Interview with
Pete Isaac
words: Ali Cairns - Good Cornwall Guide. May 2011

Pete was recently featured in the Good Cornwall Guide, read the full interview below....

Tell us about the first ever Jelly Jazz night. How many people were there? Where was it? How was the mixing back then?
It began in January 1993 at The Quay Club in Plymouth (it wasn't called Jelly Jazz, that name was coined the following week!), and kicked off amazingly well. I remember the club being around half full which was a real and fantastic surprise. At that time there weren't any other jazz/funk nights in Devon or Cornwall, at least that I knew of, so it was impossible to know if there would be an audience for it. But it was definitely 'right place, right time', as the second week and beyond saw queues out the building and an incredible atmosphere build. You have to remember that back then, clubbing was so much more part of youth culture than it is today. It was normal to see big queues to get in to many different nights around the city, especially the raves! People were hungry for music and they wanted to dance, and critically, it seemed that peoples minds were very open to hearing music that they'd never heard before. This for myself and Griff was so liberating as nothing was off limits, we could delve into jazz fusion, slower funk/jazz, whatever really and people would just go for it. That open mindedness and honest dancefloor reaction made Jelly such an exciting place to be for the audience and us. We'd regularly go up to London to shops like Soul Jazz or Mr. Bongo and buy as many records as we could afford, bring them back to Plymouth and unleash them at The Quay Club where the most common response from people coming up to the decks was 'oh man, what is this, where do you get it?'! This is of course well before the internet, DJing meant vinyl, there were no downloads and CDs were about but we pretty much ignored them! So seeking out rare/obscure jazz and funk records to spin alongside the contemporary music of the day like Mo Wax, Tongue & Groove, Dorado, Talkin Loud, Acid Jazz etc, was what is was all about, and the combination was a storming success. How was my mixing back then? well pretty good actually! I had spent the previous few years spinning acid house at free parties and raves, so got all the beat mixing skills in the bag then.

Who is your biggest inspiration as a promoter?
Russ Dewbury in Brighton and his incredible and continuing 24 year run with his 'Jazz Rooms' club night. Russ' model of a small yet intense weekly session backed up with a few big live shows a year was the blueprint for Jelly Jazz. The venue that Russ used was actually really small so he did weekly Friday's and Saturday's, and then his huge Jazz Bop events with live bands from around the world. He's put on some amazing people like Terry Callier, Melvin Sparks, Johnny Hammond amongst many many more. I have to give huge props to Russ and thank him for showing us the way!

DJing on the same bill as Norman Jay must've been a treat! Is he as nice in real life as his sets are?
Of course! He first came down around 1995 I think, he wasn't as famous as he is now but his rep was solid and those that knew, KNEW! It was like having rare groove royalty in the place and he always smashed it. He's also a lovely genuine bloke, he invited me to go to Germany with him around then and do a night in the place of Gilles Peterson who couldn't make the show. I flew over with him so got to hang out and hear some of his stories about his life in music, going to New York in the 70's and so on, it was a fabulous trip and I felt utterly honoured and privileged to be asked. So yeah, love the man!

How has Jelly Jazz evolved in terms of music, lighting, location over the years?
Well, musically Jelly has certainly evolved many times and in many ways, yet always retaining a core vibe. No Jelly Jazz night is complete without uptempo funk and jazz, full of percussion, horns, hammond organ and wickedly funky. But over the last 18 years we've kept contemporary and embraced the funkier left-field music that was being produced at any given moment. So that meant Acid Jazz and Hip Hop in the very early days, then it was Trip Hop, then Big Beat, we played some early Drum & Bass etc etc. For the last couple of years, we've really embraced the resurgent Latin vibe. At the end of the day, it's all about quality music for us, and that is a timeless thing. Real music lovers and people that love to dance don't give a monkey's about when something was made, whether it's popular or has a trendy mag telling you it's 'cool'. Lighting wise, we used a lot of Super 8 films in the early days, that was something that no one else was doing. It gave a great retro vibe when others clubs were using lasers and rave visuals. And the artwork of Jelly has always been a passion of mine, I do all that stuff personally and feel that it's been a major part of our success. We were certainly the first club night down here to print flyers on nice thick uncoated stock when everyone else used cheap gloss art card. Back in the early pre-internet days, we'd print weekly flyers and produce quarterly litho printed newsletters that featured articles on labels, charts, reviews and info on the guest DJs and bands coming up. We'd then physically mail them to the Jelly Jazz membership, and I can tell you, collating 12 flyers, a newsletter and stuffing into an envelope, stamping and adding an address label to around 1400 people was quite a task. But people loved it and it was another small aspect of Jelly that made us stand out from the crowd, that extra bit of love. These days it's all done online and it's much easier to do, but I'm not sure it's better than getting mail in the post from something that you're really into.

