Archer Street is a short street in the Soho district of Central London that connects Rupert Street with Great Windmill Street. It became famous as a meeting place for jazz and dance band musicians from the 1920s and into the 1950s.
History
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The earliest reference (as "Arch Street") is found in the parish rate books of 1675. By the 1740s the name had changed to Archer Street.[1] Originally (until the 1830s) it was connected to Rupert Street only by a narrow, right-angled passage.[2]
At the Red Lion pub (built in 1793) Karl Marx and Frederick Engels lectured on Communism and first presented what was to become the outline of the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848.[3] The pub closed in 2005. The Windmill Theatre, best known for its nude tableaux vivants, opened in 1931 and lasted until 1964.[4] It was housed in a block of buildings that also includes the Apollo and Lyric theatres, whose stage doors open onto Archer Street.
Number 6 dates from the mid-18th century. The facades of Number 7 and Number 16 are circa 1800.[2] 9-11 Archer Street - Archer Street Chambers - was built in 1882/3 as dwellings for artisans: a plaque marks its renovation, completed in 1981.[5] Number 12 was Giovanni Defendi's delicatessen in the 1880s, housed the Italia Conti drama school from 1945 to 1972, and opened as the Bocca di Lupo restaurant in 2009. The London Orchestral Association building (1912, by architects Henry Percy Adams and Charles Holden) spans Numbers 13 and 14.[6] The relief Euterpe (1912) by Charles James Pibworth (1878-1958) is on its facade.
Jazz
[edit]From the early 1920s - especially on Mondays - jazz and dance band musicians began to gather on Archer Street to socialise, to look for engagements, and to collect pay from previous engagements.[7] It was, according to Jim Godbolt, "both social club and labour exchange, and the latter function was exploited by the 'fixers' for bands ranging from trios to thirty-strong orchestras for TV extravaganzas".[8]
Musicians were attracted to Archer Street by the numerous local drinking establishments nearby, and by its proximity to theatres and clubs where work could be found. But it has also been suggested that the exclusive nature of the London Orchestral Association on Archer Street (the LOA merged with the Musician's Union in 1921),[9] and its initial reluctance to admit members of the jazz and dance bands that emerged in the 1920s, led to these musicians being forced to meet outside or nearby. The Archer Street gathering served as a resource for hiring musicians to meet the "Charleston craze" of the 1920s, and later for the big bands playing the dance halls, society balls and cruise ships. It also helped maintain a sense of solidarity among the many musicians who found themselves unemployed during the 1930s depression.[10]
In 1948 British bebop musicians founded Club Eleven at 41 Great Windmill Street, a minute's walk away from Archer Street.[11] The Harmony Inn, in the middle of Archer Street, was opened in 1950 by Czech émigré George Siptak. It was an all-night greasy-spoon cafe, and was frequented by jazz musicians and criminals.[12] Ronnie Scott, Peter King, Benny Green, Derek Humble, Tony Crombie and Jimmy Deuchar were among the musicians who conceived the idea of forming a nine piece co-operative band there in the early 1950s - a pivotal moment in British jazz.[13]
By the end of the 1950s the number of musicians gathering in Archer Street had declined drastically.[14] Even so, in 1961 the London police force felt it necessary to order a crack-down on musicians gathering on Archer Street on Mondays between 2pm and 5pm.[15] Gordon Thompson has described how the street continued to have a role to play in the early days of British rock during the 1960s.[16]
'Archer Street jazz' was sometimes used as a derogatory term when jazz split into the revivalist and modernist camps after the war, intended to refer to a scorned middle ground between the two: jazz played for commercial gain rather than artistic authenticity or conviction.[17]
Film location
[edit]The BBC documentary The Street, first broadcast in 1985, compiled clips of Archer Street and many of its characters, taken from 8mm film shot in the 1950s by the trumpeter and pianist Denis Rose.[18][19]
The 1949 film Murder at the Windmill was the first film to show footage inside the Windmill Theatre. There is also footage of Archer Street at the stage door.[20]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ John Rocque. A Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, and Borough of Southwark (1746)
- ^ a b Dan Cruickshank. Soho (2020). pp. 308-10
- ^ Melissa Tyler. Soho at Work (2019), p. 18
- ^ "The Windmill Theatre, Great Windmill Street, London, W.1". Arthur Lloyd. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
- ^ Plate 139: Artisans' Dwellings, Survey of London
- ^ Basil Tschaikov. The Music Goes Round and Around (2009)
- ^ Lennie Bush. 'Oral History of Jazz in Britain', British Library Sound Archive (1992)
- ^ Jim Godbolt. A History of Jazz in Britain, 1950-1970 (1989), pp. 268-270
- ^ Williamson, John; Cloonan, Martin. Players' work time: a history of the British Musicians' Union, 1893-2013 (2016)
- ^ Bill Kirkpatrick. 'Archer Street', The Musician, June 1993
- ^ Ray Kinsella. The Bebop Scene in London's Soho, 1945-1950 (2022), pp. 38-39
- ^ Christopher Hallam. White Drug Cultures and Regulation in London, 1916–1960 (2018), p. 193
- ^ 'Cafe Confessional: Harmony Inn and the Archer Street connection', Classic Cafes
- ^ Benny Green. 'Archer Street', Topic, August 1962
- ^ Melody Maker, 27th May 1961
- ^ Gordon Thompson. 'The foundations of British rock: Archer Street', extracted from Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out (2008)
- ^ Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople. The Cambridge History of 20th Century Music (2004), p. 317
- ^ Philip Spaight (producer). The Street: Denis Rose's Films of Archer Street, BBC Television
- ^ The Street, broadcast 9 December 1985 on BBC2. BBC Programme Index
- ^ 'Murder at the Windmill', The Monthly Film Bulletin, 16 (181), p. 115, January 1949