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Beer history pubs quotes

Manchester Jazz Pubs, 1950s

“When I lived in Manchester in the 1950s, the pubs were  bursting at the seams on Saturday evenings as fans got their weekly ration of jazz… In the Napoleon Inn, you had to ask the landlady to leave off playing the drums for a few minutes so she could go behind the bar and pull you a pint of Chester’s Fighting Mild.”

Harry Giltrap, CAMRA’s PINT magazine, 1982

2 replies on “Manchester Jazz Pubs, 1950s”

The Cotton City Jazz Band played at the Brunswick pub on Moorgate in Bury twice a week for a few years in the early and mid 50s with the upstairs room windows wide open. Too young to go inside I listened hidden in the doorway of the Salvation Army Citadel across the street, sometimes doing my school homework from the street lights. In those days many poor children could be seen hanging around pubs, waiting for wayward parents leaving, that is why I was cautious, my Mother would have ***** me for creating the wrong impression to the neighbours nearby. This experience started my lifelong interest in jazz and at least one of the Cotton City Band members is still playing in a different jazz mode in the Manchester area. Not being a beer drinker I thing the Brunswick was owned by Wilson’s Brewery of Manchester.

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