Book a Table in the Moldy Fig - Open for Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch & Dinner

PEGGY DUKE & BENNY

About this event

Member ticket only - £16
Non-members ticket only– £21
Members dining + ticket– £44
Non-members dining + ticket– £49

Hotel Deal - Dinner, Bed & Breakfast plus tickets just £139 per couple


Over 18s only

Doors Open 7pm

1st Set 8.15pm 

Georgina Jackson – vocals/trumpet, Pete Long – clarinet, Nick Dawson – piano, Anthony Kerr – vibes, Dave Chamberlain – bass, Richard Pite – drums.

This show came about, as most good things do, largely by accident! I’ve been organising for the last few years the music for the summer Jazz concert at the RAC country club in Epsom. They do like to have a theme with their jazz concerts, and we’d organised for them concerts of, amongst others, Ray Charles and Louis Armstrong.

Last year, we were trying to come up with something. I’d been going around the theatres with my Benny Goodman show, and Georgina had been broadcasting the Peggy Lee songbook with the BBC big band. I’d always fancied the idea doing a dedicated Benny Goodman small band show, and as Peggy’s first job was with Benny in the 1940’s, there was a link there to easily include Georgina and to take advantage of all the work she’d put in for the Beeb!

I did Business Studies A-Level back in the 1980’s, and Mr. Griffiths, my teacher, said that for marketing purposes, things were always easier to sell in threes- (Frank Dean & Sammy- Good, Assault and Battery-Bad, Sodom & Gomorrah-Bad) so I figured we’d need another big name on the poster. In the 1960’s, Peggy worked with the Great Duke Ellington on the movie "Anatomy Of A Murder”, and even co-wrote the dark but intensely groovy "I’m Gonna Go Fishin’. As one of my great heroes is Duke Ellington, it felt natural to include his big songs in the set and so the show was born.