Best venue?
Has to be the Quay Club in Plymouth, no contest, it ran weekly for 14 years!! Aside from the longevity of the place, we had literally 100's and 100's of totally rocking' nights in the joint. Whether that was with just myself and Griff spinning the tunes or with the multitude of guest DJs and bands that visited, so many of my best clubbing memories are based there. When The Quay Club was rockin', there wasn't anywhere better. Saying that, there's plenty of other venues where we've had incredible nights… The Koola in Newquay was pretty damn special for a few years, The Eden shows we did with Lou Donaldson, The New Mastersounds, Quantic Soul Orchestra and Fertile Ground are right up there and the run of big live shows at The Dance Academy with people like Sharon Jones & The Dapkings, Sugarman 3, Pucho, Norman Jay etc were also high points.

Best crowd ever?
Oh blimey, that's almost impossible to answer. Maybe it was when we had Lou Donaldson backed up by The New Mastersounds at Eden, that one was super special. The vibe was just incredible, a true Blue Note legend with our favourite contemporary soul jazz band in the amazing venue that is Eden. The 1200 or so people that were there was made up of young and old, from all over the South West and beyond and EVERYONE there was 100% connected by the music. One of our most proudest moments for sure.

What is so special about playing to Cornish crowds?
Our first proper Cornish session was at The Koola in Newquay, which started around 2000/2001, can't quite remember! The Koola at that time was putting on lots of great nights and was pretty exciting. Jelly Jazz exploded onto the scene there with massive amounts of people trying to get in. And maybe a little more so than the Plymouth crowd, were totally out to party and party HARD! Our first 3 years there were bonkers. But as Newquay gradually got taken over by stag-do/hen-night hell, things changed there and we eventually pulled out. So Cornish crowds are a little like the guitar amp in Spinal Tap, they go up to 11. Good on em'!

Where do you see yourself in 18 years time?
Well I'll be 61 in 18 years so hopefully I'll have a little house in France, tending my vines for the local co-operative and rocking the local bar once a month! Seriously, who knows, I will most probably be working in graphic design as I really enjoy that alongside music. I kinda doubt I will be DJing, 25 years of night clubs has already left me with a certain level of tinnitus and I really fear that getting worse (wear ear plugs budding DJs!). But I'd love to take Jelly Jazz to 20 though as that would be amazing, and beyond that? If we continue to have people that love what we do and we are still buzzing off music, then why stop?! There's plenty of DJs out there that are pushing 60 and still love the life, as long as the passion is there, age doesn't matter.

All time favourite tune? (I know! Impossible!)
Not impossible at all, it's Reuben Wilson's 'Got to Get Your Own' on Cadet Records. That record epitomises Jelly Jazz for me, it's soooooooooo funky, percussive and features killer Hammond! It's an epic tune that never fails to get a dancefloor rockin'. I've been listening to and playing out the track since week 1 of Jelly and it still feels as fresh and funky as the first time I heard it, which was 1988-89 on a farm in Cornwall. The guitarist of the band I was in at the time played it to me and maybe in doing so laid the seed for Jelly Jazz, so thanks to Pete White there!

Define the Jelly Jazz ethos in 5 words (Or more, or less)
'Funkier music for the funkier people'. That was a tagline we used for many years and sums it up perfectly.