In a little over a decade of writing for JJ, I’ve never have I done something like this, which is perhaps best described as review-cum-reportage. If I get the reportage out of the way I can spill some ink – more than well deserved – on the excellent entertainment that Tony Jacobs plus five highly gifted musicians laid on the attendees of what sadly will be the final AGM of the Sinatra Music Society.
Some seven years after Sinclair Traill founded Jazz Journal a group of Sinatra fans – Fred Dellar, Clive Lester and Ray Purslow – living in and around Birmingham, founded the SMS. At that time (1955) the gulf between the popular music personified by Sinatra, and that featured in Jazz Journal was barely perceptible. Now, SMS, faced with a dwindling membership, can no longer break even, let alone turn a profit. This, then, is the situation that obtained when SMS staged its 70th, and final, AGM in the Cobden Hotel in Edgbaston, Birmingham – fittingly, the place where it all started. As swan songs go this was up there with the best of them. Fifty-five members attended, and given that there are now slightly less than 200 loyalists shelling out on annual membership fees, this turnout represented more than a quarter, from all compass points of the UK.
As I arrived, having driven from London, the first member I ran into had travelled from Scotland. Wendy Squires had prevailed upon a pastry-cook friend to bake a large cake, and this was shared collectively after the concert. The committee – Elaine, Patrizia, Marilyn, Alan and Wendy – bent over backwards to ensure it would be an occasion to remember and prior to the AGM proper they presented 10 tracks by Sinatra that spanned his entire career, from All Or Nothing At All to My Way. I can’t speak too highly of this committee, who had clearly reached into their own pockets to hire the hotel and pay the band.
Well, I got there in the end. All I can say is that Tony Jacobs and band was well worth driving from London to hear; they were slightly superb. Leader Tony Jacobs is a triple threat; trumpeter, vocalist and showman, he knows how to make an entrance. The band – Martin Litton (p), Paul Morgan (b), Neil Bullock (d), Sue Greenway (ts, f, cl) and Simon Picton (elg) – took the first number, Strike Up The Band, without Jacobs. They then worked up a lather on 16 bars of Alexander’s Ragtime Band. Suddenly a trumpet with a Harry James sound-alike vibrato started wailing and Jacobs bounded on stage blowing up a storm before segueing into the vocal. Rather surprisingly, given this was essentially the Sinatra fan club, the band featured Sinatra material only peripherally. But the 22 numbers over two sets were seriously eclectic, and with the exception of Paul Morgan all the band got to solo. A truly fine afternoon.
Sinatra Music Society AGM with Tony Jacobs and band at the Cobden Hotel in Edgbaston, Birmingham. 28 September 2025
