“The bubble burst”: How Louis Armstrong doomed a Yorkshire venue
Jazz might not be the first thing to pop into your mind when confronted with the soot-stained stone and industrial heritage of West Yorkshire, but back in 1968, the region played host to one of the greatest jazz musicians to ever grace the airwaves: Louis Armstrong.
Throughout his extensive and illustrious career, Satchmo visited virtually every corner of the globe, from newly-independent African nations to his home stomping grounds around New Orleans. Included within that country-hopping career was Britain, where the trumpeter made his first visit during the pre-war days of 1932, for a run of concerts across the length of the nation that were utterly essential in introducing UK audiences to American jazz for the very first time.
When Armstrong returned to British shores in 1968, however, the nation was fully on board with his iconic sound. During an extensive residency, some of which was captured in recordings by the BBC, Armstrong performed for adoring audiences across the country, including in the shadow of smokestacks and factories in West Yorkshire.
Namely, the jazz legend performed at the Batley Variety Club on one stop of the tour, cementing the show in the pages of local legend for multiple decades and, at the same time, placing the future of the local venue in jeopardy. Reportedly, Armstrong was drawn to Yorkshire by the BBC, who were recording an episode of their long-running ‘Desert Island Discs’ with the trumpeter in one of their northern studios.
As well as that, since the lost and found radio recording, though, Armstrong’s journey north was spurred on by a conversation he had months prior, in New York City. There, James Corrigan and Bernard Hinchcliffe, of the Batley Variety Club, travelled across the ocean in order to speak to Armstrong’s booking manager and secure an appearance by the jazz hero for a grand total of £27,000 – for reference, that’s over £415,000 in today’s money, when adjusted for inflation.
While that might sound ludicrous for what was essentially a local club with a capacity of under 2,000 people, Batley Variety Club had quite the reputation to uphold back in the 1960s. Having hosted a plethora of stars ranging from Roy Orbison to Eartha Kitt, the club became a haven for American artists coming over to the UK, and was modelled by Corrigan and Hinchcliffe on the clubs they had experienced in Las Vegas. In that sense, Batley became a key stomping ground for global stars back in the 1960s.
Seemingly, though, the sum paid for Louis Armstrong’s appearance was one of the steepest Batley had ever forked out – rivalled only by that of Dean Martin, who also performed at the club. As legendary as the show was, then, Batley Variety Club had shot itself in the foot somewhat.
“When Louis Armstrong came, the publicity was enormous, it was worldwide,” Maureen Prest, the club’s promotion manager, once told The Yorkshire Post. “And [Corrigan] made it known how much he’d paid to bring him over, which was a big mistake because all the other agents read this.” Essentially, that meant that all future booking agents knew they could charge Batley more, as the club had set a precedent with Armstrong.
As Prest put it, “Their managers knew their pockets were very deep and increased their fees and eventually the bubble burst.” So, although the club managed to march on until its eventual closure in 1978, the calibre of stars it managed to attract certainly dipped off, with the club unable to afford the steep fees that artists demanded in the wake of Louis Armstrong’s fateful visit.
However, locals of a certain generation still discuss the magical moment when the king of American jazz set foot on the rainy pavements of West Yorkshire.
