A Life in Music: Ricky Cool

Fifty years with a buzzcut

Ricky Cool is a music veteran... who adores vintage music. He's a walking encyclopedia of US roots music, and he's no slouch about the UK music scene over the past 50 years. 

In this episode, l get schooled about harmonica playing, and we get a fascinating look at what it meant to be in bands struggling to get ahead through the 70s, 80s, 90s, and on into this century. Things are - different - now. 

The latest incarnation of Ricky's band, Ricky Cool and The In Crowd, is a very slick and entertaining operation, which harks back over 50 years to the mid-60s days of ska and organ groove.  Be warned: there's one teeny little bit of louche behaviour described. A swear word. But it's not sweary.  

Links

Ricky Cool's website for history and gig updates

Historic music links in the podcast
Muddy Waters wiki (McKinley Morganfield)
Howling Wolf wiki (Chester Burnett)
Howling Wolf - Smokestack Lightning
Barrett Strong wiki
Tommy Tucker - Hi Heel Sneakers
Sonny Boy Willamson - Bring It On Home
Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee - Long Way From Home
Jesse Fuller - San Francisco Bay Blues
Tiny Bradshaw - Train Kept A Rollin'
Nappy Brown - Don't Be Angry
Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys - San Antonio Rose
Louis Jordan - Caldonia
Roy Milton and His Solid Senders - Hop Skip and Jump

UK Folk (and associated) links

Dave Cartwright wiki
Bill Caddick - John O'Dreams Live

The Destroyers feat Mick Howson - Kalinka
Nic Jones - Canadee-i-o
Diz Dizley - It had To Be You

Lives in Music Podcast

The Lives in Music series celebrates people who have spent a lifetime in music. 

They may be famous; they may be people who have spent their lives working in the background for the love of it. 

But they all have stories. 

The intro and outro music in this series comes from the great bass player Mike Hatton, who you can hear interviewed in series 1, here. 'Everything Changes' is included in his excellent 2019 album 'Bassic Salvation'. Follow the album link for more :-)

Stream Ricky's podcast here 

Published in Series 2  (series 1 episodes listed here)

1 - Brian Travers of UB40
2 - Ricky Cool
3 - Mark 'Foxy' Robinson of the CBSO
4 - Roy Adams
5 - Gavin Monaghan of Magic Garden studios 
6 - John Mostyn
7 - Stewart Johnson: taking UK Country back across the pond
8 - Dave Pegg of Fairport Convention
9 - Roy Willams (JB's, Little Acre, Weapon of Peace, Robert Plant)

10 - Simon Duggal (Simon & Diamond, Apache Indian, Shania Twain, Desi Beats)

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The same, not the same. Horace Panter, the Specials after John Bradbury, and more

The many bands of Sir Horace Gentleman

Next month, the man who plays bass with the Specials, founder member Horace Panter, brings his latest project to Birmingham. This is his fourth band. Not sequentially mind – they all run pretty much at the same time. 

The trick is: Horace is now... going Country. That's in addition to a Blues outfit and a very purist Ska operation. Oh, and the Specials. Not bad going for a kid who bumped into Jerry Dammers at Art School in Kettering.

Horace Panter. Special.

He still loves it, all of it. 

Horace Panter is great company: courteous and affable. He is hugely knowledgeable about music and musicians, both local and further afield. He plays in three and a bit bands: blues band Blues 2 Go, and straight-up ska outfit Uptown Ska Collective. And he's also working with Champion Doug Veitch, collaborating with Martin Bell, once of The Wonder Stuff. 

But the big band is, of course, The Specials, who started in 1977, reformed in 2008, and are now bigger than ever. 

The Beat goes on. And on. And on. Three different ways.

UPDATE: A revised and expanded version of this post 

is included in the Radio To Go ebook, Survivors 

It's complicated. We're now living in a universe where three, count 'em, three Beats are clattering, rattling, skanking, twisting and crawling.

