words emily cheng

Dixieland jazz keeps Hong Kong’s gran’daddy pub smiling.

“It’s a pretty sad scene,” Colin says of jazz in Hong Kong, “Nobody wants to have a jazz band every night a week, or even once a week.” Yet Colin and the China Coast Jazzmen have never been without a job: they boast a full-time residency at Ned Kelly’s Last Stand and a contract with Ocean Park since 1997.

In fact, Colin and the China Coast Jazzmen never have to advertise. On getting gigs, he says with a grin, “I don’t really look. [People] just call me up.” However, despite all the requests to perform, Colin says Ned Kelly’s is their “first priority”. And when on the rare occasion they can’t play there, such as when they were giving their all at the Sacramento Jazz Festival in the USA, the Macau Jazz Festival (where they got the crowd to march around the Macau Tower with umbrellas), a replacement band is called in. It’s not easy though. Dixieland is a fun form of jazz and Colin stresses that finding musicians who have mastered the bouncy tunes is difficult. “It’s not just about the style,” he says. “You’ve gotta have a feel for it from the heart, you know.”

It is that dedication and enjoyment of the music that has kept the band playing for the past 15 years. “It’s not unusual seeing us doing three jobs in one day. Though I have tried to cut back because I’m not a young chicken anymore,” Colin says with a laugh. Although none of the band members are ‘young chickens’, age hasn’t held them back from performing every night, five nights a week, for a decade and a half. Berry, a well-respected trumpet player fondly referred to as the ‘youngest member of the band’ (he is turning 81 this year), is always the first one to arrive at the pub to prepare for the show, after practising two to three hours a day. “He’s very dedicated. It’s his life…his mind is so alert for someone of that age,” Colin tells me with admiration. When asked what keeps him playing every night, Berry gives an atypical answer for a musician: “I don’t like to take money from my children… it’s about family,” he says.

That is a comment Colin echoes describing the band’s relationship with Ned Kelly’s. “When you work at Ned Kelly’s, it’s like working with family,” he says. “It’s a hard thing if you ever want to leave – I don’t particularly want to. I think one day, as Hong Kong develops, this place will be demolished, not because of a lack of business, but because of the properties and the developers.” According to Colin, his band and Ned Kelly’s have survived for three main reasons: playing Dixieland jazz, offering a comedic show, and not setting a cover charge. “We’re not a club, we are a pub, we have no cover charge – never been that way – people come in here to buy a pint and sit down and enjoy themselves,” he points out.

But the most important drawcard that keeps the crowds coming is the band that plays Dixieland. “A lot of jazz,” says Colin, “especially the artistic form of jazz, has a very limited audience. We do a bit of Latino, bebop, jazz rock, but 85% is Dixieland… The thing about Dixieland jazz is that we use a lot of songs locals know – When the Saints Go Marching In, Sweet Georgia Brown, What a Wonderful World – but other [Dixieland] standards, like Muskrat Ramble and Tiger Rag, the Europeans would know. We try to hit something for everyone.”

It is this ability to satisfy any cross section of the audience that Colin believes to be crucial. When asked what motivates him to play each night, his voice lowers and he starts to get serious. Although the answer may seem slightly clichéd, he is sincere when he says it is seeing the happiness on people’s faces. “It’s about allowing someone to forget their troubles for at least one hour… apart from playing jazz, you have to be able to entertain, that’s my job – that’s why we’ve survived so long – that’s why my hair has gone white.” As I look around the pub and see a wide smile on the face of each member of the audience: the source of his satisfaction (and snowy hair) is obvious.