Smilin' the Blues Away

The young Julian Holland had little interest in school, preferring instead to play the piano whenever he could. It was a working-class upbringing and money was tight. He would have a bath once a week at his Nan’s house, saved every penny to buy records, and playtime was spent scampering around the bombsites that still scarred southeast London.

“When I was about eight, I heard my uncle playing a boogie woogie version of St. Louis Blues and I was immediately obsessed,” he beams. “Literally the chaos of the universe became ordered and I knew what I had to do. He showed me what he was doing and I drove everybody mad playing that one piece of music for a year. Our neighbours must have hated me. My father could see that I had a gift for playing piano. Although my parents didn’t have any money, they managed to send me to some lessons. I didn’t really stick with it because they were trying to teach me The Dance of the Pixies and I’d already started playing boogie, which seemed much more exciting.

“I’d been given this record token, so my father told me to goto a jazz shop in Soho called Dobells. I got on a 53 bus wearing my shorts, long socks, open sandals, cap and cardigan and went skipping off through the streets of Soho past the doorways of beckoning sin. I went in and said, “I’d like to buy a boogie woogie record.” They gave me a pile of records that I took into the listening booth and I played every one. The shop was about to close, so I selected an LP with Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Jimmy Yancey, who were the godfathers of boogie woogie. I took it home and got a bewildering sense of being lifted up and excited.”

Whether he’s talking about vintage cars, his 100ft model railway or the new series of Later… With Jools Holland, he exudes a Tiggerish enthusiasm that’s impossible to resist. He credits his mother, June, for his positive outlook on life.

In his 2007 autobiography, Barefaced Lies and Boogie Woogie Boasts, he recalls that she was once flung off the back of a motorbike. The first thought that came into her head was that she was happy she might get a day off work following the accident.

“I think the joy of music is that you are able to communicate your feelings without using the blunt instruments that we call words,” he grins. “Whether it’s Beethoven, boogie woogie, the blues or the Beatles, all music is about feeling. When you play it has an effect on people, so you see them getting excited. Not many artforms have that. If you go round an art gallery, listen to poetry, or watch a film – marvelous, beautiful things that they are – they don’t have the physical effect that music has. You’re sort of mystified by music. It’s an enigma. Music lifts you up, so I think it keeps you young.

“If you really want to get into the roots of boogie woogie, it’s a phrase that denotes a dance or some sort of amorous behaviour. Then Pinetop Smith made it a dance sensation that swept the nation in 1928. Boogie is coming out of the heart a bit more than the head, and because it’s the grandfather of rock’n’roll, it’s got that same excitement to it. Whether it’s my uncle playing it in my Nan’s front room in Greenwich in 1965, a little shed in Memphis, or here in Boisdale, boogie woogie lifts you up and makes you want to dance. It’s old but sexy – like me!”

Now 65, he is no longer the skinny young man who somehow shifted from pop stardom with the band, Squeeze, to TV presenting for Channel 4’s The Tube before eventually launching the BBC’s flagship music show, Later… With Jools Holland in 1992.

With his winning combination of ready charm, casual wit and chutzpah, he has been a constant presence on our screens for more than 40 years, which perhaps partly explains why in certain circles he is sometimes not taken as seriously as he should be as a musician. Having performed with everyone from Paul McCartney and George Harrison through to Robert Plant and Bono, it’s probably easier to list the legendary names he hasn’t worked with than those he has.

When it comes to the question of the greatest rock’n’roll piano players, some people will rightly mention Little Richard or Fats Domino, Dr John or Jerry Lee Lewis. Whichever names are proposed, every last one of them has to reckon with the unmistakable talents of Jools Holland, who somehow manages to blur the boundaries between boogie woogie, rock’n’roll, rhythm and blues and pretty much every other genre you can think of.

“That’s the best thing that anybody can say, because any musician wants to sound like themselves. What I do is a mash-up of all these different musical genres. One of Squeeze’s first hits was a punk record where I played this little piano figure that I’d learned off this old stride pianist who used to play like Fats Waller in a pub in Greenwich. A reviewer said, “With these riffs, Jools Holland has invented punk piano.” I was so touched, but I’d nicked it off Fats Waller and transposed it onto a punk record. Whether you’re the greatest classical composer or the most modern rapper, nothing comes from nothing. You’ve got to be inspired by the things that have come before you.