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Helen McDonald with Edgar Macías, Chris Bowden and more - Julian Powell Collective - Art Themen to play Andy’s 92^nd Birthday Party
 
SAM BROWN OBITUARY & FUNERAL DETAILS

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HELP PROMOTE BEARWOOD JAZZ BY DOWNLAODING & DISPLAYING OUR LATEST POSTER   -   KEEP IN TOUCH WITH BEARWOOD JAZZ ON YOUR MOBILE

SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART

Updated 07/02/10

THE GUARDIAN - "Andy Hamilton... ...Caribbean saxophonist with a romantic purr like the sound of the waves"
Date	BEARWOOD CORKS CLUB	Price
Feb 4	Andy Hamilton & The Blue Notes	£4/3(concs)
Feb 11	HELEN McDONALD & Her Allstar Band	£5/4(concs)
Feb 18	Andy Hamilton & The Blue Notes	£4/3(concs)
Feb 25	JULIAN POWELL COLLECTIVE	£4/3(concs)
Mar 4	Andy Hamilton & The Blue Notes	£4/3(concs)
Mar 11	Andy Hamilton & The Blue Notes	£4/3(concs)
SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART UP & COMING FEBRUARY Helen McDonald On the 11th February with singer Helen McDonald we repeat the formula that worked so well in Spring 2008. We will reassemble the Allstar Quartet led by Edgar Macías (keys) and featuring Chris Bowden (alto sax), Tom Hill (bass) and Miles Levin (drums). Since moving to London, Birmingham born Helen has become well established as a solo artist; and vocalist with Afro Funk band Yaaba Funk and the London Bridge Ensemble. She has recorded with David Murray (one of the world's great sax players), sung with Roy Ayers and travelled the world at major festivals. It was a great gig last time round and we have every reason to expect it will be again. If you want a little taster of what to expect click on the Youtube video below; it's great Jazz. Also on the 25th vibes player Julian Powell (below) will lead a "Collective" of hot young musicians to Corks. There will be more news on this one as I get it along with news of Andy Hamilton's Birthday and all the other great gigs in March and April, so keep watching this space... With all this and the regular Andy Hamilton gigs in between we can still put on a great show and offer great value for money in these challenging times (with social club prices behind the bar to boot). We look forward to seeing you! IN THE PIPELINE 18th March - Alvin Davis 25th March - Andy Hamilton’s Birthday Party with Art Themen 8th April - The Notebenders SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART PROMOTE US JAN/FEB POSTER NOW UP!! Download our January/February poster as a full colour Press Quality PDF (File size = 1.2meg) now revamped to include Artist info and looking good. Put it up somewhere prominent and and help spread the word!! Also still available to download Andy Hamilton’s 91st Birthday Poster. This fabulous poster features stunning photography by Garry Corbett from Andy’s 90th. Posters are A3, but if you're printing from Adobe Reader or Acrobat you will have the option of scaling the document to fit Printer margins. This will allow you to print it to A4 size on your home printer. To download just right click (Mac users control click) on the text about the poster you want to download and save to disc. If you don't have Adobe (Acrobat) Reader you can download it for free from http://www.adobe.co.uk LATEST SCHEDULE ON YOUR MOBILE If you've got one of those clever mobile phones that has t’internet on it you can now keep in touch with what's on at Bearwood Jazz on your mobile. We've just set up a mobile site at bearwoodjazz.ubik.net/ It's nothing fancy, you understand, but it's got a home page with the latest programme, address and showtime on it, plus pages with contact details and an email form. So, if you're ever out and about, and wondering what to do on a Thursday night just click bearwoodjazz.ubik.net/ Bookmark it in your mobile's browser now!   SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART THE CLUB At Bearwood Corks Club we run Jazz every Thursday, and, as Corks Club is a Social Club, the new venue makes for an affordable night out in a purpose built Function Room. You'll find us on the corner of Bearwood Road and Sherwood Road virtually opposite Aldi - watch out for our new banner - see the picture on our Map page. We would like to thank everyone who's attended and helped to spread the word. Let's keep the momentum going or as Andy's Vocalist, Vic Evans, always says "tell you're friends and your enemies too". If you want to know more about us and get regular updates on our programme click the Contact button to join our mailing list,and, remember, if you like Jazz and you haven't seen Andy Hamilton and the Blue Notes you've not been to Birmingham or the Black Country. SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART GUESTS & JAMS Here's a photo With a nice Jazz mood. It's guitarist David Lloyd Henry performing with singer Indigo at Corks Club on 18th June. Click here to view a larger version. Chris Murray Paintings from Andy’s last Birthday Bash This year at Andy's Birthday Party Artist, Chris Murray produced these two wonderful paintings. The top one is of Scott Hamilton playing with Andy Hamilton and the Blue Notes; and behind the two stars you can clearly see Tim Amann on keys and Paul Foad on guitar. The one on the left is of Scott Hamilton on his own. All great stuff and it's amazing that we're able to get these images up on the net before any photographs. Anyone wishing to see or buy his art can see more of his work at www.onlinejones.co.uk/chrismurray If he's got any sense he'll be whacking up the prices for these two little beauties. SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART STOP PRESS Sam Brown RIP Sad news for jazz fans is that the great jazz pianist Sam Brown (photographed above by Russ Escritt) passed away on Monday 25th January in West Bromwich following a long period of illness. Sam, whose real name was Ron Daley, arrived in England from his home in Jamaica during the 2nd World War and saw service with the RAF, an organisation that he maintained close links with. He eventually settled in Birmingham, where in 1949 he met the newly arrived fellow Jamaican Andy Hamilton. Sam, known to friends at the time as “Big Boy” was over 6 foot tall with the build of a heavy weight boxer. He was not a regular musician, having just dabbled in playing organ, but he was a regular at dances where his great sense of rhythm and his huge hands caught