Everett and his cohort of Mighty Mighty local Bosstones. Photo by Horseman

Dave Wakeling, a founder member of the original Beat, lives in California, and leads The English Beat. Fellow Beat founder Ranking Roger leads his brand of The Beat at home, and Everett Morton, the original drummer, has just announced dates for his band, Beat Goes Bang. 

Time for a chat with Everett, to go with this blog's existing posts on Dave and Roger. you'll find links for those at the bottom of this post. There's clearly a bit of history here. I wasn't planning to dig too deep into the feelings that boil up over a thirty year professional association. But I did... just a bit. 

The immediate question that springs to mind is: leaving Dave's US-based operation aside, is there room for two Beats in the UK, and what sort of musical differentiation will there be?

Wha'ppen next, Dave? a conversation with Dave Wakeling, who wrote 'Stand Down Margaret'

"I often think this band reunion thing is like inviting the first five or six people you had sex with... and expecting everyone to get on great." 

Hunt Emerson's brilliant logo

It's complicated. Dave Wakeling was a founder member of The Beat, one of Birmingham's finest original pop/ska bands. Now he's in California, leading the English Beat, and fellow founder Ranking Roger leads a 21st century Beat at home. Roger was profiled here last year ahead of Birmingham's Reggae City May festival; The Selecter are starring this year. 

The original Beat line-up is long gone, but a classic song has echoed down the years of late. Stand Down Margaret got renewed airplay in the weeks leading up to Thatcher's funeral. I wondered if Dave would want to revisit all that old territory. But, courtesy personified; revisit it he did, especially as it ties in nicely with Specialized 2 Beat Teenage Cancer, a soon come album of covers of original Beat Songs to help Teenage Cancer Trust. 

The Selecter at Reggae City in May: It's not the same old show

Pauline Black talks racism, sexism, 2-Tone, Ska and Reggae, re-forming your band, keeping it punchy, and not wallowing in black and white nostalgia.

I’m not absolutely sure, but I'm probably the first (legal) radio DJ to put The Selecter on air. We used to do sessions at the old BRMB Radio, recording up and coming West Midlands bands just as they came to the boil. This included UB40 and the Specials, pretty much all in quick succession, in 1979 . It worked a treat: the station scored great listening figures and got to look - very unusually for the old BRMB - hip and cutting edge. And the bands got exposure and MU scale cash. Everyone was happy. It worked. Just saying...

So, back in the day, Pauline Black came in for an interview to tie in with the session. Now, Pauline Black’s on the phone ahead of a string of midlands dates - you'll find them at the bottom of this post. 34 years on, The Selecter is touring again, and a stroll down 2-Tone lane it ain't. Two new albums, new members to go with founders Gaps Hendrickson and Black, a richer mix - and the same fierce attitude. 

Handsworth Evolution – a documentary

One tradition. Three generations of Birmingham reggae.

I spent a lot of time in the summer of 2010 bathed in classic reggae grooves, chasing down some of the musicians I worked with at local radio, over a generation ago, for a radio documentary. It was a true pleasure, and while it wasn't quite a labour of love – Birmingham Music Heritage paid me, bless, em, but they didn't pay me that much – I certainly put in way more time than was economic.  The picture here is from Birmingham Museum and Art Galleries; the site's well worth a visit. 

While working on the documentary, I got to hang out again with some dear friends from back in the day – so nice to catch up with some of the guys in UB40 that I hadn’t had a chat with for ages - and forge new friendships with guys like the great Andy Hamilton, and the amazing Apache Indian. And I got to do a bit of proper radio as well. It’s all there – the story of how the children of those early post-war immigrants came up with a vital new approach to reggae, mixed, matched and mashed up... and invented whole new styles of music along the way. And right now, there’s even a third generation doing new and vital stuff. Now, with the blessing of Birmingham Music Heritage, whose commission it was, I am making it available via MixCloud. Know what? I love internet publishing. All three parts are after the jump.