IF anyone connected with the music scene in the Greater Manchester area for the past 40 years or so was asked to name a drummer of their acquaintance, they would almost certainly come up with the name Chick Gammidge.Since the halcyon days of the late 1950s, this Bolton-based percussionist has been one of the busiest and most respected players in the business. The reasons are simple. He will tackle anything from small group to big band. Is thoroughly reliable and professional. And he has none of the usual idiosyncrasies associated (often unfairly) with musicians, such as drinking, drug-taking and wenching. Wild man he is not. In fact Chick looks more like the archetypal businessman (which he very much is these days) than a drummer, though the image changes when he picks up the sticks.

Born Raymond Keith Gammidge, he has his mum, Mavis, to thank for his nick-name which has lasted for all his 60 years. In fact no-one I know calls him anything but Chick and we have moved in the same circles for most of our adult lives.

"My mum called me 'her little chick' from day one. My aunties picked it up and always referred to me as Chick. I don't think anyone in my family or among my mates have ever called me anything else. Well, not to my face!"

Music is in Chick's genes. His dad, the late Reg Gammidge, was a tremendously talented trumpet player who for many years played lead with the BBC Northern Variety Orchestra after spells with Harry Roy and Geraldo, two famous names from the big band era. Reg was with the Sherwood Foresters during World War Two and met Mavis, a Channel Islander, during service in Guernsey. Chick was born in Scunthorpe but the family were back in Guernsey when the Germans occupied the Channel Isles and the Gammidge Family were evacuated to the UK and wound up in Bolton.

Chick's early schooling was spent at Clarendon Street and later at Hayward Grammar School. He went into engineering on finishing his education and served a five-year apprenticeship to qualify for a 'proper job.' But music was proving an increasingly potent distraction.

After a brief flirtation with the trumpet, which he fancied but never really mastered, Chick was smitten in his teens by the drumming of Kenny Bowers, who was 'driving' the Phil Foster band at Bolton Palais. Reg Gammidge was a member of the Foster band at the time and his son accompanied him as many times as he could to listen and learn.

"I was fascinated by the sounds of big bands. Still am. Musically, to me at any rate, there's nothing quite as motivating or exciting. I loved it and wanted to be part of it. "At first Kenny wouldn't hear of me buying any drums. He said 'We'll soon find out if you've any idea of time or rhythm' and for my first few lessons he made me play with brushes on a suitcase!!!

"It worked anyway, because he said I had a natural talent and took me on as a pupil."

Chick's first venture into band work involved a trio called The Premiers, who took on weddings and similar family 'dos' at church halls and pubs.

There was no car to carry his gear to and from the gigs and he once suffered the mortification of watching horrified as his snare drum rolled off the back of a bus where he had stowed it and bounced down the street. Luckily the sympathetic conductor rang the bell for the driver to stop and Chick, red-faced but relieved, retrieved his precious drum.

But he was on the way, literally and metaphorically. Pretty soon, Chick Gammidge became a name on the music scene, particularly the part occupied by jazz players, and his link with pianist Roy Powell led to an explosion of work, seven nights regularly every week, at the Golden Ladder Club in Bolton's Bradshawgate, run by former ballroom dancing master Bill Baker and his sons, Tony and Bill junior.

By this time Chick had turned professional. Demands on his time had inevitably led to conflict with his engineering bosses and the decision was more or less made for him. "There was so much work about in those days that I had no hesitation turning pro," Chick recalled.

During the next 20 or so years, when cabaret clubs were busy virtually every night, Chick worked at numerous venues in the Greater Manchester area, alongside some of the very best musicians in the UK, backing internationally-known artistes. For many years he led his own jazz combo, the Keith Ray Sound, with Jeff Ashby (keyboards), Chris Carty (flugel horn), Wilf Nuttall (vibes) and Colin Worth (vocals) and realised his ambition of 'driving' a big band with the East Lancs-based Sounds 18, who are still delighting jazz enthusiasts with their Ellington, Basie and Kenton arrangements.

He was linked for one golden period with Frank Sinatra soundalike Eddie Gregrori, and played in his backing trio at the Black Dog in Belmont Village.

He and his fellow musicians, Eddie Lomax (piano), Bill Livesey (bass), Wilf Nuttall, and Colin Worth had a lucky escape when the Top Storey Club in Bolton's Bank Street burned down in May, 1961, claiming the lives of 19 people.

"It was our night off, otherwise we would have been working and would have certainly been badly injured or killed. We all lost our instruments but at least we were alive."

In fact, that was one of two occasions when Chick lost a kit in a club blaze. Another was destroyed when the Broadway Club in Manchester went up in flames but at least he lived to play another day. During a spell at The Paradise Club, which later became the Green Rooster, in Wigan, Chick met and fell in love with a cabaret singer called Joanna James, down from Barrow in Furness to do a week's cabaret work on the circuit.

They have been married for almost 32 years and have a daughter, Zoe.

Joanna pursued a successful solo career in cabaret in Britain and Europe, and has numerous radio broadcasts to her credit, including six weeks with the BBC Northern Dance Orchestra, which succeeded the NVO.

These days, like most musicians from his era, Chick finds that most of the good work has dried up, though he and Bolton keyboards maestro Guy Porteous have a very 'civilised' week-end gig at the Belfry Hotel in Wilmslow.

And if there is a jazz gig going, anywhere, he'll be there. Jazz drummers never die, they just fall off the backs of buses!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.