Over a hot stove

(Photo © John Watson/jazzcamera.co.uk)

Cooking it all up for his own satisfaction and, he hopes, your delight has been Peter Bacon. Peter discovered his father’s Art Tatum records at an early age and has been a jazz devotee ever since. Other formative experiences were hearing Miles’ In A Silent Way piped over the speakers in a dark basement jazz club at the age of 17 and witnessing Abdullah Ibrahim (then Dollar Brand) playing his first gig back in South Africa in 1970.

Peter was a full-time newspaper journalist for over 20 years before moving into freelance and online journalism, and arts administration. He has been writing about live jazz and reviewing recorded jazz since 1978 and was The Birmingham Post’s jazz reviewer and feature writer from 1994 until 2016.

He truly believes that jazz music is a force for good in the world and can even give us a glimpse of heaven.

He plays tenor saxophone (a Borgani which he loves more than words can say) His music can even give us a glimpse of hell.

He is delighted and honoured to be living near enough to Birmingham, England, and the many amazing (especially young) jazz musicians who have chosen to study, gig and – please! please! – stay there. When he can he writes very complimentary things about them.

This blog has been mainly about jazz in Birmingham and the English Midlands, but there are also reviews of CDs he has been listening to, and news and opinion pieces about whatever else takes his fancy.

Its title is inspired not only by his surname, but also by a New Yorker cartoon which showed a dog sitting at a fancy restaurant table perusing the menu while a waiter stood at his side, pencil poised above pad. The caption read: “I’ll have the dog’s breakfast, please.”

Peter was delighted to have this blog site nominated as one of three contenders for the title of Best Publication in the 2009 Parliamentary Jazz Awards and again in 2015 in the Jazz Media Award category.

Other occasional guest chefs in thejazzbreakfast kitchen have included Tony Dudley-Evans, Steve Tromans, John Watson, Garry Corbett, Laurence Jones, Brian Homer, J J Wheeler, Peter Vacher, John L Walters and Alex Roth.

Peter has now brought down the shutters on this site as far as new content goes, but its considerable archive of posts remains. He does some sub-editing for LondonJazz News but is otherwise happily retired.