Mary Stewart, Lead Curator of Oral History, writes:

The key mission of the British Library Oral History team is to gather as many stories about life in the UK as possible – to create a tapestry of experiences, reflections and insights for use by researchers today and in the future. But why would someone agree to record their life story? In a recent recorded discussion at an oral history symposium, celebrated artist Hew Locke explains why he accepted our invitation:

Hester Westley in conversation with Hew Locke at the NLS Symposium. Photo: Camille Johnston.

Hew Locke on recording his life story

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Although Locke’s recording with Hester Westley for the extensive Artists’ Lives collection is closed in his lifetime, he sums up in a phrase the aims of the Library’s life story programme: we capture the unofficial histories of people and of moments.

A central pillar of the Library’s work in oral history is National Life Stories (NLS), the oral history fieldwork charity established in 1987 by Paul Thompson and Asa Briggs, supported by founding Trustee Jennifer Wingate. The in-depth biographical interview – the ‘life story’ – is the core methodology of National Life Stories.

But how do we attempt to accomplish the gargantuan task of recording life stories across the UK? How do we conduct a life story, and how does this methodology contrast with other oral history techniques? What value can a life story collection bring to wider policy debates? What specific challenges do we face in archiving life story interviews?

To explore these and related questions, a permanent, open-access (free to all) edition of the leading journal Oral History presents for the first time a comprehensive volume of articles interrogating the life story methodology. The special issue of the journal offers many insights and features numerous embedded links to audio files, which we are confident will be essential reading for scholars and practitioners – whether you are just setting out in oral history or have decades of experience.

This special edition of Oral History arises from the papers and discussions from National Life Stories’ International Symposium on the Life Story in summer 2023. The journal was edited by Mary Stewart (NLS Director) and Rob Perks (NLS Trustee and former Director), and the publication features contributions from many members of the National Life Stories team, in conjunction with internationally acclaimed oral historians and colleagues who discuss various aspects of oral history and life story practice.

Alongside the full transcript of the conversation between Hew and Hester which introduced this blog, the highlights include:

• Canadian scholar Alexander Freund’s thoughtful and provocative paper on the nature of the life story interview, considering who it is for, how it captures a ‘life’, some of the ethical implications particular to the method, and the re-use of the material now and in the future.
• Indira Chowdhury’s (founder of the Oral History Association of India) reflections on institutional histories and life stories in the context of post-independence India. NLS Project Director Niamh Dillon then adds her own experience of conducting numerous institutional histories for NLS.
• Alistair Thomson’s (Monash University, Melbourne) retrospective assessment of his career researching using the life story. Weaving in examples of his work in the UK and Australia he articulates the value in the long-form interview and gives some practical tips on how we can approach the cataloguing and re-use of material.
• Donald A Ritchie’s (Historian Emeritus of the United States Senate) comprehensive review of publications on the life story, which contextualises the debates in the journal.
• Elizabeth Wright (NLS Interviewer), Madeline White (NLS Deputy Director) and Wendy Rickard’s (a frequent collaborator with NLS and the British Library) insights on the practice of life story interviewing, including how we frame questions, what we can gain from conducting life story interviews with younger people, interviewing over time and how life stories compare with other types of interview.

In addition to these articles, three panel discussions from the Symposium are printed in full:

• An animated session focusing on the spectre of new technology for the reuse, analysis and ethics of archived life stories, which brought together experts in the field. NLS Archivist Charlie Morgan introduces the key issues and is joined by academics Julianne Nyhan (Technical University Darmstadt and University College London) and Doug Boyd (Louie B Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries), in a discussion chaired by NLS Trustee Andrew Flinn (University College London).
• For the past fifteen years NLS has made great strides in capturing oral histories of science, technology and the environment. Paul Merchant (NLS Oral Historian and Researcher) outlined five observations from the 50 interviews he conducted for An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-war Britain - a project funded by Arcadia. NLS Trustee Jon Agar (University College London) then chaired a wide-ranging panel discussion on the value of life stories of the environment with Paul, Sally Horrocks (NLS Senior Academic Advisor for Science and Technology) and Fiona Harvey (environment editor at The Guardian).
• The final part of the Symposium brought together all of the international panellists with Rob Perks and Mary Stewart, chaired by Don Ritchie, to speak to the future of the life story. The discussion draws together themes addressed in the entire issue of the journal and responds to reflections on the life story method contributed by Symposium attendees.

Thanks to the speakers and authors, the editors, designers and proof reader of Oral History, the Symposium attendees, the NLS team and Trustees, British Library events team, and – of course – to all our past and current interviewees. This special edition of Oral History contains something of interest for anyone involved in the study and collection of life stories. Visit the Oral History Society website to download the journal. 

