Denny (Denys Justin) Wright (6th May 1924 - 8th February 1992) was a jazz guitarist, born in Deptford, London, England. Denny grew up in Brockley, with frequent forays to the Old Kent Road and the Elephant & Castle.
<Denny on the left. Denny's first instrument was the piano. His older brother, Alex, was a semi-professional guitarist before the war and it was inevitable that Denny, ten years younger, was soon trying to play his brother's guitar. He must have succeeded, because Denny began playing professionally before 1939 while still at school. For a schoolboy, he was pulling in a substantial income. Indeed, when one teacher took a dislike to him, Denny took his entire class to the cinema and the teacher arrived after lunch to find an empty classroom. Denny spent the first part of the war playing in jazz clubs in the West End of London, doing almost non-stop session work and performing in bands on many hit wartime shows. He worked with Stephane Grappelli for the first time in London around 1941. Denny was unable to join up, being classified as medically unfit due to a childhood injury which resulted in his spleen and half of his liver being surgically removed. When he was old enough to join up, Denny joined ENSA, entertained the troops, and ended the war in Hertogenbosch in Holland.  After the war, he toured Italy and the Middle East with the Francisco Cavez Orchestra. In the 1950s he featured on BBC's Guitar Club. In 1981, Denny was voted BBC Jazz Society Musician of the Year.  Denny's free-flowing improvisational style came to the forefront through his work with Lonnie Donegan in the 1950`s. Denny was a pioneer in establishing a fresh lead guitar style in the context of the folk and blues roots from which Donegan drew his song repertoire . Drawing upon and transcending the jazz blues elements in his own background, and the vital influence of Django Reinhardt, Denny produced constantly innovative lead breaks and solos for Donegan's live work and recordings on both acoustic archtop and electric guitar.  Together with Bill Bramwell and Donegan's younger lead guitar players, Les Bennetts and Jimmy Currie, he helped forge an approach to lead styling inspirational for the next generation of British lead guitarists working with blues - based material in a rock context.   He was a session musician for many years and frequently acted as arranger and fixer for recording sessions. Denny was a prolific composer for jazz and orchestra. Denny led many bands in his career, ranging from small jazz ensembles through night club bands to full size orchestras. Denny worked with Latin American and Jamaican bands. Although he was best known as a guitarist, Denny's favourite instrument was actually the piano. At home, he frequently played piano, while his guitars stayed in the car!

Les Bennetts was a fine player and a better one in the making then.  Les formed "Les Hobeaux"  and joined Chas McDevitt when the then incumbent Tony Kohn was purloined into National Service.  A bit later he was recruited by Lonnie Donegan to replace Denny who was not treating his body like a temple.  Les stayed with Lonnie for some time until Denny recovered his health.

Stephane Grappelli: "Denny Wright also is a marvellous player, he's got such a good technique. Of course he can't produce Django's melodic line because Django invented it, but he has his own style, and on top of that he's got the strength of Django Reinhardt. In my opinion he's the only player in the world who can compare to Django and, you know, when I'm playing with Denny Wright and if I let my spirit go, then maybe I find that for a few seconds I'm back again with Django Reinhardt."  Paul McCartney: "I remember going to see Lonnie Donegan in 1956 at the Empire in Liverpool. It was wonderful. After we saw him and the skiffle groups, we just wanted guitars. Denny Wright, his guitar player, we really used to love--he was great."  Denny died in1992 in London after a nine year battle with cancer. His wife, Barbara, predeceased him by just under three years. He leaves a son.

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Roy Plummer - Guitarist and 50's Session Musician
 

Encounters

The Pioneer Corps dance band was stationed in Bradford, with Nat Gonella on trumpet. We followed them all over the city. It was a bit comic because the band was conducted in full military style by the band sergeant major, a strict disciplinarian who allowed improvisations only very occasionally, in 'suitable' numbers.  Being a military man, he worked regulation hours and when his duty was finished he'd pack up and go. Whereupon the band would let rip. The guitarist was Roy Plummer, who taught me guitar for 2/6d a lesson. He is now forgotten although in fact he had the first band on Radio Rhythm Club - for four weeks, after which Harry Parry took over. For me, his eternal claim to fame is that he had played with Django Rheinhardt. 

Harry Parry formed a trio, including George Shearing, to play on the BBC's Radio Rhythm Club and it became the show's house band. He later became producer of the show and increased the trio to a sextet
Harry Parry and his Radio Rhythm Club Sextet - January 28th, 1941 (Parlophone)
Harry Parry (cl), Roy Marsh (vib), George Shearing (p), Joe Deniz (g), Tommy Bromley (b), Ben Edwards (d).

