[Reader-list] Fwd: Bombay & The Swinging Sixties

[Patrice Riemens]

bwo Goa-Research-Net/ Patrick de Souza 


This one is not about Goa but about Bombay. You see the story of jazz in 
Bombay (and for that matter India) was written by Goans. So do do read on 
and for those of you who were in Bombay in the 1960's ......enjoy this 
walk down memory lane


Bombay & The Swinging Sixties

Stanley Pinto old Bombay boy and night club pianist, describes the rocking 
times that the city was witness to in the 1960s.


A man called Chris Perry died in Mumbai a few weeks ago. The news didn't 
send even the tiniest ripple out onto the turgid waters of this restless 
megalopolis. In its headlong rush into tomorrow, Mumbai has become a city 
uncaring of the yesterdays from which its today is cast; constantly 
moulting, constantly and unconcernedly shedding memories of times past.
 
Chris Perry is one such forgotten memory of the great jazz age of Mumbai 
that once was Bombay. Alongside Hecke Kingdom and Norman Mobsby and Tony 
Pinto and Neville Thomas and Seby Dias and Sweet Lorraine and Wendy and... 
but I'm getting ahead of my story about the long-ago-and-far-away 
nightlife of Bombay. A scene of a hundred (or so it seemed) jazz dives and 
cabarets that made Bombay the centre of India's entertainment world in the 
60s, 70s and 80s.
 
I discovered this exciting world as a 16-year-old in 1959 when I ran into 
Dorothy Jones on Colaba Causeway. Dorothy was the pianist who accompanied 
all comers on the late great impressario Hamid Sayani's Ovaltine Amateur 
Hour over Radio Ceylon, the FM radio of its time. Teetering on impossible 
stiletto heels, her red hair crowned by a magnificent tres chic turban, 
she enveloped me in a deliciously bosomy hug. Hello luv, how lovely to see 
you, do you still sing, how is your piano playing, you must come and see 
us at Berry's, come to the jam session next Sunday morning. And she was 
gone in a cloudburst of Channel No. 5.
 
Sunday morning couldn't come around soon enough. When it did, I ducked my 
sainted mother after church, dashed off to the nearby railway station, and 
ten minutes later there I was at Berry's little restaurant, just past the 
Tea Centre on Churchgate Street. The band was already swinging: Dorothy at 
the piano was the Marian McPartland of Bombay's jazz. Her son Robin on 
drums, the elegant Percy Borthwick on bass and behind the largest dark 
glasses I'd ever seen, Dennis Rosario, a magnificent guitarist in the 
Barney Kessel style. A reed of a man, Georgie Rich, who later became a 
good friend, was doing a Mel Torme on Sweet Georgia Brown.
 
The joint, to use Cab Calloway's signature phrase, was jumping, and in ten 
minutes it changed my take on life in the fast line. I'd discovered the 
magical, mesmerising, unashamedly decadent and just slightly seedy world 
of life and dark.
 
At the far end of Churchgate Street, just across from today's Jazz by the 
Bay (which didn't exist then) was the bistro Napoli. No live band but with 
Bombay's first and only juke box, very popular with the college set.
 
Almost next door was The Ambassador hotel, lair of Jack Voyantzis, it's 
Greek owner, a beautiful woman always on his arm, a giant Havana ever 
between his teeth. The restaurant at the hotel was called The Other Room 
and India's most reputed jazz agglomeration. The Tony Pinto Quartet, was 
in residence. Tony Pinto was a short, bald martinet of a man who drilled 
his band to perfection in polished, if somewhat pre-meditated, jazz 
arrangements. The quartet was fronted by Norman Mobsby on tenor saxophone, 
as aggressive as Coleman Hawkins, as gentle as Ben Webster.
 
The Other Room was where the well-heeled went to dinner. Every night was 
black tie night, and you were Social Register if Jack knew your first name 
and your wife well enough to kiss her gently on the mouth. The wives 
seldom resisted, I might add.
 
Fifty yards down was Bombelli's, Swiss Freddi's eponymous restaurant. 
Advertising men gathered in its al fresco forecourt each evening, sipping 
the only genuine (or so Freddie said) cappuccinos in town, made from a 
shiny, hissing coffee machine. A trio played at nights. It was all very 
Continental.
 
Right next door, over a fence so low you conveniently held conversations 
and exchanged criossants for pakodas across it, was Berry's. As Indian as 
it's neighbour wasn't. The Tandoori Butter Chicken to die for. And the 
Dorothy Jones Quartet with Marguerite at the mike, as the advertising 
said. A few years later, after Dorothy and all of her band had emigrated 
to the UK, I led my own trio there.
 
Across Berry's was the original Gaylord restaurant. The band was led by 
Ken Cumine, India's only jazz violinist, replete with soft suits of pure 
cashmere, a shiny white violin and radiant daughter Sweet Lorraine at the 
microphone.
 
Around the corner, just across from the Eros cinema, was the Astoria hotel 
with its famous Venice restaurant. Famous because this was the jazz 
musicians' jazz hideout. For years, the diminutive trumpeter Chris Perry 
led his quintet there. There was the incomparable Felix Torcato on piano; 
years later he moved to Calcutta, first leading a wonderful quarter and 
later a big band at the Oberoi Grand, with his spectacular wife Diane as 
partner and singer.
 
