Memories of Ventnor Comic Jazz Band

Friday, 22 October 2021 13:50

Pics courtesy Bob Trowbridge. Bob, centre, aged 13 and his childhood friend Jill Holbrook playing Ann Boleyn in 1963.

Bob Trowbridge joined the iconic Ventnor Comic Jazz Band in the early 1970s. Although he was born into a ‘carnival’ family, he had never really played an instrument before — but that wasn’t a requirement of the Jazz Band!

"The rules of Ventnor Comic Jazz Band. There are three rules. The first one is you’re not allowed to drink. The second one is you’re not allowed to practise, and the third rule is ignore rule 1 and 2. OK?

It’s quite simple. If you can’t follow those rules you don’t get in."

He now confesses to being able to play the trumpet 'badly'..."It's all by ear" he says.

Bob’s great uncle dressed up as a Brigand in 1898: "It started as a Mop Brigade and most of the members then, goes back to 1894... were members of the Isle of Wight Rifles, and they dressed up in weird costumes and carried mops instead of rifles...do mock military drills and entertain the crowd.

Rob (right) with Jim ‘Skimbo’ White, who led the band for 50 years.

And in 1911 it suddenly morphed into a musical band, with inverted commas round the musical bit!" "They played weird tunes with weird instruments, so it could be kazoos, home-made instruments... a horn off a gramophone attached to a watering can or something like that, but in amongst it you would have a nucleus of people that could hold a tune and the others just used to make a noise as they went along. It’s anarchy! You know, they would just sit down in the road in the middle of the procession, and...wander off into a pub and then rejoin. Yeah, it hasn’t changed!"

A lot of the Jazz Band had painted faces, some wore masks and some weird and wonderful uniforms, as they do today.

The Ventnor Comic Jazz Band aka The Isle of Wight Camel Corps, at Ventnor Carnival 2006

"It’s whatever you want really. We had a chap turn up in just a pair of ‘y’ fronts one year...We didn’t say anything to him but ...I mean some people turn up and we don’t even know their names. We wondered if he’d been visiting somebody else’s wife the night before and been discovered and had to leap out the window just in his ‘y’ fronts. We didn’t like to ask!"

Bob is currently writing a booklet about the history of the band ‘it's part of our heritage’ he says.

Contribution from Bob Trowbridge

Island Carnival Memories are brought to you by the New Carnival Company

Island Carnival Memories is an Oral History project, capturing people’s stories of carnival in years gone by. If you would like to contribute your own memories, please go to our Facebook page Island Carnival Memories and share. We would love to hear from you! Island Carnival Memories is supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Memories of Ventnor Comic Jazz Band

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