When Georgie Fame referred to as his previous pal Zoot Cash up on stage to sing at Ronnie Scott’s Membership one autumn evening in London in 2022 – “Come on Zoot, I can’t do that with out you” – they tore the home down.
It was a shifting second for each performers, as they joined forces with the Man Barker Large Band to sing Papa’s Acquired a Model New Bag, that introduced again recollections of the times when Zoot Cash’s Large Roll Band vied for reputation with Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames on the peak of the British R&B increase.
Cash, who has died aged 82, was a charismatic character, a soulful singer and a very good Hammond organist. He was a lot cherished by the mods who flocked to his band’s exhibits at London golf equipment such because the Flamingo within the swinging 60s. Members of the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the Animals had been additionally amongst his best followers.
The son of Italian mother and father, Mary (nee Repitti) and Oscar Cash, George was born in Bournemouth,
the place his father labored as a waiter. At Portchester faculty he discovered to play the piano and french horn and sang within the choir. Nonetheless, it was not lengthy earlier than he found rock’n’roll, Jerry Lee Lewis and Ray Charles, and commenced singing and taking part in in native golf equipment. His stage identify was impressed by the American jazz saxophonist Zoot Sims.
On leaving faculty Cash educated to be an optician however misplaced his job when he saved turning up late for work after nights gigging together with his Large Roll Band, shaped in 1961. By 1963 the Large Rollers featured Andy Summers on guitar, Nick Newall on saxophone and Colin Allen on drums. Cash additionally switched from piano to the funkier sounding Hammond organ.
When noticed by Alexis Korner’s supervisor, Cash was invited to play with Alexis in Blues Included and moved to London. The Large Rollers rejoined him and commenced to play repeatedly on the Flamingo, the place they changed Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames because the resident band in 1964. Summers recalled: “Fraught with unemployment and starvation, we had been dwelling on borrowed time and the dole queue. However once we changed Georgie Fame on the Flamingo we had been ecstatic.”
The Rollers, with a brand new member, the singer and bassist Paul Williams, started touring extensively and launched a debut single, The Uncle Willie (1964), adopted by an album, It Ought to’ve Been Me (1965). On stage, they’d play a well-liked James Brown medley. Cash recalled the Flamingo as “a very groovy place … We cherished taking part in to black American servicemen that got here to the membership and had been accustomed to the soul and R&B music we had been attempting to play. For them, it was like being at house. We additionally backed visiting American blues males like John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson. They had been stunned we had been so good.”
One other former US serviceman and musician, the younger Jimi Hendrix, arrived at Cash’s home in Fulham, west London, in September 1966 escorted by his British supervisor, Chas Chandler, previously of the Animals. Cash had an Italian-made acoustic guitar mendacity round which Jimi immediately picked up and performed.
The Large Rollers packed out golf equipment equivalent to Klooks Kleek in West Hampstead, the place they recorded their reside album Zoot! in Might 1966. Cash cherished to entertain the crowds together with his extrovert showmanship, pulling followers’ sneakers off whereas singing Barefootin’ and dropping his trousers on stage; but it surely was troublesome to crack the all essential singles charts and his solely hit was Large Time Operator, which received to No 25 in 1966.
Nonetheless Cash was at all times within the music press gossip columns. One evening on the Olympia in Paris, the Large Rollers carried out their James Brown medley. It prompted a sensation with younger French followers, however didn’t go down nicely with the star of the present – James Brown.
A 12 months later R&B was on the wane, fashions had modified and the Large Roll Band broke up to get replaced by Dantalian’s Chariot, a band extra in tune with the Summer season of Love. A Melody Maker headline in August 1967 proclaimed “Zoot drops the trouser dropping – for psychedelia”. Though tracks like Madman Working By the Fields proved spectacular when performed reside on the Speakeasy Membership with a psychedelic mild present, the brand new course was troublesome to keep up and the band broke up in April 1968.
Thereafter Zoot divided his time between varied teams and artists, notably Eric Burdon’s New Animals, GRIMMS, Kevin Coyne and Kevin Ayers. He additionally turned to appearing and had display roles in a bunch of TV exhibits, and movies together with Breaking Glass (1980), Absolute Inexperienced persons (1986) and Mona Lisa (1986), and developed a profession as a document producer and songwriter.
He launched his remaining solo album, The E book of Life … I’ve Learn It, in 2016, and the next 12 months Repertoire Information launched Large Time Operator, a celebratory four-CD field set of reside Large Roll Band recordings.
Cash married Ronni (Veronica) McCann in 1967. She died from dementia in 2017 and in recent times he had suffered from ill-health himself.
He’s survived by a daughter and two sons.
