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Humphrey Lyttelton is descended
from a long line of land-owning, political, military, clerical,
schola stic and literary forbears. Not
a musician among them. He claims to have most in common with
a former Humphrey Lyttelton who was executed for complicity with
Guy Fawkes in the Gunpowder Plot.
He was born on May 23rd, 1921 in Eton College, where his father
was a famous housemaster and where he was subsequently educated.
During the war he served as an officer in the Grenadier Guards
and, on demobilisation, studied for two years at Camberwell Arts
School. In 1949, he joined the Daily Mail as a cartoonist and
whilst there also wrote the story -line for Trog's 'FLOOK' cartoon
- Trog being the nom de plume of clarinettist, Wally Fawkes,
coincidentally a descendant of Guy.
He formed his first jazz band in 1948 after spending a year
with George Webb's Dixielanders. Humphrey Lyttelton and his Band,
with Wally Fawkes on clarinet, soon became the leading traditional
jazz band in Britain,with a high reputation in Europe gained
through many Continental tours. In 1949 he signed a recording
contract with EMI and made a string of now much sought -after
recordings in the Parlophone Super Rhythm Style series. It was
for this company that Humph recorded his own 'Bad Penny Blues'
which, in 1956, was the first British jazz record to get into
the Top Twenty.
Highspots of that early period include a visit, in 1948, with
an all star British band to the first International Jazz Festival
in Nice, where he 'sat in' with the likes of Rex Stewart, Jack
Teagarden, Earl Hines and Louis Armstrong. In 1956 when Louis
Armstrong and his All Stars played in London, Humphrey Lyttelton
and his Band were chosen to open the shows. In the late Fifties,
Humph shocked many of his fans by enlarging his band and his
repertoire to include mainstream and other non-traditional material.
The eight-piece band toured the United States successfully in
1959 and led to many fruitful collaborations with other artists.
Humphrey Lyttelton is today busier than ever, his band, one
of the most versatile in the world, still tours regularly. Every
Monday night for over a quarter of a century has found him in
the 9.00 p.m. slot on BBC Radio Two purveying 'The Best of Jazz'
on record. Nowadays when people say "I enjoy your radio
show . . .", they are as likely to mean the anarchic panel
game 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue' in which he has played the
role of reluctant chairman for over twenty years.
He still pursues his career as a freelance journalist, which
in the past has encompassed restaurant reviews for Harpers &
Queen, humorous articles for Punch and the British Airways Highlife
magazine, as well as innumerable articles on jazz. He has written
seven books and has composed over 150 tunes, which have been
recorded by his band.
In 1984 he founded his own record label Calligraph Records. Two
of its most successful albums 'Echoes of the Duke' and 'I Can't
Get Started', feature the band with singer Helen Shapiro, a collaboration
which has resulted in many successful concerts since 1984.
Humph is now in much demand as an after-dinner speaker, on
his own and in combined presentations involving his band. On
a more academic level, he has been awarded Honorary Degrees in
Letters at the University of Warwick (1987), and Loughborough
(1988), and Honorary Degrees in Music at the Universities of
Durham (1989) and Keele (1992). He began a three-year Honorary
Professorship in Music at Keele University in 1993.
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in .Bethnall Green and brought up in Clapton, East London. With
the release of her singles 'Don't Treat Me Like a Child', 'You
Don't Know' and 'Walkin' Back to Happiness' at the tender age
of fourteen she achieved internation.al stardom, following up
these discs with half a dozen more single hits plus best selling
EP's and LP's. She appeared many times as a London Palladium
headliner and topped the bill in a nation-wide concert tour of
Britain with The Beatles as her support act! During this time
she won many awards including the Variety Club's Silver Heart
as The Most Promising Newcomer, The Melody Maker Award as Britain's
Most Popular Female Vocalist and runner-up to Top World Female
Singer. By the age of 19 she'd sold millions of records and had
three Silver Discs to her credit.