In a nation said to have ‘never had it so good’, Britain’s jazzmen were certainly proving this to be so during 1958. Not yet drowned by rock and roll, jazz was the youth culture music of the cognoscenti, those who, digging both modern American records and Continental fashion, were laying the groundwork of the first phase of ‘Mod.’ But there was more to 1958 than aping the mannerisms of others. London had its own scene and its own style – a Soho kind of sound – centred around clubs like the Flamingo and bands like the Jazz Couriers and there was seemingly no shortage of visiting US jazz giants, from Dizzy Gillespie to Dave Brubeck, queing up to give their approval for music they thought world class. Soho Scene ‘58 tells the story of this heady time; a Year Zero for Modernism in which London began to swing its way towards the 1960s, jazz setting the pace as never before.
