How I fell for 78s
I recently made a programme about the British jazz pioneer Arthur Briggs. Yes, I know. Arthur who? The much-missed Jeremy Clarke told me: ‘If only he’d been called Arthur “Big-Boy” Briggs or “Honeydripper” Briggs, maybe things would have turned out differently.’ As it was, his name always suggested a painter-decorator from Edwardian Brixton rather than one of the hottest cornetists on the prewar jazz scene. Briggs was a Caribbean child of empire who, as a teenager, fell in with makers of the new music in New York, then after the first world war helped bring jazz across to Europe. His various adventures – seeing black bodies in the Mersey after