Hamilton’s eye. Andy persuaded Sam to take lessons from local musicians and he soon started to play the occasional session at dances and parties with Andy and the gold toothed Willie Rogers. By 1953 Sam had become a regular with Andy. They put together The Blue Notes and started to perform regularly in church and school halls across the city. It was at one of these gigs, at The Good Companions on Coventry Road, that Sam met his future wife Evelyn with whom he had two children. Sam became Andy’s closest friend as they shared over 50 years of playing music together, Sam leading the rhythm section with his own unique style of playing drawing on Caribbean, gospel and blues influences. During the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s at venues such as St Johns Restaurant and The Tower Ballroom they organised hugely popular dances. It was Sam Brown who Andy telephoned from his hospital bed in the late 1980’s to sing the melody of Silvershine, a song Hamilton wrote in the 1940’s for Errol Flynn which came back to him in a diabetic coma. Together they arranged the song which was to change their lives. In 1990 Sam led the rhythm section on the internationally acclaimed debut album Silvershine, which took the band from Sundays at The White Swan in Aston and Accafess to top venues in Paris, Milan and St Lucia. Sam was also a central figure in the residencies at Dirty Betts, The Bear and The Drum where he accompanied some of the worlds greatest jazz musicians along with many complete novices for whom he always had a kind word of encouragement. It became a regular delight at gigs to open the 2nd set with a “Sam Brown Blues”, starting with a long solo reflecting his mood of the day and almost always ending with a big smile to the audience. Sam Brown, who was in his late 80’s will be terribly missed by his family and Andy, as well as the church community in West Bromwich where for many years he was warden and organist and the music community of Birmingham which has lost one of the key figures in its post war history. As Andy often said, “Nobody can play the Blues like Sam Brown” The funeral service will be at the Good Shepherd Church, 4 Bromford Lane on Tuesday 9th February at 12 midday. TWO NEW BOOKS OF JAZZ PHOTOGRAPHY BY RUSS ESCRITT Jazz photographer Russ Escritt has just launched a couple of new books of his work which are available to buy. The first new book (cover above) features his photography of Andy Hamilton & The Blue Notes and guests who have played with him over the years. You can buy it from Blurb) at: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/701680/fd31e1926a136edff1b08dfdf4e5736d It features the photo of Sam Brown that Russ kindly allowed us to use on this website. The second is of his colour photograpy, which you also can buy at Blurb: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/701638/90a56f1193c40be14f8a7811a8df43ed This one is a follow on from one he launched of black and white photography, still available at http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/840984 BEARWOOD JAZZ ARCHIVE I've started an Archive Section to house old articles from our front page to clear space for new information. The Archive currently houses features on the David Murray / Hal singer gig and Andy Hamilton's return to the Zaka among other things. SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART ART & PHOTOGRAPHY Fans of our “resident artist”, Chris Murray will be pleased to see that there has been a major upgrade to his site and that it has been moved to some ad-free webspace. You will find it at www.onlinejones.co.uk/chrismurray and there are lots of recent paintings up there with more to come shortly. Photographer Garry Corbett has been snapping away at Corks. He amazingly got his photos that he took on the Silvershine night, where David Murray and Hal Singer guested, up on his Flickr site by 11am the next day (or so I've been told). This photo of Vic Evans hands drumming is one of his. Dick Jones (that's me folks!) has painting, sculpture, drawings and prints on the web, and now has a section dedicated to jazz photography. The site now has the domain name www.onlinejones.co.uk even if it's still hosted on free space. Jazz Photographer, Russ Escritt has a second website, http://www.russescritt.co.uk . This site features many photos of Andy Hamilton and the Bluenotes as well as images of the many stars who have guested with him over the last ten years. Russ’s original site http://www.russpix.co.uk  has been redesigned and now features many of the national and international jazz names Russ has photographed. SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART
The Ladywood Community School of Music offers affordable classes in Saxophone, Trumpet, Piano, Guitar, Violin, and Drums with the possibility of doing other instruments. Run out of Ladywood Health and Community Centre it is the brain child of Andy Hamilton. Click on picture to find out more about us. Andy Hamilton’s Sunday lunchtime is back but only once a month. There's also a monthly Saturday gig at the Symphony Hall and another Sunday one at a new Afro Caribbean Centre in the Dudley Road - see press for details.   Bearwood Live Jazz is always building up content on all the great musicians who play here, with web or e-mail links to the musicians where possible. Keep watching this space as we're hoping to make it into one of the most exciting Jazz sites around. This site is built by Dick Jones and any enquiries specifically about the site should be directed to him. This site is best viewed in version 5 browsers or better, though it sort of works in version 4. My personal recommendation is Firefox (2.0) from Mozilla. It's got "tabbed browsing" which will come as sweet relief for anyone still stuck on old browsers like Explorer 6, a beautifully simple interface and it's much more secure. To download for free go to http://getfirefox.com/ Definitely the best browser for the blind and visually impaired. Opera's toolbars take up more room than Firefox, but it's got a brilliant page zoom which enlarges images as well as text, it's easy to stop images loading if you want and you can use voice recognition and/or keyboard shortcuts to work it. Windows users can now get version 7 which also has tabs. I've put up more info on the various browsers available on my site at http://www.onlinejones.co.uk/browsers.html site index