03.04/2018 -

Ron Smith died in hospital last night after a long illness. He was the original banjoist in Annie's Saints and Sinners. He had to stop playing about two years ago when he found he couldn't lift the banjo let alone play it.

Annie Cousins

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In September 2016 Ron wrote to me -

Mart Rodgers' - broadcast on Radio Humberside was most interesting and it triggered several memories - Twelfth Street Rag in particular as this was the tune (Pee Wee Hunt's recording) that was the start of my abiding love of our kind of music. I first heard it in the late 1940s and thought that I had discovered "the latest" in music, being completely unaware that this was a revival, and while my mates were listening  to Guy Mitchell, Frankie Laine,  Doris Day etc., I was searching around for venues where I might be able to hear more of 'Trad Jazz' as it was called. Another memory Mart's words triggered was of 'The Zenith Six' which was my favourite band in the Manchester jazz scene of the early 1950s.

It was many years later ( I was 60 by then!) before I dared to venture into playing an instrument -  the banjo being my long held dream, and I never thought that I would ever play alongside Mart, and Dave Berry who has also commented on the Radio Humberside broadcast.

It was good to see you Fred, at Macclesfield Treacle Market, but you had merged into the crowd before I could say hello.

Ron Smith. 

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Photo supplied by Sam Wood