A key figure of British jazz, Coleridge Goode worked with the likes of Stéphane Grappelli, Django Reinhardt and Ray Ellington. He performed frequently and his double bass playing graced countless London jazz clubs. He kept diaries in which he noted his bookings, at venues like the Marquee and Ronnie Scott’s – names redolent of incandescent evenings and brilliant sounds.

Music permeated Goode’s early life in Jamaica, where he was born in 1914. His father had a studious interest in classical music, was a choirmaster and played the organ, whilst his mother was a chorister; he was named after the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Goode became an accomplished violinist. When he moved to Glasgow to study engineering, he led the university orchestra’s second violins.

As a student, he also came across a new kind of music – music with a rhythmic swing. He heard it on the radio, visited the city’s dance halls and collected records by Count Basie and Duke Ellington. He started to contemplate a career in jazz but, being classically trained, found that he couldn’t switch styles on the violin. He duly took up the double bass which, to the vexation of his landlady, he practised for eight hours a day. ‘Other studies eventually got left far behind’, he wrote. ‘But I felt I had to make sure I was capable of mastering this instrument.’

He began working as a musician in Glasgow, then moved to London in 1942, and quickly got to know the city’s clubs. One of these was the Panama, a venue he played at with Johnny Claes and his band. When the Panama closed for the evening, he would go on to another job, at the Slip In near Regent Street. Goode recalled the Panama’s clientele of ‘well-heeled people who lived around Knightsbridge’. In contrast, the Slip In was ‘a haunt of gangster types’, its name fittingly hinting at the clandestine. He fondly remembered the Caribbean Club in Piccadilly, where he started working in 1944. This was ‘small and compact’ and ‘a genuinely mixed club in terms of race and class.’

These quotations are from Goode’s autobiography Bass Lines: A Life in Jazz. Its illuminating details of people, places and events help to contextualise the appointments jotted down in his diaries. His diary from 1958 is on display at the British Library in the exhibition Beyond the Bassline. Its pages, open on the week commencing Sunday the sixth of July, show the names of venues along with other particulars, like time of performance and time of rehearsal. The Star Club, the Marquee and the Flamingo are amongst the bookings entered that week.

Coleridge Goode’s diary for 1958, open to show the days for 6-12 July © British Library Board. Used with kind permission from Coleridge Goode’s family.

One of Goode’s major affiliations was with saxophonist Joe Harriott. It was at the Star Club on Soho’s Wardour Street where the two first met; this was probably in March 1958. ‘Sitting in’ on performances was commonplace at the club, and one evening Harriott dropped in and played alongside Goode, pianist Alan Clare and drummer Bobby Orr. That evening, Harriott asked Goode to join the band he was forming. They would go on to collaborate for years in the Joe Harriott Quintet, first playing bebop, and later exploring Harriott’s pioneering concept of ‘free form’ music.

The Marquee was originally located below a cinema on Oxford Street. The space was a ballroom before it was a jazz club, and its interior incorporated a striped, canopy-like design. In 1958, Harry Pendleton, who headed up the National Jazz Federation, started programming events at the Marquee. The Joe Harriott Quintet would rehearse at the venue and performed there regularly on Saturdays. Goode recalled that Harriott secured this slot for his group ‘even before the band had been unveiled… or the personnel had been fixed’ – such was his standing. The Marquee Club – as it became under the auspices of Pendleton – moved to Wardour Street in 1964.

The Flamingo opened in 1952 below a restaurant on Coventry Street. An upmarket venue with plush surroundings, it hosted the big names of British jazz, and counted Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan amongst its star American guests. The Flamingo moved to Wardour Street in 1957. The Don Rendell Jazz Six and the Tony Kinsey Quintet were two of the many bands who played at the Wardour Street venue; the Joe Harriott Quintet were regulars there on Sunday afternoons.

Whilst Coleridge Goode’s diaries are illuminated by these histories, they are intrinsically informative, too. They chronicle the engagements of their keeper and, as compendia, record venues which shaped the history of British jazz. They also possess an evocative and an emotive quality, written in Goode’s hand, intertwined with his life on the scene.

Quotations in this article are taken from ‘Bass Lines: A Life in Jazz’ by Coleridge Goode and Roger Cotterrell. The British Library Sound Archive holds a collection of Coleridge Goode’s diaries and a significant collection of his recordings.

Coleridge Goode’s diary for 1958 is on display in the British Library exhibition Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music, which runs to 26 August 2024.

Blog written by Jonathan Benaim, researcher for the exhibition Beyond the Bassline.