The jazz years
LIKE Duke Ellington and Earl Scrugg before him, Sir Alfred Sherman has long been a source of inspiration to a rich variety of creative artists. It was while taking a youthful walk along a river-bank that he was first spotted by a young author called Kenneth Grahame, and the immor- tal figure of 'Toad of Toad Hall' was born. Professor Tolkien, too, found much to admire in the young Sir Alfred, and he often made it clear that, without him, there would have been no Hobbit. How comfort- ing it is for parents the world over to know that, for as long as children flick through books, they will always be fingering the familiar, jovial figure of Sir Alf.
Not content to spend the rest of his life simply as a children's hero, Sir Alfred Sherman took off with his trombone to New Orleans, the home, as he puts it in his delightful autobiography, Boogie Down with Alfie, of 'hootin', tootin', red-hot jazz'. He was never to look back. As plain Al Sher, he was soon backing all the
greats, among them Blind Boy Williams, Black Jack Malone and the then virtually unknown Perry 'Peregrine' Perry (dubbed 'The Worst Horn in Town').
Odd, I suppose, that so many of our leading right-wing polemicists should have learnt their craft in the smoky haunts of New Orleans. It was by no means unusual in those days to find oneself jamming in the early hours with, say, Mary Kenny on sax, Wailin' Paul Johnson on castanets.
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