Gordon Stretton, Black British Transoceanic Jazz Pioneer

Mike Brocken is senior lecturer in popular music studies at Liverpool Hope University.Jeff Daniels is an independent research scholar who over the past decade has concentrated on the history of Gordon Stretton.

• ForewordChapter One - An Introduction: “The Times Are Always Contained in the Rhythm” (attributed to Quincy Jones)Chapter Two – LiteratureSection One - Survival and Emergence: From Liverpool to LondonChapter Three - Survival: The Liverpool of William MastersChapter Four - Emergence: “Gordon Stretton”Chapter Five - Identification: London (and Jazz) Calling! Dark Town Jingles, Billy Dorsey; “they did a Marconi test in a plane”Chapter Six - Fragments: A Summary of Gordon Stretton’s Career Prior to Paris via Historical Fragments: Advertising, Promotional Materials, Sheet Music, RecordingsSection Two – Affirmation: “And So to Paris”Chapter Seven: AffirmationSection Three - Celebration: The Latin American Adventure; Brazil and ArgentinaChapter Eight - Celebration! Gordon Stretton and Transoceanic JazzChapter Nine - Verification: Audiovisuals and a Home in ArgentinaChapter Ten - Gordon and the Anglo Argentine community in Buenos AiresChapter Eleven – Confirmation: So, What Can We Learn?Appendix 1: TimelinesAppendix 2: Short Biographical Notes on Members of the Jamaican Choral UnionAppendix 3: Brief Pen Pictures of a Few Musicians Who Performed with Gordon StrettonAppendix 4: Email Received from Guy Revell, Royal Air Force Museum, LondonAppendix 5: Discography

A Liverpudlian of mixed Jamaican and Irish ancestry born in 1887, William Masters, who adopted the stage name Gordon Stretton in tribute to an Edwardian music-hall artist, provides a fascinating study of a member of the African diaspora seeking and finding an artistic identity. After working in a troupe of Lancashire clog-dancers as a child, and then connecting with his Jamaican heritage through membership of a touring choir, he learnt to be a jazz drummer under the tutelage of visiting African American musician Billy Dorsey. His career as a drummer and bandleader subsequently took him first to France and then to South America, where he settled in Argentina. He exemplifies the manner in which members of the African diaspora of very varied backgrounds were sucked into currently prestigious North American idioms and used them to develop their own individual modes of expression. Jeff Daniels is Gordon Stretton's great-nephew. His mother Veronica was the fourth daughter of Gordon's brother Henry and Helen née Clemence. He has for many years been collecting information on Gordon from family and contemporary sources in an effort to restore Gordon to his rightful place in the history of Liverpool’s multi-cultural melting pot.