John James Chilton is a British jazz trumpeter and writer. During the 1960s he also worked with pop bands, including The Swinging Blue Jeans

The Swinging Blue Jeans

The Swinging Blue Jeans were a four piece 1960s British Merseybeat band, best known for their hit singles with the HMV label; "Hippy Hippy Shake", the follow-up, Little Richard's "Good Golly Miss Molly", and "You're No Good", a Clint Ballard song that provided a change of pace and furnished the...

 and The Escorts

The Escorts (Liverpool band)

The Escorts were a Merseybeat band formed in October 1962 in Liverpool, England, by three classmates who had just left the Morrison School for Boys in Rose Lane, Allerton — Mike Gregory, Terry Sylvester and John Kinrade...

.

He was born in London to working-class parents (his father was a musical hall comedian) and was evacuated to Northamptonshire, where he began playing the cornet at the age of 12. He switched to trumpet at 17 and after doing national service in the RAF (1950–1952) he formed his own jazz band, playing at Butlins

Butlins

Butlins is a chain of large holiday camps in the United Kingdom. Butlins was founded by Billy Butlin to provide affordable holidays for ordinary British families....

 in Skegness with a troupe that included comedian Dave Allen

Dave Allen (comedian)

David Tynan O'Mahoney , better known as Dave Allen, was an Irish comedian, very popular in Great Britain, Australia, and Canada in the 1960s and 1970s. He also became known in the United States through repeats of his shows on public television. His career had a major resurgence during the late...

.

He worked in Bruce Turner

Bruce Turner

Bruce Turner was an English saxophonist, clarinetist, and bandleader.Born Malcolm Bruce Turner in Saltburn, he learned to play the clarinet as a schoolboy and began playing alto sax while serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II...

's Jump Band from 1958-1963. A movie of their exploits called Living Jazz was made in 1961 by director Jack Gold

Jack Gold

Jack Gold is a British film and television director. He was part of the British Realist Tradition that followed Free Cinema.-Career:...

. Chilton later appeared in Alex Welsh

Alex Welsh

Alex Welsh was a Scottish jazz musician, who played the cornet, trumpet and sang.-Biography:Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Welsh started playing in the teenage 'Leith Silver Band' and gigged with Archie Semple's 'Capital Jazz Band'. After moving to London in the early 1950s, Welsh formed his own band...

's Big Band. He played piano on some pop recordings in the 1960s while also working for Mike Daniels' Big Band. In the late 1960s he formed his own Swing Kings band which backed some leading American jazzmen who toured Britain, including Buck Clayton

Buck Clayton

Buck Clayton was an American jazz trumpet player who was a leading member of Count Basie’s "Old Testament" orchestra and a leader of mainstream-oriented jam session recordings in the 1950s. His principal influence was Louis Armstrong...

, Ben Webster

Ben Webster

Benjamin Francis Webster , a.k.a. "The Brute" or "Frog," was an influential American jazz tenor saxophonist. Webster, born in Kansas City, Missouri, was considered one of the three most important "swing tenors" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young...

, Bill Coleman

Bill Coleman

William Johnson Coleman was a jazz trumpeter from the swing era.He had his musical debut in 1927. Coleman's first recordings were with the Luis Russell orchestra, but all solos on record went to the rising star Henry "Red" Allen. This led to Bill Coleman's departure from the band. By 1935 he...

 and Charlie Shavers

Charlie Shavers

Charles James Shavers , known as Charlie Shavers, was an American swing era jazz trumpet player who played at one time or another with Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Dodds, Jimmy Noone, Sidney Bechet, Midge Williams and Billie Holiday...

. He also recorded The Song of a Road, one of the radio ballads

Radio-ballad

The radio ballad is an audio documentary format created by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, and Charles Parker in 1958. It combines four elements of sound: songs, instrumental music, sound effects, and, most importantly, the recorded voices of those who are the subjects of the documentary...

 of folk singers Ewan MacColl

Ewan MacColl

Ewan MacColl was an English folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. He was married to theatre director Joan Littlewood, and later to American folksinger Peggy Seeger. He collaborated with Littlewood in the theatre and with Seeger in folk music...

 and Peggy Seeger

Peggy Seeger

Margaret "Peggy" Seeger is an American folksinger. She is also well known in Britain, where she lived for more than 30 years with her husband, singer and songwriter Ewan MacColl.- The first American period :...

 in the 1950s for the BBC.

