December Features
Continued: Debbie Arthurs
Besides Annette Hanshaw, Debbie was listening to Ruth Etting, Fletcher Henderson, Ellington, Basie, Goodman, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges and Coleman Hawkins. Her musicianship and natural manner on stage encouraged Sean to try out her vocal skills. "I never wanted to sing. I sang around the home, but never had the idea of wanting people to hear me and was never even in a choir. One day at rehearsal, Sean said `You've got a nice speaking voice, how do you fancy having a go at singing?' I said I didn't want to. I just wanted to play the drums."
Finally persuaded, Debbie woodshedded for a while with her collection and made her debut as a band singer. "Oh God, it was hideous, awful. I've got a recording of me singing a song called 'Nothing Does Does Like It Used To Do Do Do'. The phrasing is dreadful. I'm sliding up to the notes in the modern style and slurring the words, whereas Annette Hanshaw's diction is so clear. Now I really try to think about the words and pronounce them properly.
"The more I did the easier it became, and I gained confidence. But it's something you have to work on, because it's quite hard to sing to an audience, and terrifying. When you get nervous you tense, and that's the last thing you need to be if you're trying to put a song across. After a couple of numbers, once the audience is laughing and enjoying it, it's easier. But you're very exposed and there are times when you have to fight to get them on your side.
"I remember one audience in Yorkshire who were expecting a New Orleans band. The front row was about two feet from the stand and one lady had her knitting out and was staring at me from close to. And you're thinking 'Oh Lord, are they going to like us?' But we did our thing and it took us a few numbers to get into it, but they loved it, they absolutely loved it."
Debbie Arthurs can sing a standard with the best of them, but she also breathes new life into lesser-known songs. To hear her light, clear, musical voice, with a hint of the little country girl she once was, give an airing to forgotten delights like "The Clouds Will Soon Roll By" is to realize how steeped in the music of her chosen period she is. "I do another one called 'When The World Is At Rest' and it's a lovely thing to be able to revive a song like that and find that it suits the band."
In the early days, no fewer than five of the ten musicians came from Debbie Arthurs' old school in the picturesque village of Chipping Campden (by coincidence the summer home of Bob Wilber). For a brief period, they even became the Campden Nighthawks. Significantly, Raina Reid, music teacher at the school, joined the band on piano. She subsequently married Sean Bolan and contributed many of the arrangements the band plays to this day.
Raina Reid was classically trained and had dabbled in pop, but the band music of the 1920s was foreign territory. Her first tentative arrangements got the thumbs down from Sean and, like Debbie Arthurs, she had to spend months woodshedding before getting into the groove. High praise has come from British pianist and educator Keith Nichols. "Her arranging syle can't be faulted," he says.
According to Raina Reid, her mentor was Paul Whiteman's arranger Bill Challis. So, are the Chasers a Whiteman clone band? Far from it. Their guitar/banjo player, Martin Wheatley, makes the point that "They don't sound like any band of the period. They have their own sound. It's partly to do with Raina's arranging style, which is unique to her, and partly perhaps in the way they started as an amateur band composed of friends."
With Debbie Arthurs maturing as both singer and drummer the Chasers went from strength to strength, playing throughout Britain and on the Continent. Finally in 2007, after 20 years as the band's chief mainstays, Sean and Raina retired and Arthurs took over the leadership. "A very good move," says Martin Wheatley. "She manages with a light touch."
So, no Goodman "ray" directed icily at an offending musician, or "I'm the boss and if you don't like it you know what you can do" as practiced by Tommy Dorsey. Fortunate in having a bunch of superb instrumentalists to call on, Debbie Arthurs holds the band's performances together with charm and musicianship.
One of the star performers is trumpeter Peter Rudeforth, who has recently been recruited by the veteran British bandleader Chris Barber to replace Pat Halcox, retiring after more than 50 years with Barber. Rudeforth is hoping to continue playing as many Chasers' gigs as possible, and the fans will be hoping he does just that. When the band plays early Ellington selections, he can move with ease from the eerie growl of Bubber Miley to the sweet-sounding melodic statements of Arthur Whetsol. In Rudeforth's own arrangement of "Runnin' Wild," he showcases his exciting skills in the upper register and often gives the first half of Chasers' shows a rousing finale.
December 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag
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