As a spotty 16 year old looking to freelance for Melody Maker I had the pleasure, if that’s the right term, of being interviewed by him during a pretty short period Ray Coleman and Richard Williams were away working on something I can no longer recall. They didn’t ever let him do it again. It consisted of a phone call and an invite to London which he agreed to fund despite having no authority to do so.
The bewilderment when I arrived for interview was obvious and it soon became clear that it had been a waste of my time and theirs. No-one was going to interview me. They needed me to write stuff and quickly. Mr. Case soon solved the discomfort by offering to take me for lunch. Lunch lasted the best part of 5 hours. We discovered some shared Welsh heritage and he set me off on a journey into jazz I could never have imagined whilst writing about the latest act to set foot on stage at Eric’s. I got a late train home, wasn’t very well for a day but got the freelance gig.
We stayed loosely in touch over the years and he was always amused that my sibling landed a gig at Empire working with the equally entertaining Barry Mc just as I was moving on to entirely different things. Mr. Case had of course worked with Barry at MM.
Wonderful man who I’d have read anyway regardless of the fact I came to know him a little bit.
Coincidentally I was talking to my dear friend Val Wilmer this morning and she was sharing some nice memories of Brian. Apparently it is his funeral today but she can’t go as her health is not the best right now and travel is tricky for her, especially in this sort of heat.
I never knew Brian Case, but Val just told me what a kind and lovely man he was, especially when she came back from living in the States and needed to re establish herself here as a photographer and writer.
He sounds like the sort of chap about whom nobody has a bad word to say.
She is great. I sometimes go round her house to help her with a few things around the place and she cooks a meal, often with a Nigerian or Ghanaian twist. She is a very good cook! Or we will go to Devran, her favourite Turkish place (she always has the liver) or a very good chippy in Stoke Newington.
I phone her once a week to check up on her and inevitably I’m on the phone for an hour or two because she has so many interesting tales to tell. She really has had the most amazing life. I do worry about her because she is 85 now, rather frail and lives on her own but she is still full of that unique spirit of hers.
I’ve seen her in the crowd attending a few concerts in the past - at the Barbican for ‘Jazz Britannia’ for one. Nice article in Jazzwise that she has written this month about visits to the Brill Building to see Al Sears and her friendship with Sears, Henry Coker and ‘Lockjaw’ Davis.
Still have my paperback ‘As Serious As Your Life’ bought when it came out in the mid 70s. On Quartet, I think.
Probably much of the same content but I think mine is the ‘updated’ version from 1978 which might have a bit more of the recent avant-garde/fusion recordings content. So - likely worth getting for £5.