He later worked with Wally Fawkes

Wally Fawkes

Wally Fawkes Wally Fawkes Wally Fawkes (born 1924 in Vancouver, Canada (left in 1931 for England) is a British-Canadian jazz clarinetist and, until recently, a satirical cartoonist...

, also known as the cartoonist 'Trog', and in January 1974 formed John Chilton's Feetwarmers, who began accompanying British jazz singer and writer George Melly

George Melly

Alan George Heywood Melly was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer and lecturer. From 1965 to 1973 he was a film and television critic for The Observer and lectured on art history, with an emphasis on surrealism.-Early life and career:He was born in Liverpool and was educated at Stowe...

. Together they made records and toured the world for nearly 30 years including trips to America, Australia, China and New Zealand. In 1983 and 1984 they had their own BBC television series called Good Time George. They appeared on countless other TV shows, including Parkinson

Parkinson (TV series)

Parkinson is a British television talk show that was presented by Sir Michael Parkinson. It was first shown on the BBC from 1971 to 2004, and on ITV from 2004 to 2007.-Background:...

, The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club

The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club

The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club was a British television variety show produced by Granada Television from 1974 to 1977. It was set in a fictional working men's club in the North of England and was hosted by comedian Colin Crompton. Also regularly featured was comedian Bernard Manning...

, Aspel, This is Your Life

This Is Your Life

This Is Your Life is an American television documentary series broadcast on NBC, originally hosted by its producer, Ralph Edwards from 1952 to 1961. In the show, the host surprises a guest, and proceeds to take them through their life in front of an audience including friends and family.Edwards...

and Pebble Mill at One

Pebble Mill at One

Pebble Mill at One was a popular British lunchtime chat show broadcast live originally on BBC2 before transferring to BBC1. It was produced from the Pebble Mill facilities of BBC Birmingham, and uniquely was hosted from the centre's main reception area rather than a traditional studio...

.

Chilton is also a songwriter and composer and one of his songs, "Give Her A Little Drop More", was used in the 1985 film St Elmo's Fire, sung by the Hollywood Brat Pack including Demi Moore

Demi Moore

Demi Guynes Kutcher , known professionally as Demi Moore, is an American actress. After minor roles in film and a role in the soap opera General Hospital, Moore established her career in films such as St...

 and Rob Lowe

Rob Lowe

Robert Hepler "Rob" Lowe is an American actor. Lowe came to prominence after appearing in films such as The Outsiders, Oxford Blues, About Last Night..., St. Elmo's Fire, and Wayne's World. On television, Lowe is known for his role as Sam Seaborn on The West Wing and his role as Senator Robert...

.

Chilton is one of the few European writers to win a Grammy award for his album notes on Bunny Berigan

Bunny Berigan

Rowland Bernard "Bunny" Berigan was an American jazz trumpeter who rose to fame during the swing era, but whose virtuosity and influence were shortened by a losing battle with alcoholism that ended in his early death at age 33. He composed the jazz instrumentals "Chicken and Waffles" and "Blues"...

 (1983) and was runner-up for a further Grammy award in 2000. In the same year he won the British Jazz Award for 'Writer of the Year'. His Who's Who of Jazz was described by the poet Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin

Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...

 as "one of the essential jazz books". His books on Coleman Hawkins

Coleman Hawkins

Coleman Randolph Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn"...

 and Louis Jordan

Louis Jordan

Louis Thomas Jordan was a pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician, songwriter and bandleader who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", Jordan was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the...

 have both won for Chilton the prestigious American Association for Recorded Sound Collections' Award for Historical Recorded Sound Research. Jazz magazine Down Beat called him "a master of the craft of research". The Jazz Rag recently described Chilton as "one of the world's top jazz writers". For his books on Sidney Bechet

Sidney Bechet

Sidney Bechet was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.He was one of the first important soloists in jazz , and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist...

 and Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

he was given the freedom of New Orleans.

In March 2007, Northway Books published his autobiography, Hot Jazz, Warm Feet. John Chilton continues to play trumpet with the clarinetist Wally Fawkes in London.

Discography

• Nuts (1972)
• Son of Nuts (1973)
• It's George (1974)
• Making Whoopee (1982)
• Best of Live (1995)
• Anything Goes (1996)
• Goodtime George
• The Ultimate Melly, including guest Van Morrison (2006)