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Eric Kershaw, who died on 18 February 1983, was one of the last great representatives of the 'swing' era in Britain. In the 1930's Eric's guitar could be heard regularly on the radio in a programme entitled 'Eric Kershaw and his Rhythmic Guitars' and later he played with top bands such as Jack Parnell's Orchestra and Cyril Stapleton. In the sixties Eric played for many shows in the West End including Expresso Bongo and the Benny Hill Show. He became well-known for his various publications including the best-selling 'Dance Band Chords for Guitar'. In 1970 he became perhaps the first salaried teacher of the 'plectrum' guitar in Britain when he was appointed Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in Jazz Guitar at the City of Leeds College of Music, an appointment he retained until he retired in July 1981. Many students of the guitar had the opportunity to learn the secrets of the trade from him. He was a brilliant teacher of the instrument, one of the best. His methods were thorough, unorthodox and highly effective. Though he did not suffer fools gladly, with enthusiastic students he could be endlessly patient and full of an inimitable dry Yorkshire sense of humour.

He made several recordings with various jazz groups, and gave many recitals, both solo and with students. His plectrum tone and his legato phrasing of a melodic line had to be heard to be believed. In his jazz solos he placed each note with impeccable precision and a lifetime's experience. Though influenced by the playing of Django Reinhardt, Eric Kershaw created his own immediately identifiable style. His recordings cannot do justice to the sheer magic of his live concerts. He was a great player whose stature was appreciated by all who heard him or had the privilege of playing with him.

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Eric Kershaw on Django

“It was easy for that bloody gypsy to play all those fast runs. He only had two fingers, so there was less to get in the way”.

 - He was an endless source of anecdotes about the session scene in the 40s & 50s. He’d known them all, including a friend of my Dad’s called Roy Plummer, and people like Dave Goldberg, (“he smoked too many drugs”), Ike Issacs, Judd Proctor etc.  I only went back to Leeds once in about March 71 to look up an old girlfriend. I didn’t find her, but did bump into Mr Kershaw, who told me that he was making a record with “some Dutch fiddle player, who’s better than Grappelli”. That was of course Time to Swing, and the last time I saw him.  I started playing again when I was about 40, and I’m very active mostly playing Django style stuff in that parallel universe which is Gypsy Jazz. I reckon that he would have loved the way that that style has come back, mostly in Europe, where it’s become really important to the Gypsy tribes in France, Holland, Germany and Belgium, some of whom I know personally.  I heard afterwards that Eric ended up splitting up from his wife, and living in a bedsit. I don’t know if that’s true, (I don’t want to get libelled), but that’s what I heard.  I’ll never forget you anyway Eric- every time I pick up the guitar something will come back.

Eric Kershaw Memorial Award for 'most promising guitarist'
???? - Ged Brockie
1990 - Mark Finney
1991 - Simon Picton
1992 - Masaki Toraiwa/Stephen Browning (Shared)
1993 - Steven Buckley
1997 - John Heyes
1998 - Chris Sharkey
1999 - Chris Sharkey
2000 - James 'Jamie' Taylor
2001 - Dale Harrop
2002 - Sam Dunn

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Ken Sykora - influential host of ‘Guitar Club’ who was on a number of occasions voted the winner, ‘musician of the year’ by readers of the ‘Melody Maker’   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.
 

Thanks for the mention we are keen to make sure his music and  playing remain alive, it's so lovely to hear and see him on the net.   He pretty much worked with every one you mentioned on the UK Jazz  Pioneers page!  Dads 1958 tune "Little Black Dog" dad plays rhythm, Ike Isaacs on  lead guitar with the guitar club band is the theme tune for the new  short British Film "The Bedfordshire Clanger" from Five Feet Films, showing at Cannes  Film Festival this year  (2007).  Very kind regards  - Alison Sykora - Duncan Sykora (Ken's Son) is also A Guitarist and sister Susan Sykora has a career as a Chanteuse

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Sid Colin

40's Squadronaires - Sid Colin Guitar, Jock Cummings Drums, Ronnie Aldrich Piano, Arthur Maden Bass
George Chisolm - We'd taken to calling ourselves The Squadronaires - unofficially. The Air Council forbade the unqualified use of this commercial sounding name. I can just picture some red-faced, handlebar- moustached Air Vice-Marshal recoiling with a cry of "Ugh! Smacks of trade!" - so, on best behaviour days, we were billed as "The Royal Air Force Dance Orchestra (by permission of the Air Council)"; a snappy little title, you'll agree. By way of a minor concession, in very, very small letters underneath, it said "The Squadronaires". But whenever we got out of town, we were "The Squadronaires" in big letters and all the other rubbish at the bottom.  "What did you do in the war Daddy?" 'l was a Squadronaire!"

