Spike Hughes

Patrick Cairns Hughes, called Spike Hughes ( * October 19, 1908 in London, † 2 February 1987) was a British jazz musician ( arranger, bandleader, bassist ), composer, journalist and writer.

Life

His father Herbert came from Ulster ( Northern Ireland) and was editor of the Daily Telegraph, musician and founder of the Irish Folk Song Society. His mother had artistic ambitions and traveled with him in his childhood throughout Europe to theater and opera performances. Hughes himself was infected by opera and theater fever and wrote in 1923 his first opera. He took private lessons in Vienna with the composer Egon Wellesz and enthusiastic about there not just for the operas of Richard Strauss, but also heard in 1924 first jazz music by Arthur Briggs. Back in England he planned initially to study at Cambridge, but then went to London to the (classical ) immerse musical life, where he also made the acquaintance of the composer William Walton. He wrote music reviews, but began again to care for the herüberschwappende from the U.S. jazz music and taught himself to play bass in 1928 to work with the ultimate in dance bands as an arranger. Walton mediated contacts with Decca, who wanted to start a label own band. He made recordings with his bands The three blind mice and Decca - Dents. In 1931 he arranged and played in the 1931 Review of Charles B. Cochran. In the same year he was critic (as "Mike" ) of Melody Maker ( 1945 ), which made him known beyond the borders of England. At the same time he forwarded a Decca Orchestra and arranged for the label. In 1931, he played bass in the orchestra by Jack Hylton, with whom he went on tour in Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels. In 1932 he composed the jazz elements containing in London successfully listed Ballet High Yellow and around the same time a Harlem Symphony. In the same year he composed and arranged ( with Hyam Greenbaum ) the music for the revue Words and Music of Noel Coward in Manchester. In 1933 he went to New York, mainly to meet John Hammond. He could hear Bessie Smith, Art Tatum ( he and Hammond at Brunswick solo recordings mediated ), Benny Goodman and the Dorsey Brothers in Onyx Club, and Billie Holiday as a singer in Monettes Supper Club, where he heard John Hammond, who generally as their " discoverer " applies. With the band by Benny Carter, he took on his own jazz compositions for Decca, which show him as not to be underestimated students from Duke Ellington.

After returning to England he turned away in 1934 as a jazz musician and from a career as a writer. He wrote mainly about classical music, but also wrote jazz reviews (which in the 1930s, for example, Duke Ellington recording on the British public very relieved ). 1946 and 1951 he published his autobiography. In 1954 he married for the third time and settled near Lewes in Sussex down. He wrote knowledgeable and witty opera books, but also Coarse Guides (short guide) about about cricket and Bridge, travel stories, culinary leader and worked regularly for BBC Radio and reported by the Glyndebourne Opera Festival on TV. He also wrote the history of the Festival and regularly in the program booklets.

Literary works

  • Opening bars - Beginning of Autobiography, Pilot Press Ltd 1946
  • Second Movement - Continuing the Autobiography, Museum Press 1951
  • The Toscanini legacy, reprint Dover, 1970, ISBN 0486221008
  • Famous Puccini Operas 1962
  • Great opera houses - A travelers guide to their history and tradition, Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1957
  • Famous Verdi operas, Chilton Book 1968
  • Famous Mozart operas, as Mozart's great operas in 1972 at Dover, ISBN 0486228584
  • Glyndebourne - A History, Methuen 1965, new edition, David and Charles 1981, ISBN 0715378910
  • The Art of Coarse Travel 1957
  • How to survive abroad, Methuen 1971
  • The Art of Coarse Language 1974
  • The Art Of Coarse Cricket, Museum Press 1954, 1966
  • The Art Of Coarse Bridge, Hutchinson 1970
  • The Art of Coarse Entertaining, 1972
  • The Art Of Coarse Gardening -The Care and Feeding of Slugs 1968 ( translated: demolition of the art of gardening - the care and feeding of the worm )
  • Out of Season - a travelers tale of a winter journey ( trip report from the wintry Italy in 1955 during the search for a libretto )
  • Cold food for all seasons
  • With Charmian Hughes A pocket guide to italian food and wine 2nd edition, Carbery Press, 1992, ISBN 0951871420

Discography

  • Spike Hughes and his All-American Orchestra ( Decca Records, 1933) with Coleman Hawkins, Dicky Wells, Chu Berry, Henry Red Allen and Others
  • Spike Hughes and Benny Carter ( retrieval, 1931-33 )
  • Spike Hughes: His Orchestra, three blind mice and Decca - Dents (Kings Cross Music, Arrangement of British recordings from the 1930s )
  • High Yellow - All his Jazz Compositions 1930-33 ( Largo )
Arthur Briggs (musician) Noël Coward John Hammond (producer) Glyndebourne Festival Opera Integrated Authority File
741705
de