PAUL
VERNON CHESTER
Manouche Maestro
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Manouche Maestro |
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Ken Sykora, 1923-2006
They need all the help we can get in spreading the
word about Ken and the film. They have just launched their campaign to
raise funds to pay for the music rights, so we can keep as many of Ken's
performances of the great jazz classics on film as possible. It's a fair
target they need to reach, but if if you can spread the word
widely and lots of people give just a few quid, we can get the film out and
everyone will be able to fully enjoy Ken's musical contribution!
They aim to have a Ken Sykora 'Radio Station' broadcasting from the film website and they will try to get the BBC to allow them to 'air' some of Ken's programmes. They have 3 complete Guitar Clubs and look forward to making them fully available. They also interviewed Ray Dempsey two years ago as part of their research. He was living in London and in very good form. They spent the evening chatting with him about his recollections of Ken, Guitar Club and of course Django (Ray's another huge fan). Also spoke with Jack Toogood around the same time, who recalled the Stringalong years. Indeed, a number of the performances of Ken that we've extracted have come from Stringalong.
He
did so much to bring the instrument to the fore at a time when there was
little else but George Formby Ukelele
Roy Smeck Performance Hawaiian Guitar, Uke, Harmonica and Banjo The Man with the Jazz Guitar Preview
Music remained an all-consuming passion for Sykora. He led own band in the 1950s, performing with Ted Heath at the London Palladium and with Geraldo at the old Stoll Theatre, and was voted Britain's Top Guitarist five years running in Melody Maker's readers' polls. Music led him into broadcasting, and involvement in the creation of a wide range of popular radio programmes. First he presented and played on Jazz Club and At the Jazz Band Ball. He devised, presented and performed on the Guitar Club and Stringalong series. Other programmes with the Sykora stamp included Those Record Years, Album Time, LP Parade, Big Band Sound, and Radio Three's Jazz Digest. In his final years he liked nothing better than to watch the ever-changing waters of Loch Long lap on the foreshore opposite his house at Blairmore, and to soak up the music of Django Reinhardt and other guitarists. Sykora's talents also extended to journalism. He wrote for magazines, in the music press and also for educational, travel, and food and wine publications. He also composed music for films and for his own band. He produced regular weekly music shows for Radio Clyde from its inception in 1974, Serendipity with Sykora
Sykora did not merely proselytise for the guitar. He was a natural broadcaster, whose output included award-winning programmes about food and drink and Scottish place names. Although he had a successful TV career, his real talent was for radio, and for bringing his subjects alive at the microphone. Sykora, who was born in London in 1923, read geography at Cambridge and social sciences at the London School of Economics. He captained the London University football team and was president of the union. After war service in the Far East as an intelligence officer with the Chindits, he returned to the LSE as a lecturer, also teaching at the College for Distributive Trades. In the meantime he had developed his talent as a guitarist, and in the early 1950s this was to become the main force in his life. Sykora first recorded at the age of 19, with a jam session band led by the jazz saxophonists Harry Hayes and Buddy Featherstonhaugh. He was to continue to move in such fast company, recording in 1956 with the celebrated Jazz Today Unit, alongside George Chisholm and Dave Shepherd. From the late 1940s he led his own band, playing in a convincing jazz style, and appearing in concert opposite several of the leading bands, including those led by Ted Heath and Geraldo. He was noticed by Melody Maker as an emerging talent, and won the magazine’s annual poll as best guitarist five times. Melody Maker also featured him on its cover when he married Helen Grant, a well-known cabaret singer (an earlier marriage had ended in divorce). Grant had met him on a blind date, and thought him a rather boring academic until she heard him sit in as a guitarist with the house band. Sykora’s days as a full-time guitarist were numbered. Although he continued to play and record, notably with Bob Cort in the emerging skiffle movement, he was increasingly busy as a BBC radio presenter. At first, this was a direct consequence of his musical work, and he hosted Jazz Club and then At the Jazz Band Ball.
Sykora’s wife Helen predeceased him in 1997. the daughter of Hannah Grant, Scotland's first woman chef. In the 1970s when they ran the Colintraive Hotel, Sykora enjoyed being the chef, using local produce such as hare, venison and rabbit, and earning himself the nickname 'The Big Soup' because of his legendary Powsowdie soup made with singed sheep's heads. He is survived by his sons Duncan, Dougal and his daughter Alison. Ken Sykora's Selmer Maccaferri
Paul - Duncan Sykora was delighted with the material on his dad that you've posted. I had the added pleasure of performing a few numbers on his dad's Selmer, which had been played by Django himself! Ken had met and played alongside Django.
Number 833 (Oval Hole) owned by Ken Sykora now in the JWC Guitar Heritage Collection
Ken Sykora - Portrait of Django
Musicians including
Diz Disley
and Martin Taylor celebrated Sykora's 80th birthday with an all-star tribute
concert in 2003. Ken Sykora Six Personnel Dill Jones - Piano Ken Sykora - Guitar Bill Bramwell - Guitar Reg Wale - Vibraphone ? Clarinet Lennie Bush? - Bass Chingford Swings - Lionel Hampton? - hardly - just the singer Annie Ross no less.
1959 Guitar 1954 New Musical Express Poll Winners
The Bedfordshire Clanger
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Ken Sykora an early addition to this series of UK Pioneers, is the subject of a feature length documentary titled, The Man with the Jazz Guitar due for release in 2012.
You can contribute to complete the Five Foot Films production and help
shine a light on this pioneering jazz guitarist luminary.
's for the masses on the British Music
Shops.
The
urbane figure of Ken Sykora was an inspiration to thousands of amateur
guitarists, through his radio programmes Guitar Club and
Stringalong.
An accomplished guitarist and a relaxed presenter, he made even the most complex
aspects of playing the guitar seem accessible. His devoted listeners included
the young Paul McCartney. 
However, Sykora soon
realised that there were other ways to use his talents, and he devised and
presented his two long-running guitar series, before moving on to present
Roundabout (a music and chat show for the Light Programme) and Be My
Guest, in which celebrities talked about their lives. Other radio work
included Album Time, Big Band Sound,
LP Parade, Those
Record Years and Jazz Digest. By now living with his family in
East Anglia, Sykora also took to the outdoor life, presenting a radio series on
the joys of sailing. Radio also allowed him
to discover the story of his family. Although he knew his mother was Swiss, it
was only as a result of appearing with Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs
that he found that she was the stepdaughter of a Count, and that she had eloped
to London with his father, a Czech Cavalry Officer. An anonymous letter telling
him this turned out to be from his elder sister Phyllis. Kens parents had
eloped and in those days the subject was still sensitive. As a child
growing up, such things were not spoken of. The families had long since
reconciled. Ken holidayed in Switzerland as a child and spoke warmly of his
mothers village - Finsterhennen. 
Ken Sykora,
guitarist and broadcaster, was born on April 13, 1923. 
Melody
Maker Jazz Polls - Guitar
