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Eric Clarke & the pioneer generation: Clayton Goodwin on the potentially "star" musician who refused to be a star and to whom, even today, all the big names of the UK music industry defer. Eighty-year-old Eric Clarke personifies a generation that was, in itself, a "star" and that does not deserve to be forgotten.

Article Excerpt
Eric Clarke has become part of the social landscape of the New Cross district of southeast London in which he has lived for the greater part of the 42 years in which he has been in England. He is no different to any other 80-year-old Jamaican going about their business on the streets of the city, and could be overlooked easily as just "one of the crowd". If you did overlook him, however, you would be wrong, because Eric is a living legend in the world of music. He led one of the most polished, and best, big bands; he was compared favourably as a trumpeter to the legendary Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, and is still respected by those musicians whom we, ourselves, respect.

Clarke belongs to that "lost generation" of (primarily) Jamaicans who created a vibrant mixture of jazz, R&B, soul, mento and a score of other rhythms and music-forms in the l960s, setting the scene for their more recognised successors, but who are now generally unknown to wider society. They are generally forgotten now--whereas other, inferior musicians are remembered--because, in spite of their fame and the thousands of fans whom they entertained at live performances in a host of venues from Masonic black-tie dinner-dances in august venues to the pubs of inner-city London, they made no records, or the few which they did make were in sub-standard back-street studios.

By playing mainly within their own community instead of chic, trendy West End night-clubs, they...

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