15/09/2024
Thank you to Tom Ogg and All Island Media for a lovely space in the JEP and some of your archive photos.
Book tickets (priced to be affordable :) and prepare to be charmed - suitable for all ages and anyone who likes blues, country, jazz and trad acoustic music.
https://www.islandtickethut.com/event/living-with-the-blues-an-audience-with-ernie-roscouet-and-friends/
Stage Against the Machine presents ‘An Audience with Ernie Roscouet and friends, ‘Living With the Blues’ at the Royal Hotel, David Place on Saturday, 19th October. Tickets are £15, £10 students, £5 under 18’s.
- Listen to Ernie’s Acoustic Blues Trio and Black Butter Jazz Band and Bordeaux Blue for free at www.stageagainstthemachine.com
- See the Black Butter Jazz Band live on Channel Television https://youtu.be/WzXVjO3sz2A?si=sNAmv_XIWZ0TguWl
FULL INTERVIEW>>>
Sitting in front of me is living legend for Jersey music, Ernie Roscouet – Jersey born on the 5th November 1938 and in excited anticipation of his next gig that evening with his current band Bordeaux Blue. White beard, friendly disposition, eyes that twinkle with curiosity and warmth, a deep kindness, curious, jolly; Ernie is a well-loved musician and storyteller - “I can’t imagine life without music and I’m still discovering so much”, he says.
This one conversation just isn’t enough to capture his 60+ year career as a central figure for Blues and Jazz but it’ll have to do…for now… (details at the end!).
In his modern, light and comfortable lounge, dotted amongst pictures of family and grandchildren are others showing Ernie with musicians who are considered some of the greatest of their times - Jazz Violinist, Stéphane Grappelli, Jazz Guitarist Martin Taylor, Saxophonist Alan Barnes to mention a modest few.
He puts on some seriously high calibre trad jazz music – his Black Butter Jazz Band at St Ouens Manor (1984, BBC live broadcast) as we chat and cover the basics:
Ernie bought his first guitar for £8 in 1959, while stationed at a RAF base in Malta. Having no clue how to play it, he wandered to a bar with a couple of guitars and a mandolin hanging from the wall and eventually some musicians turned up and played them. They got talking and taught him enough to get him started. Less known, is that Ernie only wanted to play guitar, so he could be his own accompanist to sing along with.
Ernie’s authentic and evocative voice, like smooth sticky Black Butter, is unmistakable - once heard, never forgotten and terrifically tasty. His humour and projection is unique, an infinitely compelling component of a Blues, Folk and Jazz soundtrack to Jersey since the 1960’s.
“My first inspiration was a guitar player called Freddie Green, who was a guitar player in Count Basie’s band. I went to see them in 1956 at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and I was sat a few metres away from the band. Bassie comes in and starts plinking away and pushing through was the sound of his wonderful arch top guitar. He was one of the first guitar players I actually heard in a live situation.”
“In those days, it was fantastic everything was coming at you, musically speaking. I have memories of American Forces network on the Radio – you could hear all the big bands and American Music. There were also great radio shows on the BBC and other channels on the radio.”
“I was in the RAF for 10 years and came back full time in 1964 to do a summer season at the Pavillion at Greve De Lecq for Stan Parkin with the Geoff Bond Four”. That year his band and won a competition for a residency in famous Paris club ‘La Locomotive’ and in September 1965 back in Jersey he founded the very first Jersey Folk Club at the Victor Hugo Hotel.
Ernie goes on to paint a scene when Jersey had hundreds of dedicated live music and entertainment venues for all ages, tourists, locals, families – a normality many of lesser years may find hard to imagine; a time when Jersey was a hotspot for professional famous and jobbing musicians – with cabarets, bands, singers, dancers, roller skating and variety and participative shows. “A time before recorded music became a ‘performance” he says – people just liked entertainment”. “Musically, it was fantastic, there was just so much going on. There were shows with dancers and entertainers. Everywhere had a minimum [band] of a trio, many had a five or six piece band and West Park Pavillion (later known as In On The Park) had a 14 piece band. Ernie name checks more yesteryear megastars than I can quote, who worked in Jersey and points me to another iconic Jersey musician, Ray Kitchen for more info.
In the early 1980’s Ernie was playing at the Pomme D’Or Hotel and with the support and backing of David Seymour, went on to be a central and founding figure of the Jersey Jazz Festival. The festival grew and attracting much support from investors and players alike featuring the best of their time including trumpeter Kenny Baker, Vibes player Bill Le Sage, John Barnes, Alan Barnes, Bruce Adams, Roy Williams, Brain Dee, Dick Morrisey, Jim Mullen and Diz Disley…the list goes on. The festival was a valuable platofrm for local players to see or even play with theses greats and Gerry Rossi, Jimmy Harrison, Pete Thompson, Gary lloyd, Jack Duff…to mention but a few. After different organisations got involved in the running of the event, it splintered and for a short while Jersey had two Jazz festivals! Before eventually this all come to an end in the mid 2000’s.
A life so well lived, isn’t without some sadness though. Ernie explains “My wife, Pam, was a Guernsey girl – she’d come to Jersey with her parents for business. We got Married in 1967, brought up our kids and travelled between the two islands all the time. I took early retirement from my job at Fort Regent in 1998 when I was 60.
Pam was working for Children’s Services but in 1999 she had a massive brain haemorrhage and died, and that was my whole world out the window”. “Plan was, before she died to sell the house in Jersey and to get a smaller flat and spend all our summers in France. After the funeral, I made up my mind to carry on and so I moved to France and travelled between there and Guernsey”. Ernie describes an intriguing network of French musicians over these years, and that over a time, many of my Jersey nucleus had gotten ill or had died and there was no one for him to play with in Jersey, however, his Guernsey family had grown stronger, with grandchildren and another chance for love with a Guernsey lady called Diana. They enjoyed a fabulous 11 years in France becoming close friends with Dr. Jean Heutier (Ernie recounts a fantastic story of their good friend, a General Practitioner Doctor who he exchanged skills with - health care for music, who lost his fingers and toes through sepsis and then relearnt the guitar on what was left), moved to Scotland for 4 years, before settling close to family in Guernsey. These days Ernies daughter Tanya and her son live in Jersey and his eldest son Morgan lives in Portugal.
But the first question Ernie asked me when we met was ‘Why do I want to put on a gig in Jersey for him? Who will come, and who remembers him?’. It’s because Ernie is a legend. A rare vintage of excellent musician, natural connector of people, and a great example of a Peter Pan energy, if Peter Pan sang the blues.
Ernie is most looking forward to seeing the faces that he hasn’t seen for years. Music friends and fans, that used to come to the Folk Club, the Blue Note, wedding and events we’ve played at.
Stage Against the Machine is a platform by Martin Coxshall to promote the occasional worthwhile gig and develop a diverse audience who want to prioritise Music and artists before other commercial activities.
