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London Jazz Café - August 15, 2005
The last show which Scotty did on this tour was at a very neat club in the Camden section of London called the Jazz Café. This show was on August 15, 2005. We had two days to recover from Pete's birthday party before that one came off. Again, we were accompanied by several friends.....Jacques Vroom from Dallas, Donnie McGuire from Russellville, AL, Ron Garson from London, Jim Roy from Boston and Bucky and Gigi Barrett from Nashville.
Several of our friends and guests gathered and visited prior to the show in the dressing room. The dressing room was upstairs, so there are some shots of the Stage from above. Scotty had to walk down some metal stairs that were pretty open behind the stage, and he was a little nervous about that, but he made it without a hitch.
After sound check, the band were served dinner before the show. I went out and up the street with Donnie McGuire and Sally Humphreys to a Mexican restaurant. This is quite an area! There are all kinds of markets and restaurants in the area, and it is full of young people all buying, eating, running around and generally having a great time.
Sally is a friend of Ron Woods (Rolling Stones guitarist and our friend also) and in addition to acting on the English stage, television and Radio, runs a production Company in London. We had not met her before, but she was at the sound check and we all were just charmed by her (especially the guys). She spent the entire evening with us. The three of us had dinner and then went back to the Jazz Café (you can read more about her here).
After we got back to the café, there was a man there who had a guitar that he had bought off the internet. It was claimed to have been Scotty's ES-295 that had been used on most of the Sun sessions with Elvis except "Mystery Train". Sadly, I had to inform the man that this was just a guitar that Scotty had signed years before for a man who had a little music museum across from the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. Scotty had signed it at our office with the man promising him that it would not be displayed as Scotty's guitar, but the man died, someone else bought the guitar, immediately sold it to another man saying that it was Scotty's Sun session guitar, then it was sold once more to this poor guy in London who thought it really was! He payed far too much for it. Jim Roy from the website previously notified a company in San Francisco that had originally purchased it on E-Bay and were advertising it as Scotty's online that it was not the Sun Sessions guitar. There is just no way to keep crooked people from trying to cheat others. This man had a beautiful Guitar, but it was not the valuable one he thought he had. Scotty is always sad to see this happen.
We had an email from a fan who had been at an earlier show where he had taken a new girlfriend because they were both Scotty fans, and they had since become engaged. They were to be at the show, so I had some flowers to give them during my little speech, but they did not show up, so we had some leftover flowers.
I had a great time talking to the fans from the stage, and got the privilege once more of introducing "our guys" to the audience. Also this time I had the extra added attraction of introducing Bucky Barrett. He and his wife Gigi (they were married just a few days before in Stockholm with Scotty, the band, our friend Vidar Thomt, and me looking on proudly) had made the whole trip with us and he played on every show as Scotty's special guest. I have known Bucky for quite a few years, and never get tired of listening to him. He's best known as Roy Orbison's last lead guitarist but he's also one of the finest jazz instrumentalists in Nashville. So the audience at the Jazz Café got an extra helping of talent, with our English band, Scotty, and Bucky.
The show went really well, and I think Scotty played the best he did for any show in the tour. Of course his English band was with him, and he has so much love for and confidence in this band that he does better with them than any other group. They show him such respect and love both on and off stage that they are just like members of our family. And I have traveled with them on so many gigs now that I'm just one of the boys... or maybe the band mom!
Scotty claims that he won't be going overseas again to play, and all
of us will try to talk him out of that, but if he does not play there
again, he surely went out on a high note....it was a really good show,
he played extremely well, the guys were on top of their game, the
audience was really great and a good time was had by all!
Gail Pollock
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