On tenor saxophone with Chris was his brother Paul, a happy laughing 
buddha of a man. And out in front was Molly, a singer in the Sarah Vaughn 
mould, one of the best we've ever seen in the country.
 
Some years later, the Astoria opened a second restaurant. They called it 
Skyline and it opened with a young alto saxophonist who was continued over 
the next three decades to dominate the Indian jazz scene. The man was Braz 
Gonsalves and what a heart-stopping quartet it was. Xavier Fernandes, the 
most cerebral pianist of his time, Leslie Godinho, the 'dada' of the Hindi 
film percussionists on drums and... dashed if I can recall the bassist. I 
think perhaps it was Dinshaw 'Balsi' Balsara, advertising art director and 
clothes horse who later went on to become one of Asia's most successful 
commercial photographers in Hong Kong.
 
When Chris Perry moved on to Calcutta, Braz shifted to the Venice. The 
quartet grew into a quintet with the addition of a tenor saxophonist. 
Leslie made way for Wency, the most dynamic young drummer of his era, and 
Bombay rocked to the Cannonball Adderley sound. For almost a decade Venice 
was the meeting place for jazz men from all over the country and indeed 
the world. Dave Brubeck visited and sat in, regal if a little incongruous 
in his particular jazz genre. Duke Ellington came two nights in a row 
after he discovered half his orchestra moonlighting with Braz and the 
gang. Venice was the Blue Note of India's swingingest jazz scene and would 
we miss a single evening of it? Perish the thought.
 
Across the road at the Ritz hotel was The Little Hut. Neville Thomas, one 
of the most dashing men around town, led a group called Three Guys and a 
Doll. The luscious Shirley Myers was the doll. (Thirty years later I met 
Shirley one evening at Jazz at the Bay and she's still a doll!) Later, 
when Molly returned from Calcutta to marry her piano player sweetheart 
Mervyn, they took over at The Little Hut for many years.
 
>From that spot, it was a brisk walk past Flora Fountain, where, plumb 
opposite Akbarally's, were Bistro and Volga, the two most popular haunts 
of the younger set. Seby Dias held court at Bistro, with my school friend 
Johnny at the piano and a hugely talented young lady called Ursula at the 
mike. She was the daughter of one of India's best known orchestra leaders 
of the big band era. Chic Chocolate, as unprepossessing as Chic was 
dashing, and just as gifted. At Volga next door Hecke Kingdom's Quartet 
held sway. Hecke was India's only baritone sax man, a grandfatherly man, 
gentle and wise. In delightful contrast, the trio that backed him was more 
mischief than a tribe of monkeys. Richie Marquis on piano, Percy on bass 
and Maxie on drums. But what an unbelievable prolific trio it was. There 
probably hasn't been another like it since.
 
Off the beaten track at Kala Ghoda, around the corner from Khyber 
restaurant, suddenly, from nowhere, a restaurant called La Bella opened in 
1961. And it opened with a British sextet called the Margaret Mason band, 
with Margie Mason herself on an enthralling instrument we had never seen 
before: the vibraharp. As college kids, we swiftly became habitues of the 
11.00 a.m. coffee session. All it took was 75p for the Espresso, not to 
mention the continuous acts of petty larceny to find that princely sum six 
days a week.
 
And finally, across from the Yacht Club at Dhanraj Mahal, there was the 
Alibaba where now stands a Chinese restaurant. George Fernandes on piano, 
Cassie on bass and Louis Armstrong vocals. Wilfred on drums.
 
In time, riding the crest of the jazz juggernaut, these niteries were 
joined by clubs at the Taj Mahal hotel, the Oberoi, the Nataraj on Marine 
Drive, the Shalimar at Kemp's Corner, the Sundowner at the Sun'n'Sand, and 
restaurants like the Blue Nile at New Marine Lines, the Talk of the Town 
on Marine Drive and the second Bombelli's at Worli.
 
With them came new young stars. Iqbal Singh, the turbaned Navy ensign 
doing his frantic Elvis Presly thing. Bonnie Remedios, India's Fats 
Domino. Sunder the Gay Caballero. Not quite jazz but what the hell.
 
And there was this callow, beardless fellow, barely out of short pants, 
who sat in on five minutes' notice for pianists all over town when they 
called in sick. Tony Pinto gave him lessons in jazz progressions so he'd 
stop inventing 'Chinese' chords of his own. Hecke Kingdom advised him to 
think long and hard about wanting to make this life a profession, not for 
someone who has a subscription to TIME magzine, he'd say, only half 
jokingly. And the cabaret girls were inordinately protective of him 
because he accompanied them on the piano impeccably, not asking for 
'anything' in return. Then, when he inevitably did, they'd grown to like 
him enough to gleefully acquiesce. Life was grand.
 
Till one day it was gone. Suddenly, unexpectedly. Sadly. And much, much 
before it changed its name, Bombay metamorphosed into Mumbai.
 
We were left with a handful of memories. Now they too have 
faded..............................

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