PAUL
VERNON CHESTER
Manouche Maestro
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Manouche Maestro |
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Vic Lewis 1919-2009
Vic Lewis recalled playing with Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli before the second world war (1939) and also associating with musicians such as the pianist George Shearing. Lewis transferred from the banjo to the four-string tenor guitar, inspired by the recordings of the American jazz guitarist Eddie Lang. Dispatched to the Essex coast to benefit from the sea air, he located some like-minded players and formed his Swing String Quartet in 1935 which was soon being broadcast by the BBC and Radio Luxembourg.
In August
1952 Lewis collapsed twice on stage with heart trouble and rested for eight
weeks. On his return his agent, had arranged for the band to back Frankie Laine
on tour. This was so successful that they toured with Johnnie Ray. Despite
financial help from his mother, in 1960 Lewis's band failed in the face of the
challenge from rock music. From 1959 onwards Lewis worked mostly as a booking
agent, forming a partnership with an ex-professional wrestler, Bill Benny.
He died in
London on February 9th, 2009 a short while before his 90th birthday. Vic the Guitarist These days
Vic Lewis is, in my opinion an unjustly neglected pioneer of the jazz guitar.
Vic was born in 1919 in North London - the son of moderately prosperous but
indulgent parents who owned a successful jewellery business. At the early age of
three he picked up his father’s tenor banjo and quickly mastered the instrument.
Later, he was introduced to the instrument he was to become best known for – the
‘Quatro’ - a four-string guitar popular at the time. His parents were closet
early Jazz fans and regular record purchasers at Levy’s Music Emporium in
Whitechapel. Levy’s had established the business in 1928 and began importing
early US Jazz recordings, eventually in 1932 they founded ‘Levaphone’ Records,
later to be renamed ‘Oriole’ and coincidently in the thirties/ forties the sole
distributor of Django Reinhardt’s oeuvre.
Vic’s recordings are difficult to locate, although it is worth searching out a (deleted) 2003 CD on Upbeat - URCD 192 showcasing his pioneering 1938 New York jam sessions. - thanks to Alex Balmforth for this contribution. In 1938, Lewis's father paid for him to travel to New York. Leonard Feather, who had known Lewis in London, was now established in New York and he arranged for Lewis to play with the Joe Marsala band at the Hickory House. Joe Bushkin was the band's pianist and Buddy Rich its drummer. Later that night Lewis found Nick's in Greenwich Village and sat in with Bobby Hackett and Eddie Condon. The next morning the band agreed to make some acetate recordings with Lewis as a souvenir for him, and these, not at all bad, were issued commercially in Britain in 1985. In 1959 a nine piece group titled 'Vic Lewis and His Group' recorded one side of an LP under the title 'Leonard Feather presents...Jazz from two sides' for the Concept label, presumably for the American market. (Picture supplied by Richard Hazlewood)
Vic Lewis and his Group - June 24th,
1959 (Concept VL5) |
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Vic
Lewis was born in London in 1919 and began playing the banjo when he was three,
later switching to guitar and also cornet. While still a schoolboy, he broke his
arm on the football field and this, oddly – for the arm was eccentrically set –
enabled him to play rhythm guitar for hour after hour without tiring.
In his later
years he did much work for charity – for which he was made MBE in 2007 –
produced albums by his beloved West Coast jazz musicians, and published books.
The last of them, the lavish My Life In Jazz, (2006) featured hundreds of
photographs of Vic with the famous, from Lester Young to Frank Sinatra and Nat
"King" Cole. 
Whilst
in New York he recorded a session that for many years lay neglected and
unrecognised. A few of the recordings were eventually released but surprisingly
they were for the most part overlooked. Upon his return to the UK and at the
outbreak of war Vic enlisted into the RAF and joined the service band ‘Buddy
Featherstonhaugh’s Radio Sextet’, and after Buddy’s departure reinvented itself
as the ‘Vic Lewis – Jack Parnell Jazzmen’. Around 1944 Vic and Jack teamed up
with George Chisholm, several of the Squadronaires, Johnny Mince and three of
his US orchestra, then resident at the ‘Palladium’ and recorded a number of
landmark sessions with Parlophone Records. After the War Vic collaborated with
Stan Kenton and enlisted a band, which largely played Kenton inspired
arrangements. This band persisted in various incarnations until 1960 when Vic
segued into management, managing amongst others, Elton John, Dudley Moore and
Nina Simone. 