One of the UK’s foremost keyboard players, Brian Auger has played with a number of British blues and jazz greats, including the Yardbirds and Long John Baldry, both as a session musician and a band leader. He enjoyed a massive hit single in 1966 with ‘This Wheel’s On Fire’ featuring Julie Driscoll on vocals and continues to tour the world with his Oblivion Express band, together with his son Karma on drums and his daughter Savannah on vocals. Brian was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his contribution to American jazz music in October 2007. For more information about Brian, please visit his website www.brianauger.com

Towards the end of the Fifties, when I started to go to work aged 17 or 18, the UK was gradually rebuilding itself after the Second World War and moving into the early Sixties, the economy started to get going. There was a whole bunch of people my age who were very much interested in American music. I grew up on American jazz, so I was already playing pubs and jazz clubs; I actually played at the early Ronnie Scott club when it first opened in Gerrard Street.

Gerrard Street has now become part of Chinatown, but at that time, it wasn’t; it was basically a club street. There were two or three clubs, including Ronnie’s which was the main jazz club, and cafes where you could get an espresso, so that area had a clientele of people who were interested in music and some of the beatniks who were left over from the Fifties that were still about on the scene. This also stretched over Shaftesbury Avenue and went through Wardour Street.

The Flamingo was almost on the Shaftesbury Avenue end of Wardour Street and just across and up the road was the Marquee, so here was this kind of central club thing going on. Early bands like the Yardbirds and the Stones were forming in ‘62/63, and there were these young kids who’d listened to American blues and jazz and were into Howlin’ Wolf and people like that. So it was kind of the place to be if you were a musician or interested in music.

Check in tomorrow to read about where musicians used to shop for clothes in the Sixties.

Did you visit Ronnie Scott’s club when it was still in Gerrard Street? Share your memories here: