Cool Cat Blues: The Life and Times of Georgie Fame, as told to and adapted by Ben Sidran

Cool Cat Blues: The Life and Times of Georgie Fame
Ben Sidran
160 Pages
ISBN: 9781800509283
Equinox Publishing
2026

British singer and keyboardist Georgie Fame's long career reaches back to the pre-Beatles "swinging London" of the early '60s. After decades with small groups and big bands as well as steady sideman work, this book presents his story as told to senior jazz historian and longtime colleague Ben Sidran.

Born Clive Powell in Lancashire in 1943, Fame grew up with a piano-playing, mill-working dad, hearing songs like "This Ole House" at Sunday School dances and entering talent competitions. After losing his mother to cancer at nine, he was soon playing piano and harmonica and singing in local bands.

At 16 he headed for London and joined impresario Larry Parnes, who preferred his artists to have punchy stage names. Reginald Smith became Marty Wilde and Ronald Wycherley became Billy Fury. Fame found himself playing all-nighters, meeting American servicemen who steered him toward Booker T. Jones and Eddie Jefferson. Discovering Lambert, Hendricks & Ross's Sing A Song of Basie (Verve Music Group, 1958) was another turning point, with Jon Hendricks' vocalese front and center. Fame loved jazz.

From his first album Rhythm and Blues at the Flamingo (1964) through hits like "Yeh Yeh" and "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde," Fame was often torn between his desire to play jazz and audiences' appetite for danceable goodtime music. The book traces collaborations with Alan Price and Zoot Money, big band work with Harry South and later Guy Barker, and years as a keyboard sideman with Van Morrison and Bill Wyman. There is tragedy too: Fame's second wife Nico, the former Marchioness of Londonderry, took her own life in 1993. His sons Tristan and James Powell followed him into music and often appeared in his band in later years.

Later in life Fame assembled a full big band pad with arrangements by the likes of Tubby Hayes and Chico O'Farrill. He made good use of it, sending charts to promoters—especially in Sweden, where he lived for a time—and simply showing up to sing and front the band. He notes that he was never short of quality work, a rare claim in the jazz world.

Fame worked steadily until the late 2010s and has now retired with serious health challenges. The story is told largely in Fame's own words. The subtitle, "as told to and adapted by Ben Sidran," is accurate. Sidran, usually a perceptive contextualizer through his Talking Jazz -An Oral History (Self Produced, 2007) series, keeps his own voice mostly out of the way. That would be a flaw in an objective biography, but that isn't the aim here. There isn't even a discography, which would have been useful.

Is the book worth having? Yes. Fame's warmth comes through, the stories reach back to an ever more distant past, and the twists of his unusual life are preserved. It's good to have this material gathered and set down. The book reads as a personal, comradely tale of a full life well lived.

Listeners new to Fame's jazz work might start with "Bluesology" from The Two Faces Of Fame (Go Jazz Records, 1967) (with the Harry South Big Band) and "(Jumpin' With) Symphony Sid" from Poet In New York (Go Jazz Records, 2000). Fame is one of the few singers to truly master vocalese—singing lyrics to improvised horn solos—and he shines in that setting. Chico O'Farrill's arrangement of "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde," heard on 2004's Georgie Fame and the Birthday Big Band in full Count Basie style, is also a standout.

This volume is part of Equinox Publishing's Popular Music History series, overseen by British author, broadcaster, historian and occasional bassist Alyn Shipton. The series now includes about 40 books covering topics from Lee Morgan to Lionel Richie. Readers interested in this volume might also look for Peter Jones' This Is Bop: Jon Hendricks And The Art Of Vocal Jazz (2020) and This Is Hip: The Life of Mark Murphy (2018).