Bob Weir is a veteran jazz journalist and researcher, a columnist and reviewer for Jazz Journal magazine for 34 years and the author of a dozen discographical books on leading jazz figures.
He will talk about the origins and development of jazz music in Britain with recorded musical examples.
He will discuss the early influence on home-grown talent from American visitors including the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1919/20). Louis Armstrong (1932) and Fats Waller (1938). Postwar expatriate arrivals from the Caribbean and South Africa also made significant impacts.UK jazz has mostly followed American styles although the Trad and Skiffle crazes and some more recent occasional fusions with British folk music could be regarded as indigenous genres.
Questions and observations will be encouraged throughout the talk.