Sid Colin the singing guitarist, later to become an honest broker of jokes, japes and wheezes in the noble profession of comedy scriptwriting.

Sid Colin later wrote, British dance music sounded "effete and fussily old-fashioned". And swing heralded other developments, notably the schism between jazz and youth-­oriented pop: on the one hand, young black musicians, exasperated by this colonisation of jazz, evolved a more abstract music dubbed bebop; on the other, the singers who appeared with dance bands reacted against their accessory status and began solo careers.

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Jimmy Mesene

A talented guitarist, singer, composer and bon viveur Jimmy Mesene played most notably with Nat Gonella’s Georgians but also sang with other bands: Percy Chandler and his Band, Joe Loss and his Band, Teddy Joyce and his Orchestra, George Glover and his Orchestra, The Organ Dance Band.

He formed a popular duo with Al Bowlly in the early 1940s billed as “The Radio Stars with Two Guitars” and recorded various solo tracks where, unfortunately, little documented information remains as to who was accompanying him. Nat Gonella in a later interview ventured the opinion: "1940 was not a good year to launch a new act, neither Al nor Jimmy was a smart enough operator to get their act booked into the number one theatres. But they managed to put together a short provincial tour of lesser variety theatres, NAAFI Canteens and Palais".

The musical press thought this could be a top line act for vocally they were good, although they still needed improved stagecraft.

They were said to be too static and that on occasions Jimmy saved the act from becoming slightly boring. The duo made four records for HMV, probably on the back of Bowlly's contract with EMI.

The recordings identify some of the problems. Jimmy's style was rather florid compared with Al's and they didn't always blend well and although Al and Jimmy appeared to have a great time, their rather loose approach to harmony comes across as unrehearsed. The act finished when Al Bowlly was killed by a bomb blast on April 17th, 1941. Jimmy's career was then in decline. The stories as to his excessive drinking are widely told, many suggesting that it reached a level where people no longer wanted to work with him as he was too unreliable.

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Jack Varney Born on January, 15 -1918 in Port Melbourne, Victoria Jack was one of Australia’s most versatile and respected musicians, who played the banjo, guitar, piano and the vibraphone.  His music career was interrupted during the war years when he saw service as a pilot with the RAAF.   Jack Varney was a member of the internationally acclaimed Graeme Bell Australian Jazz Band which toured Europe, and appeared on the BBC and a several European radio networks.. He played both banjo and guitar with the band as well as doubling on piano for Graeme Bell.  During his two years in Europe Jack shared billings with such jazz legends as Erroll Garner, Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Humphrey Lyttleton and The Dutch Swing College Band.  At the time Jack was named as one of the top four banjo players in the world. 
On his return to Australia he played in orchestras and bands that accompanied such star artists that included Frank Sinatra and drummer Gene Krupa. 
Outside the recording studio Jack played in television studio orchestras, and also in various groups at Melbourne’s top night spots

After a long battle with Parkinson’s disease Jack Varney passed away in his 91st year on May 19th - 2008.

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Roy Sainsbury  his musical career began in the 1960s. He had his first lessons with Jack Toogood who, through his appearances on Gordon Frank's radio show "Swingalong," became a very well known guitarist in Britain. Roy comes from a musical family and from his very early days he wanted to play the guitar. His godfather was a semi-professional guitarist who first gave him the opportunity of hearing recordings of Barney Kessel, Johnny Smith and also the Ray Ellington quartet, who always featured very good guitarists. During the time he was growing up in Bristol he was exposed to many kinds of music. His father was a drummer and bandleader, and there was always music playing in the house. Roy grew up to the sounds of musicians such as Count Basie, Fats Waller and Coleman Hawkins. The first big band he ever saw was when his father took him to see the Count Basie band when they gave a concert in Bristol. It evidently made a huge impression, as his first love is the big band sound. It was only in later life that he realized the influence that these musicians had on his own playing.

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FRED DEGVILLE was probably the first jazz guitarist living and performing in Walsall and extolling the virtues of Django's Artistry
. .. My father was much loved and respected and should be up there with the rest of the Walsall jazz contingent. - Paul Degville