Simon  Spillett
Friday 16th  October 2026

The Trumpet in Bilston, near Wolverhampton, is now renown for a musical association that might seem a world away from jazz (it was once the regular watering hole of Glam Rockers supreme Slade) but its association with Britain's touring jazzmen goes back way before Noddy and the lads ever dreamt of stepping into a platform-soled boot.

That history embraces visiting giants (Don Weller, Peter King et al.) and local heroes alike (the late tenor saxophonist Trevor Emney for one) and, giving the gist of this entreaty even more resonance, even the fabled Tubby Hayes, whose death in 1973 prompted the pub (then under the name The Royal Exchange) to host a fund raiser for the late saxophonist's nearest and dearest.

Looking around the room's walls today, lined (some might even say layered) with a patina of musical history, there's exists a thread of continuity rarely found in the modern day pub, where pastiche and parody seem to govern every successive refurbishment. Not so the Trumpet, in whose atmospheric jumble of pasted posters, faded photographs and cartoon caricatures of parochial performers, you can unravel the timeline of six decades of jazz activity. Not all those on the walls have graced the pub's tiny stage (Ben Webster and Tony Bennett stare out at you) but that's not the point; here, these images seem to say, is a place where the good and great of jazz history still have respect.

These days there are fewer travelling players passing through but every month or so the pub's 'house' trio led by the impressive pianist Tim Amman hosts an imported guest soloist - Alan Barnes, Bruce Adams, even the American saxophonist Greg Abate - for the kind of night that once formed a nation-long spine of jazz presentation.

I've guested many times at the Trumpet in the past twenty years or so, performing with all kinds of players, some still with us, many now gone. If this cast of players has revolved and refreshed down the years, there remains however one consistent factor in the pub's jazz nights; that they attract what might be called the 'hard core' of listeners, those who've been attending these types of gig for an age and who are quick to spot what's working and what's not. There is no room for arty pretence here: the jazz played, like the beer served, makes no fancy claims to depart from the tried and true. If you called either Grass Roots there'd be no counterclaim from Trades Descriptions. Honesty is the watch word.

It's for reasons such as these that I'm always happy to play gigs there. And I'll be returning on Friday October 16th as part of a brief three day jaunt across the Midlands and into Greater Manchester, which I'll discuss in more detail in a further post.

But, if you're around on the 16th, and you might like a spot of jazz played by the old rules, do join us.

Simon Spillett w. Tim Amman Trio