Yep, knew that.
He performed in Pensford, his home village, when I was in my teens and trad jazz was pretty popular for a while even with pop music fans. It was the village fete and billed as "Acker's At Home Day".
Three of us went - a drummer and another clarinettist - and camped in the field below the viaduct.
We had a great time, the band played their socks off fuelled up on Scotch beforehand, according to drummer Ron McKay who we talked with afterwards.
He hadn't wanted to get stocious because he had his eye on some girl but I think she had drifted off so he drank beer with us instead. The fifth conversationalist in our group was the village policeman Graham Dawe, who we had to help find his bicycle pump which had fallen off in the dark, while he told us his life story.
I like real places, real communities, real people, real food, real stuff to drink, and real music.
OK, I moved on from trad, but still listen to early jazz and blues as well as Rollins, Parker, Monk and so on (and some people - like Mingus - have all eras of the music in their bag, anyway) and Acker Bilk always was a very good clarinettist in my book... great tone, great phrasing, swings like mad... what he does, he does well, and he earned his living by it.
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