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January RIP

Discussion in 'Hull City' started by Chazz Rheinhold, Jan 2, 2021.

  1. Ernie Shackleton

    Ernie Shackleton Well-Known Member

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    Commiserations Chazz.

    Always a sad time.
     
    #81
  2. rovertiger

    rovertiger Well-Known Member

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    Awful news Chazz R.I.P. Gordy
     
    #82
    Kempton likes this.
  3. originallambrettaman

    originallambrettaman Mod Moderator
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    Sorry for your loss Chazz.
     
    #83
  4. FER ARK

    FER ARK Well-Known Member

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    Bad news, condolences Chazz.
     
    #84
  5. Chazz Rheinhold

    Chazz Rheinhold Well-Known Member

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    John Pilgrim obituary
    Washboard player with the Vipers, which helped set the stage for British rock’n’roll during the 50s teenage ‘skiffle craze’
    Dave Arthur
    please log in to view this image

    Wed 13 Jan 2021 18.37 GMT
    Last modified on Wed 13 Jan 2021 18.55 GMT

    John Pilgrim, who has died aged 87, achieved fame, if not fortune, as washboard player with the Vipers during the brief mid-50s “skiffle craze”. The Vipers were among the most popular and exciting of British skiffle groups, and, as the first resident band at the 2is coffee bar in Soho, helped set the ball rolling for British rock’n’roll, many of whose early stars emerged from the 2is cellar. They toured widely and had chart success, notably with Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O, released on Parlophone in 1957, which reached No 10, and then with Cumberland Gap and Streamline Train.

    Skiffle had emerged from the postwar British New Orleans revival jazz bands – simple, catchy music popular with British teenagers, who discovered they could play this “folk music with a beat” on homemade instruments and using only three or four guitar chords. Within months of the runaway success of Lonnie Donegan’s Rock Island Line in 1956, there were thousands of skiffle groups across Britain – it was the first really demotic teenage music.

    But soon it had run its course, and most skifflers went back to their old jobs. The Vipers folded in 1960 after several changes of personnel, faced with falling interest and falling revenue from the public and record companies. Pilgrim went on to work as a bookseller, journalist, teacher, radio DJ, record distributor and a faithful, conscientious and perceptive chronicler of his Soho generation. His writing was enhanced by his encyclopedic knowledge of jazz and blues, and he had strong opinions that he was happy to air in a bar, or in print.

    He was a lifelong friend of the guitarist Davey Graham, and one of Pilgrim’s greatest satisfactions was After Hours, the acclaimed Graham album he produced in 1997, considered by many to be the guitarist’s finest. It had been recorded on a domestic tape recorder in Pilgrim’s mature student’s quarters at Hull University in 1967, and captured a relaxed Graham at the height of his powers.

    Born in central London into a working-class family during the “hungry 30s”, John was one of three children of Henry Pilgrim, a clerk in the paper industry, and his wife, Jessie (nee Walter). The family moved to Castlenau council estate, in Barnes, south-west London, and John won a scholarship to East Sheen grammar school.

    But by then he had discovered jazz. In a box of records at school he unearthed Charlie Barnet’s Skyliner and Muggsy Spanier’s At the Jazz Band Ball, which were a revelation. He began a jazz quest, not easy in 1946. BBC jazz programmes were few and far between and when his favourite was regularly taken off air in the summer to make way for cricket, it instilled in him a lifelong hatred of the sport.

    He dropped out of school as soon as possible, got a messenger job at the Guardian, and began to haunt Soho, where he discovered Dobell’s bookshop in Charing Cross Road, which had started to carry jazz and blues records. He got to know many of the luminaries of the nascent jazz club scene, including Chris Barber, who played at Pilgrim’s “joining the army” party. Humphrey Lyttelton had told Pilgrim the army was a good place to learn instruments and play in a band, so Pilgrim signed up for a few years in his late teens as a bandsman, his instrument the clarinet.

    He also learned to play the washboard, and in the 1950s, with Russell Quaye and his flatmate, the journalist Howard Jackson, Pilgrim started what became the City Ramblers. He was playing the washboard for fun, too, with his friends Wally Whyton and Johnny Booker and Jean van den Bosch, all on guitar and vocals, at the Breadbasket coffee house in Cleveland Street, and they formed the Vipers in 1956. Later they were joined by Tony Tolhurst on bass.

    Pilgrim often performed with his pet monkey, Iggins, sitting on his shoulder, who at other times lived in a converted dresser in the kitchen of his flat in Pearman Street. On one occasion, Iggins defecated on Donegan, something Whyton said a lot of people had been wanting to do for a long time.

    In 1957 Pilgrim married Tena McLaren, and in the post-skiffle years they ran an alternative bookstall in Charing Cross Road. One of their customers, the historian Eric Hobsbawm, encouraged Pilgrim to return to education. Around 1966 he embarked on a degree in sociology and politics at Hull University, where he played in a college jugband called Humberjug, and hung out in the bar discussing jazz with the poet Philip Larkin, who was the university librarian and a fellow jazz enthusiast.

