THE song In A Broken Dream is a curiosity in the momentous career of Sir Roderick David Stewart.
The year is 1969 and Rod, already an established singer, first with Long John Baldry and then The Jeff Beck Group, is heading for the big time.
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He releases his debut solo album, joins the Faces with Ronnie Wood and co — and, of lesser note, he is approached by an obscure Australian band called Python Lee Jackson.
They ask him to lend his smouldering vocals to their blues rocker In A Broken Dream, which he agrees to do — at a price.
Fifty-five years later, I’m talking to Rod and his latest collaborator, piano whizz Jools Holland, about their rollicking salute to the big band era, Swing Fever, when the song crops up in conversation.
Jools says: “One of the reasons why working with Rod means so much to me is that I bought the In A Broken Dream single.
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“I must have been 11 and I played it to death at school,” he adds, recalling how he’d invite his mates to “check this out!”
“Basically, I’ve been listening to Rod for ever, so making an album with him is the best thing ever.”
Taking all this in with a knowing smirk, the flamboyant singer casts his mind back to the recording of In A Broken Dream.
“I did that song for a set of carpets for my car,” Rod reveals.
“I had a Marcos sports car and the mate I shared an apartment with used to work at the place in Highgate where they sold Marcos cars.
‘They’re all perfect’
“He said, ‘I’ve got this band of Australian geezers, would you come and sing with them?’
“I said, ‘All right, but what’s in it for me?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’ve got no money so I’ll give you a new set of carpets — he could swipe them — for your car’. And that’s what happened.”
Who knew when I joined Long John when I was 16, I’d be doing this when I’m 79? F*** off! We had such faith in ourselves to make it.
Sir Rod Stewart
First released in 1970, when the young Jools acquired his copy, In A Broken Dream only became a hit two years later when the re-release reached No3 on the back of Rod’s growing stardom.
Casting his mind back to his early forays into the music business, Rod says: “I always think singers like me were so brave to go for it. Who knew where it was going to end?
“Who knew when I joined Long John when I was 16, I’d be doing this when I’m 79? F*** off! We had such faith in ourselves to make it.”
With that illuminating diversion over, it’s time for Rod and Jools to take a deep dive into their new album, Swing Fever, 13 vibrant big band tracks from the era that foreshadowed rock and roll.
The songs were recorded at Jools’s Helicon Mountain studio in Greenwich with his accomplished Rhythm And Blues Orchestra.
Rod picks up the story: “I’d never been to the studio before and it is a small premises.
“For a three-piece band it’s fine, but when you’ve got 18 musicians in the room, woah!”
As it turned out, Rod found the whole experience “amazing”.
He says: “Unlike the way I’d been making records, Jools rehearses the band for a day and the next day I’d go and record three songs with them.
“And they’d all be perfect and they’d all sound live.
“Apart from a couple of handclaps, the vocal was the only overdub.”
Jools found the sessions exhilarating too, and remembers his pep talk to the band.
He says: “I told them, ‘Let’s keep it really straight ahead.
“We’ve got to make people dance, to make them feel the joy.
“Cut out anything that’s too abstract or jazzy and keep it powerful’.
“So that’s what we did and once I saw Rod smiling a cheerful smile, I knew we were on the right track.”
I guess we should think of Jools as following in the footsteps of the big band leaders of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties who were the stars of their day.
I mention “King Of Swing” Louis Prima and Rod chips in with, “Duke Ellington”, while Jools lists “Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and Lionel Hampton”.
These giants of their craft knew how to get a dance party started.
Jools once chatted to the late, great Rolling Stones drummer and jazz aficionado Charlie Watts about one of those larger-than-life characters.
“Charlie told me he went to see Lionel Hampton play at Hammersmith in the late Fifties and you could smell the weed in the theatre.
‘No synthetic stuff’
“After the fourth song, [British jazz musician] Johnny Dankworth stood up and shouted, ‘When are you going to play some jazz?’ because he thought it was too much like rock and roll.
“And that’s exactly what Swing Fever is all about.
“It’s like rock and roll but it’s swinging, a bit more ‘Oi! Oi! Oi!’ than it is genteel.”
The album kicks off in spirited style with the epic five-minute Lullaby Of Broadway.
“When we did that, our drummer was actually playing the riff to Rock Around The Clock,” says Rod, referring to the 1954 hit by Bill Haley & His Comets regarded as the first rock and roll chart topper.
You also hear “fabulous piano playing” from Jools and, in keeping with the 1930s recording, tap dancers.
Jools says: “I’ve always liked that song but I had never thought of doing it because it’s quite a handful.
“The original is out of the Busby Berkeley movie Gold Diggers Of 1935.
“It’s very unusual because, in the middle of the song, they filmed and recorded tap dancers from underneath glass so you could see the bottoms of their feet.”
While accepting that his band is “pretty adaptable”, Jools imagined they’d have to conjure up “something synthetic” to replicate the sound.
