. Harry took Tony to the Settlement one night and introduced him to Ronnie, and this was the beginning of another lifelong union. Another lad who was a member of the Stepney Club was Vidal Sassoon; he and Tony both lived in that neighbourhood.'
Hair stylist Vidal Sassoon
'Then there was the Stepney Girls' Club, where dances were held on Sunday nights. Ronnie and the boys used to play there some Sundays because they wanted to meet the girls. Vidal was an extremely good-looking young man, and one of Sonny Herman's earliest memories of Vidal is how he and Ronnie and the rest of the gang used to make sure that the girls could see Vidal. They would 'put him on show'. Sonny said: "It never failed. Two by two the girls would come over to our group all wanting to meet Vidal. Once we were surrounded by girls, one or other of us would send Vidal on an errand. We always managed to find something for him to do and we got the girls.'
[later] ....'Ronnie still played at the Stepney Girls' Club with his mates from time to time on Sunday nights. The band would be playing and the boys and girls would be dancing, everyone having a good time, when all of a sudden someone would shout: "Look out, fellers, the MPs are about." The MPs were the military police. The Americans were called 'Snowdrops' because they wore white hats; the English soldiers wore red caps. The police were looking for people who should have registered for military service and hadn't done so. The guys would beat a hasty, surreptitious retreat off the bandstand, through the back door, leaping four steps at a time down the back staircase in their haste to get out. Harry Pitch remembered: "They would come in and ask to see our papers. I had papers because I was working in a factory making aircraft parts, but Denis Rose got caught once and they took him away." Dennis getting caught resulted in his being called up for the Medical Corps, which turned out to be a short-lived experience, because after a couple of weeks he deserted, returning to Soho (where he hid) and his friends and life of music.'
From A Fine Kind Of Madness : Ronnie Scott Remembered by Rebecca Scott with Mary Scott.
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