    Pilgrim took a master’s in sociology of science at Manchester University, and then taught in Liverpool. In the late 1970s he moved to Yorkshire, where he ran Jazz Services, a record distribution company, in Sowerby Bridge, and also went on the road with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee for three of their British tours. Terry declared him the “best washboard player in the country”. He played with the Hot Vultures several times, including at the Cambridge folk festival in 1974, and on their 1975 album Carrion On. Pilgrim loved to play and would perform with anyone who wanted a washboard player.

    His business eventually folded and he moved to Woodbridge in Suffolk, where he got back into writing, contributing regularly to the Independent and the Guardian. Throughout the 90s he made a monthly appearance on Stephen Foster’s Blues Show on Radio Suffolk – these ventures, plus his small teacher’s pension, were enough to keep him going.

    His marriage ended in divorce in 1986, and for the past 20 years Pilgrim lived in Yoxford, Suffolk, with his partner, Deborah Ardizzone. He is survived by Deborah, and by his daughter, Kerry, from his marriage, two grandchildren, Asha and Lauren, and a great-grandson, Joseph, and his sister, Anne.

    • John Pilgrim, skiffle musician and writer, born 7 April 1933; died 18 December 2020
     
    #85
  6. Qatartiger Cambridgetiger

    Qatartiger Cambridgetiger Well-Known Member

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    Sorry about your loss Chaz. RIP your mate Gordon.
     
    #86
    Chazz Rheinhold likes this.
  7. originallambrettaman

    originallambrettaman Mod Moderator
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    Sylvain Sylvain, of New York Dolls fame, has died aged 69 (cancer).

    RIP

     
    #87
  8. Oregon Tiger

    Oregon Tiger Well-Known Member

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    One of my earliest memories of the OGWT. RIP Sylvain.

     
    #88
    Ron Burguvdy likes this.
  9. Tickton Tiger.

    Tickton Tiger. Well-Known Member

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    Just seen this Chazz after your pm. So sorry to hear about Gord who I know was a close friend of yours from what you have told me. I knew Gordon from my days at Endike, playing in the same football team as him and following City together as teenagers. He was a fabulous footballer too and was spotted by Fred Cowell who ran our school team and was involved with City's Youth set-up and as Chazz rightly says signed Gordon up on schoolboys terms.
    I don't think I ever saw Gord without a smile on his face, even in later life when our paths crossed, which sadly was all too in frequent. Sadden tonight to hear of his passing. He was truly a lovely bloke.
     
    #89
  10. Ron Burguvdy

    Ron Burguvdy Well-Known Member

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    #90
    Last edited: Jan 16, 2021

  11. Chazz Rheinhold

    Chazz Rheinhold Well-Known Member

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    Tosh chamberlain RIP
    Before my time but a well loved player for Fulham
     
    #91
  12. Tigerglenn

    Tigerglenn Well-Known Member

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    Phil Spector music producer aged 81 dies from COVID Complications
     
    #92
  13. spesupersydera

    spesupersydera Well-Known Member

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    Mad as a box of frogs but - I think, a musical genius; that 'wall of sound' was years ahead of the game.

    RIP.
     
    #93
  14. originallambrettaman

    originallambrettaman Mod Moderator
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    Posters who don't respect the RIP thread will be removed from it, it's only one thread, it can't be that difficult.
     
    #94
  15. Barchullona

    Barchullona Well-Known Member

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    Irrespective of anything else responsible for some of the best sounds of all time. Knew he had been involved in other things earlier in his career like co-writing Ben E King's Spanish Harlem but didn't know he did the guitar solo on this.
     
    #95
    Kempton and spesupersydera like this.
  16. Jackthecap

    Jackthecap Well-Known Member

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    Sorry for your loss mate. RIP.
     
    #96
  17. Chazz Rheinhold

    Chazz Rheinhold Well-Known Member

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    RIP
    A boy found dead in Ennerdale on Tuesday has been named as 17-year-old Connor Lyons.

    Humberside Police were called at 8.20am on Tuesday following the discovery of Mr Lyon’s body on the banks of the River Hull.

    On Wednesday, officers are continuing to investigate the circumstances of Mr Lyon’s death, which is being treated as "unexplained".
     
    #97
  18. Help!

    Help! Well-Known Member

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    No age. RIP Connor and condolences to anyone on here that knew him.
     
    #98
    The B&S Fanclub and nbetiger like this.
  19. Barchullona

    Barchullona Well-Known Member

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    All the poor folk murdered by two maniacs in Baghdad.
     
    #99
  20. The B&S Fanclub

    The B&S Fanclub Well-Known Member

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    Peter Swan
    Aged 84
    Former England and Sheffield Wednesday defender.
    RIP
     
    #100

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