December Features
Debbie Arthurs
and the Charleston Chasers
Text by James Hogg
It's the 1980s. Picture a 10-year-old called Debbie Arthurs growing up in rural England, and hooked on the pop music of the day. No different, you might think, from a million other little girls. Yet Debbie is different in one important respect -- she doesn't dream of becoming a film star or model. She wants to be a drummer.
Now move forward to 2008 and picture Debbie as she is today, an elegant, self-assured young woman leading a 10-piece professional band, composed almost exclusively of men. But wait a minute, what's that they're playing? What happened to those early influences? Debbie and the years may have moved forward, but the music has moved back. Instead of the contemporary material you might expect from an '80s child, Debbie plays the songs of half a century or more before she was born. Her band, the Charleston Chasers, has won high praise for its presentation of 1920s swing music. Sandy Wilson, writer and composer of the hit musical The Boy Friend, has described it as "one of the most authentic recreations I have heard. Excellent orchestrations, perfect vocals -- and a wonderful band."
But Debbie Arthurs remained true in one way to the litle girl she once was. She did indeed grow up to be a drummer. The Chasers' lineup of two trumpets, trombone, three reeds and rhythm section takes its orders and its rhythmic drive from the attractive figure holding the sticks, though from time to time Debbie puts them down and moves front of stage for a vocal chorus. She's the band singer as well as everything else.
So how did it happen, this unusual combination of 1920s music and a woman who not only plays the drums -- rare enough -- but is the leader of the band?
Debbie Arthurs was born in the English Cotswolds, a region of rolling hills, orchards and market gardens, and ancient villages with stone cottages grouped round the church. As a child her musical taste centered on Madonna and British groups like Duran Duran and Frankie Goes To Hollywood ("And don't come back!" she shouts, hooting with laughter, as she recalls her favorites of those days).
There was a tradition of music in the family. One grandmother was a classical pianist and the other had a piano on which Debbie loved to pick out tunes by ear. And other influences came into play, inspiring the delight in drumming which eventually determined her career. Her parents had divorced when she was six, which entailed moving to nearby Moreton-in-Marsh. Her new stepfather's record collection featured Glenn Miller and, more crucially, Karen Carpenter. Here was the perfect role model for a ten-year-old with rhythm in her soul. "I always liked her voice and she was an excellent drummer. She influenced me in the way she drummed and sang at the same time," recalls Debbie.
Fortunately there was a drum teacher at her school and at 12 Debbie started lessons. Not long afterwards her stepfather, Ron, asked her to get something from the garage. "He was a painter and decorator and kept all his his gear in there, so normally I wasn't allowed in. I was quite interested in having a rummage round, but when I got inside the first thing I saw was this brand new drum kit he'd bought me. It was a wonderful moment."
A kid let loose on a set of drums can be hard to live with, or next door to, but with self-protection in mind Ron hastened to soundproof Debbie's bedroom, where the kit was installed. She began private lessons at home and spent many hours practicing. She learned percussive techniques and how to read a drum score, poring over a treasured book she still has called The Art of the Drummer by the British writer John Savage. In summer when she flung the windows open, she discovered she had dream neighbors. "After I'd finished playing I'd hear applause from next door. How lucky is that?"
Cynics might wonder if they were applauding the drumming or the fact that it was over, but bless those tolerant neighbors for encouraging a young girl with a passion for percussion.
The next lucky break came when Debbie was 17. This time it was one of those casual encounters that turn out to have life-changing consequences. In their business delivering fruit and vegetables around the villages, her parents had a customer who sang and played drums in a local band. Once, when stepfather Ron inquired how the music was going, the customer told him he wanted to concentrate on singing, which meant the band was looking for a drummer.
"Dad said, 'Well, my daughter plays drums,'" recalls Debbie. "And that's how it all started, with that one bit of chit-chat."
Out of the blue, she was asked to meet the band's leader, Sean Bolan, at Chipping Campden Manor, the home of his friend, the Hon. Philip Smith of the W.H. Smith stationery chain.
"He's a big jazz fan and a good guitar player. I'd never been to a big house like that and felt incredibly nervous. I was so ignorant. Philip looked like Prince Charles and I didn't know whether to bow or curtsey. It was quite a thing at 17, with big hair, and chewing gum I expect, and a pair of drumsticks in the back pocket, to go along to meet a couple of men and join a band."
But join it she did, a tribute to the foresight of trumpeter Sean Bolan. "My drumming style was pop-influenced and quite wrong. But Sean thought I could adapt to the `20s music he was playing. I'd never heard of that style and didn't know it existed."
The band started life calling itself Ain't Misbehavin' before finally settling on The Charleston Chasers, the name Red Nichols gave to one of his early recording groups. Says Debbie, "We would rehearse twice a week in the ballroom of Philip Smith's manor house and got to a point where we could do tea dances and little concerts. But for me, having to reach that standard meant learning a whole new way of drumming, because it's not modern drumming and requires a different drum kit, which I didn't have first of all.
"That came two years later, when I got the full 1920s metal-framed Premier console: a bass drum with a picture of the sun's rays -- very '20s; also wood temple blocks, cowbells, Chinese tom-tom, cymbals, snare drum, and not forgetting the triangle."
With Sean Bolan's encouragement Debbie had soon discovered that here were proper tunes, and lyrics which rhymed, made sense and cheered you up at the same time. "Then as today young people were denied the opportunity to hear anything else but pop and rock. But Sean's record collection is huge, and he gave me a lot of recordings of Annette Hanshaw and various bands to help with the drumming side of things, because the only way you can really learn is to listen to what they did. The trouble is you often can't hear the drums much, though you can get old footage of Sonny Greer and Jo Jones, which helps. I was also given a lovely cassette of Baby Dodds, which is fantastic because there is a lot of woodblocking, and it's pure drums. I got a lot out of that.
"Sean was a great help because he's so knowledgeable. His father was a drummer in an army band, the Grenadier Guards, so Sean knew a bit about drumming and how the sound needs to be. The way you have to hit the choke cymbal to get that chhheee sound, and all the other sounds the way it used to be."
December 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag
P.O. Box 19068, Minneapolis, MN 55419.