All anyone wants to talk about is the Dave Clark Five

Unlike Pete Best who was ousted from the Beatles, Jim has no regrets. It was his decision, he said, settling into the interview, and it was the right decision.

Jim is now 76 and reckons the suave, bearded twentysomething with the sax is long gone. The eyes still have it, though. They twinkle and smile as he goes back to the late 1950s when jazz, skiffle and rock ‘n’ roll were all pushing the boundaries and pop was just around the corner. It was, he declared, an exciting time, and nothing like it has happened since.

“When I joined Dave Clark, we (the band) didn’t know what we were doing,” he laughed. “It was terrible, really. At rehearsals, we sorted all the musical arrangements in our heads as we went along, and that’s where they stayed. We never wrote anything down because none of us could really write music!

“But we worked hard. All those emerging pop groups did.”

Jim lives in Tiptree with his wife, Audrey, and it was because of Audrey and their then new-born daughter, Katie – the couple now have three daughters – that Jim quit the Dave Clark Five in 1962.

“The band was going professional and that meant touring,” he said. “I knew what that would involve – plane, bus, hotel, gig. I would have missed Audrey and Katie so much – and, anyway, unlike the others in the band, I already had a thriving career.”

He looked hard at me, as though I wasn’t going to believe him.

“Music has always been a hobby with me. Oh, I love it, but I never wanted to be a professional. For one, I was not good enough. I also wouldn’t have liked the life.”

But his association with the Dave Clark Five never died. The group were the only non-northern musicians to become pop sensations in the early 1960s (albeit briefly). Anyone over 45 will have heard of them – think Bits and Pieces – and anyone with the slightest connection to the group will arouse interest.

“I know – that’s why the Colchester Labour Group insisted on bringing in the Dave Clark Five when I stood for the Birch seat on Colchester Council recently,” he said. “I really didn’t want to bore voters with something which happened nearly 50 years ago and, as far as I am concerned, was very short-lived.”

He didn’t get the seat. He didn’t expect to. Birch is Conservative territory.

“Why do I want to be a councillor? Well, I’ve always been a Labour activist and I’ve always believed that music can help children – look how the Venezualan Youth Orchestra gets kids off the streets.

“I’m not say north Essex needs something as drastic as that, but, as a councillor, I could influence policy to bring music and children together.”

He never gave up the sax and every other Thursday plays at a modern jazz workshop in Frating.

“I have loved music ever since the moment I heard the Proms on the radio when I was 14. From then, I listened to all kinds of music,” he revealed. “But it was jazz which had the biggest influence on me – Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.”

He decided to buy a clarinet – trumpets and saxophones were too expensive – and saw one for £4.50 (this was 1946) in a local music shop.

“I had managed to save 30 bob (£1.50) and convinced the shop manager to let me pay off the outstanding £3 at half-a-crown (12½p) a week,” he said. “I had some piano lessons, but taught myself to play the clarinet. I listened and copied and remembered.”

Jim was born in West Ham. Two of his friends – David and Rick Huxley, whom he got to know after his family moved to Dartford – made a big impression on him. David and Jim “jammed” in Jim’s front room to 78rpm jazz records. Meanwhile, Rick was on his way to becoming a permanent member of the Dave Clark Five.

By this time, Jim was at Gravesend School of Art studying commercial art (now graphic design). He wanted to be an interior designer – shops, not homes – and at 16 was working for the Co-op. Two years later he was in the RAF on National Service, and playing in one of the service’s big bands. This is where the big switch from clarinet to sax happened.

Back in civvy street, his “real job” began to blossom. He worked as a designer for the department store Derry and Tom – the building at Kensington Gardens later housed Biba – then moved to Woollands in Knightsbridge, next to Harvey Nicols. Still only in his early 20s, he then joined forces with another interior designer and set up his own studio near Chelsea’s football ground at Stamford Bridge.

“We designed sculptors for hairdressing salons and set up shoots for Vogue and Ambassador magazines,” he said.

“Successful? We nearly starved! But it didn’t matter. I was doing what I loved – designing and playing music,” he smiled.

“It was around this time I met up with Dave (Huxley) again. His parents were running a pub in Tufnell Park and Dave Clark was rehearsing his group in one of the upstairs rooms.

They needed a tenor sax. Dave – who, at that time, was playing rhythm guitar for the group – asked me to go along.”

Jim was in, but when the group decided to go professional four years later, he left.

Jim was now working for John Lewis and, after a stint in Sheffield, where he played a gig with Joe Cocker, returned to London and became a design consultant for Dorothy Perkins.

He was later head-hunted by Combined English Stores (now Next) and left in 1975 to set up his own shop fittings’ manufacturing business, Magnum Opus, in Southminster.

It fell victim to the recession in the early 1980s, and Jim went to work for Chelsea Girl (River Island) as projects manager.

After the job had been made redundant, he set up his own successful interior design consultancy until he retired in 1997.

“Yes, I have had quite a career,” he shrugged, “but all anyone wants to talk about is the Dave Clark Five.”

:: For more information about the jazz workshop at the Memorial Hall, Frating, call Paul Dawkins on 01787 224158.