“But Rod said, ‘I don’t want any synthetic stuff’.
“Next thing, he invited me over to his house where he had a huge gang of tap dancers spread out in an arc.”
Where did you rustle up this troupe from? I ask Rod.
“I phoned up an agency and told them I needed a dozen tap dancers,” he replies.
“I said, ‘As long as they know what they’re doing, tell them to come with their taps and we’ll mic the floor’. And that’s exactly what we did.”
That story tells you a lot about the close attention to detail which has gone into Swing Fever right through to the final track, a lilting Tennessee Waltz.
Jools says: “It is genuinely done by both of us with a complete love of what we’re doing.”
And Rod enthuses: “There’s not one song that I don’t like — and we’ve played the album over and over again.”
The process of choosing tracks proved democratic and without disagreements.
Rod picked the old murder ballad Frankie And Johnny, recast here in Swing style of course, and a song Jools was unfamiliar with but is now one of his favourites, Almost Like Being In Love.
Jools selected Ain’t Misbehavin’, a standard associated with jazz greats Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong, as well as the bluesy Night Train.
But Rod has one of the greatest popular voices of our age. It’s like an arrow straight to your heart.
Jools Holland
The latter, along with Sentimental Journey, feeds into both artists’ love of anything to do with trains, whether it’s their model railway layouts or the real thing.
Jools says: “We like trains and the rhythm of a train suits my piano playing, but even if we hadn’t been train enthusiasts, I think these songs would have found their way on to the record.”
Speaking generally about all Swing Fever’s tracks, many of them dusted down from the song sheets of the Jazz Age, he continues: “Once you have Rod’s vocals, they’re magnified into music people can connect with in the modern world.
“If we were playing this music and somebody else was singing, I don’t think people would get it as easily.
“But Rod has one of the greatest popular voices of our age.
“It’s like an arrow straight to your heart.”
‘Black culture’
As for the singer himself, he says: “I think we owe a lot to American culture.
“I know I do, especially black culture.
“All those great singers.”
One song, however, has a history that is much closer to home, as Jools explains . . .
“Love Is The Sweetest Thing is by Ray Noble, who was an English big band leader who also wrote The Very Thought Of You.
“For our version, the old Jamaican fella in our group Michael ‘Bammi’ Rose is playing sax which gives it a gentle ska push.”
“Noble was such a success that he went to America where he settled and became one of the big songwriters over there.”
Talking to Rod and Jools, you can’t help marvelling at their deep knowledge of the roots of popular music.
I ask both about their introduction to bands, singers and songs growing up and to what extent they were inspired.
Rod says: “The very earliest stuff I heard was Al Jolson.
“My brother used to get down on his knees and do a very good impersonation of him at Christmas.
“I was also taken to a couple of Jolson films.
“When I was ten or 11, I asked for a station for my train set but my dad bought me an old Spanish guitar instead.
“He said, ‘I think there’s some money in this for you.’
“In fact, I was always hearing music because of my family.
“They started playing Bill Haley & His Comets and Little Richard — and that was it for me.
“It just took off from there and I started listening to American folk music and just about anything.”
Rod took to buying records at Collet’s in New Oxford Street.
“It was just up the road from the Dominion Theatre and they used to do all the folk and jazz stuff.”
By the time he was 16, he was performing with Long John Baldry, a period that left him with this unforgettable moment.
He recalls: “Before we went to a gig, I went round to Long John’s house.
“It’s the time he appeared nude — but at least I was used to looking at knobs because I played football and we all got changed in the dressing room.
“Anyway, cutting a long story short, Long John had the Muddy Waters Live At Newport album and I asked if I could borrow it.
“He said, ‘No, Mick and Keith have got it’, and I said, ‘Well, I’ll borrow it after they’ve had it’. It’s a classic album.”
With that nugget, he turns to Jools and becomes the interviewer.
‘Skiffle group’
“So when did you start playing the piano?” he asks him.
“Both my mum and my Uncle Dave could play boogie-woogie but mostly I learned it off of my uncle,” replies Jools.
“My parents could hear that I had a gift so I got sent to Miss Brown, the piano teacher, who wanted me to do Dance Of The Pixies, but I preferred Uncle Dave’s music.
“He had a skiffle group called The Planets but it didn’t work out for him so he became a lorry driver.”
Rod continues to question his new collaborator by saying: “And where did you buy your records?”
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Jools answers: “I went to Dobell’s [in Charing Cross Road].
“I remember going with an old record token after my dad gave me ten bob [shillings] to go on the bus.
“I must have been about ten.
“I took a pile of boogie-woogie records into the booth.
“I think you were just meant to listen to one track and then decide.
“I bought Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson.”
With that, it’s time to leave the entertaining company of Rod and Jools and I can’t help thinking that it has been an education.
And that their album, Swing Fever, is a masterclass.
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