This article is based on a face-to-face interview with Reg Rigden, British jazz cornetist and trumpeter, in June 1989. It went through several drafts, incorporating amendments and additional memories provided by Reg himself. The final version below was produced on 17 September 1991 and tidied up on 24 April 2021. There was an expectation by both Reg and me that the article would be published. At the time it was submitted to a couple specialist jazz magazines but to no avail.
Reg Rigden was a member of the pioneering band George Webb’s Dixielanders, a group of amateur jazz musicians in South East London who set out to recreate the music of early New Orleans and Chicago. From 1944-1947 Reg, with fellow trumpeter Owen Bryce, fronted up the band until he was replaced by Humphrey Lyttelton. The band was pivotal in driving the so-called ‘revivalist’ movement that eventually led to the ‘Trad’ booms of the ‘Fifties and ‘Sixties.
This was Reg’s brief period of recognition and he continued to play and tour with his own group and others, until giving up playing in the early 1950’s when he went to work for the Borough of Woolwich, later incorporated in the London Borough of Greenwich. Reg was trained as an archaeologist and became curator of the local history museum located above Plumstead Library. He was author of a number of pamphlets and books on historical aspects of Woolwich, Greenwich and Deptford.
I was working for the Borough in the later years of Reg’s tenure but did not make the connection. It was only after he had retired in 1984 and after I had read Godbolt’s `History of Jazz in Britain’ that the penny dropped.
Whilst working full time for the council, Reg Rigden effectively removed himself from the jazz scene. In the late 1980s he had taken up playing again, getting together with a group of colleagues from the past. I managed to track him down in Meopham, Kent, not far from where I lived, and Reg came to my house for a discussion. This was recorded on tape and the article was put together from this dialogue.
He liked the idea of doing a story on those pioneering days, if only to be able to set the record straight on what he saw as some inaccuracies and misunderstandings that had been perpetuated over the years. The article is Reg’s own account of his days in jazz and his revival of interest in playing in recent years, sprinkled with anecdotes and opinions on the jazz form and the people who played it.
The article is available for download below as a PDF file.