Would you have prefered to have been born at another time?

[Paul Clifton]

My dad was a musician all his life and I am very envious of his start point - 1914. He went from a 14 year old stomper and singer in Music Hall to dance halls, jazz clubs, recording work for the BBC; and ended up front man vocalist for Henry Hall band (UK equivalent of Glenn Miller), then led the RAF Bomber Command Big Band in WW2. After the war he played cruise ships (employed Ginger Baker as his drummer for a week but sacked him for being too busy and having no swing) and worked as a session singer in New York backing up Tony Bennett amongst others. He then established his own big band "Leslie Douglas Singers and Swingers" and had a regular stint as house band for Caxton Hall in the West End. In the early seventies he gave up singing and became a drummer himself for Mecca ballrooms then for his own trio. He was still playing every Saturday night into his eighties. To have been part of that Jazz age and the true age of live music as mass entertainment. That would have been awesome.

So I Would go with 1910 ish