Sixty years of Dundee jazz will be celebrated at the Post Office Bar in Broughty Ferry this week.
Professor Ron Elder, who runs the monthly jazz club at the pub, is reuniting members of the East Coast Jazzmen on Wednesday to celebrate the group’s 60th anniversary.
The band, which plays traditional jazz, formed in 1958.
The group got back together in 1962 to be the house band at The Invercarse Hotel and has continued to perform even since, featuring an ever-rotating cast of musicians.
Professor Elder, 78, a double bassist who was also a founding member of the group that became the Average White Band, joined the Jazzmen in 1962 and continues to perform with the band.
But he is bringing back three of the group’s original members for Wednesday night’s show, Andi and Sheila Lothian and Dave Fimister.
Andi Lothian will perform the Piper of Dundee, a song written by his father for the Palais house band when they performed – and won – at the Scottish Jazz Championships in Glasgow in 1959.
Professor Elder said the evening will see the band’s current incarnation play a set before they are joined by musicians who have played with the band over the past six decades.
He said: “The first half of the evening will be the current line-up of the band.
“In the second half Andy will join us for the Piper of Dundee and then a whole number of people who have played with the band will be coming up for a song or two.”
Professor Elder, a former vice principal and dean of the of the faculty of education and social work at Dundee University, has been running the jazz club for a decade and said it attracts a regular crowd of between 30 and 60 enthusiasts.
Andi Lothian continued to be involved in music throughout the 1960s and as a promoter brought The Beatles to Scotland in 1963.
Credited with coining the phrase “Beatlemania”, he worked with a number of the decade’s most famous acts including Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones and David Bowie.
He then set up the Insights training and development company, which has grown into a global business and is headquartered at Dundee Technology Park.
Wednesday’s concert will begin at 7.45pm and the event will run until 10.30pm.
