Dave Laing 

Brian Innes obituary

Percussionist and Goon-ish comic of the Temperance Seven who became a successful partwork publisher
  
  

Brian Innes, with cymbal and drumsticks, sporting a trademark cigar in the Temperance Seven
Brian Innes, with cymbal and drumsticks, chomping a trademark cigar in the Temperance Seven. Photograph: David Redfern/Redferns Photograph: David Redfern/Redferns

Part offshoot of the trad jazz movement and part offspring of the British surrealism of the Goons and the Alberts, the Temperance Seven were unlikely chart-toppers in 1961 with their 1920s dance band pastiche You're Driving Me Crazy. Brian Innes, who has died aged 86, was co-founder, percussionist and spokesperson for the band, before following a successful career as a publisher and author.

The success of You're Driving Me Crazy and subsequent chart hits ushered in an intensive period of concert and cabaret appearances, broadcasts and films for the Temperance Seven, including It's Trad Dad! (1962), Richard Lester's first feature film. The band took part in the 1961 Royal Variety Performance and made their West End debut in The Bed Sitting Room by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus, which ran for six weeks at the Mermaid theatre in 1963.

Innes was a key figure in projecting the group's fogeyish and comic image. The trumpeter Cephas Howard was the de facto musical director, and the vocalist Paul McDowell was the focus of attention on stage, but Innes did most to create the Temperance Seven brand. At each show he came to the front of the stage, puffing on a cigar, to provide the Goonish introductions to each member and to the group's alleged origins, at the Pasadena Cocoa Rooms in Balls Pond Road in 1904. The mythology of that north London street was so ingrained that a 30th anniversary event was held in 1991 in an antiques shop there owned by a Temperance Seven fan.

Innes was born in Croydon, south London, the son of Stanley, a civil servant, and Florence, a housewife, both of whom were keen amateur thespians. He also took to the stage, gaining theatrical skills that he would incorporate into his work with the Temperance Seven. After attending Whitgift school in Croydon, he studied chemistry at King's College London.

Graduating in 1949, he worked for several years in a laboratory before deciding that his true vocation was as an artist. He took classes at the Chelsea College of Art, where the Temperance Seven was born when a colleague of Innes was asked to provide a band for a party to be held at new year 1956. Although Innes had learned the piano as a child, he now played the washboard, graduating to what he called his Grand Jazz Percussion Kit. The group expanded in size to nine members, which Innes described as always being "one over the eight".

Over the next five years, the band steadily increased in popularity (Princess Margaret became a fan), moving on from college dances to society events and jazz clubs. In his entertaining memoir, A Long Way from Pasadena (2001), Innes recalled that a turning point was reached when the multi-instrumentalist and recording expert John RT Davies joined in 1958: "We changed from a weird and wonderful eccentricity into increasingly polished musicianship."

The big break came when the Temperance Seven appeared on the radar of George Martin, recording manager of the Goons. Martin took them into Abbey Road studios and, in March 1961, EMI's Parlophone label issued You're Driving Me Crazy, featuring McDowell's elegant vocals. After the single was featured on the BBC television show Juke Box Jury, it entered the charts, reaching No 1 in late May. The next single, Pasadena (which became the group's signature tune) was almost as successful, getting to No 4, although the third and fourth discs of 1961, Hard Hearted Hannah and The Charleston, barely scraped into the top 30.

Innes left the Temperance Seven at the end of 1965, and the group dissolved in 1968. It has subsequently re-formed on several occasions and the current line-up is led by Chris Buckley.

For most of his musical career, Innes held down a series of day jobs in publishing, eventually becoming a founding partner of Orbis Publishing, which became a market leader in partworks in the 1970s and 1980s. As a pianist, he led the Orbis All-Stars, an informal group that played at industry events.

After Orbis was sold to Robert Maxwell's Pergamon Press, Innes moved to the south of France where he poured out a stream of books, mostly in the true crime genre. For a number of years he chaired the non-fiction Dagger award committee of the Crime Writers' Association. He died at his home in France, and, on his instructions, was cremated to the strains of Benny Goodman's rendition of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.

Innes was married and divorced twice. He is survived by his sons, Simon, Jamey and Andrew, four grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

• Brian Stanley Innes, musician, publisher and author, born 4 May 1928; died 14 July 2014

 

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