The Happy End

Naming themselves after Brecht and Weill's play, The Happy End was also a socialist band that began in 1983 as a six-piece thing and ended up as twenty-one piece in the tradition of big bands. The band was started in 1983 by Mat Fox with the slogan "making politics swing". Inspired by Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, it swiftly became a large, loose and freewheeling ensemble. Despite the instrumental line-up (saxes and brass, plus vibes and accordion - up to 24 musicians at its largest - ), it was never a jazz big band as such. But it drew on that tradition - occasionally satrically, always humourously. In its more organised moments it could echo Basie or Ellington's classic hard-swinging punch, in its more disorganised ones Sun Ra's high-energy and joyful cacophony. Source material was drawn from the political left: the songs of Bertolt Brecht (with both Kurt Weill and Hans Eisler), Maoist anthems, Chartist protest songs, Cuban rhumbas, miners' anthems, South African township jazz, Irish jigs. The essence of The Happy End was in delivering this music with humour and energy rather than dourness or overt preaching. Many early gigs were part of the mid-eighties anti-Thatcher movements, the Miners' Strike and the GLC (Greater London Council) included; the band was also involved in the burgeoning alternative comedy circuit, especially at Roland Muldoon's Hackney Empire. At its best, a Happy End gig was a genuinely celebratory experience. In a spirit of musical collectivism, the band contained less-experienced players alongside more polished ones, and combined skilful arrangements with organised chaos so that both could thrive. The musicians were also evenly balanced between men and women. (Belonging to a big band that wasn't for once all-male should have made life on the road more civilized, but often didn't.) The original vocalist was Sarah Jane Morris, a singer with an extraordinary contralto range who left the band in 1988 to work with The Communards. Since then she has developed a successful solo career in the jazz/soul area. The Happy End was lucky enough to find another singer with a wonderfully powerful and expressive voice, Bernadette Keeffe, who was with the band for its last eight years.