JIMMY LEE – BIOGRAPHY PLUS

This Boy has led some sort of life!
A country boy, born into a working class family in a remote farming community in Sussex, England. He had a start in life few would have survived......Taken into care at 3yrs old, by the time he was 9 he'd had 10 homes and 11 schools.

His has been a life of music with a distinctive voice and style which was later to find a home during his travels in the America. He took his first steps towards a music career in the embryonic London folk scene, existing by day in a Cricklewood squat and emerging by night alongside the passionate new wave of British acoustic aristocracy - Alex Campbell, Roy Harper, Jerry Lochran , Cliff Aungier , Johnny Silvo , Derek Brimstone, Ralph McTell, and Ron Geesin Wizz Jones et al . In that hallowed company he cut his performing teeth.

His early life was hard by any standards..... At 14 he ran away to join the Royal Navy and was sent , with 2000 other boys, to the notorious HMS Ganges training establishment at Shotley Mill where a harsh regime held sway . He had the misfortune to be placed under the care of two particularly brutal and drunken instructors whose continual bullying and abuse proved too much for this emerging free spirit, he fought back and deserted on numerous occasions. Among his many punishments, he suffered 'cuts', a particularly brutal form of naval punishment.... The next 6 yrs passed with regular naval detentions, exhausting punishments, solitary confinements, ending with a twelve month sentence in the infamous HMP Corradina Malta. He was subsequently dismissed from the service and returned to civilian life.

His Father was ' called up ' in 1942 and was to serve the next 4 years in one of the most bitter campaigns of WW2 as part of the ' Forgotten Army' , in the jungles of Northern Burma..... He would not return to England until Sept 1946.

During that long absence his Mother, destitute, and shunned by her family, struggling to survive with her four children, placed her youngest son on a train... She was never to see him again....... (Jimmy was to search for, and find him 42 yrs later) Jimmy and his elder brother, suffering from neglect and malnutrition, were taken into ' care '.

As an infant, dominated by hardship and loneliness, music became a critical stone in the man. When singing in school and church choirs, he discovered that displays of emotion were not seen as a sign of weakness so music and his abiding faith were to become, and still are, his salvation.

Following on from his days in London, Jimmy had to flee to the West of Ireland to escape a high court warrant, where he remained until the ' Troubles' began.; Back in the day, Bernadette Devlin was recruiting for the emerging operational IRA, and Jim's failure to read the danger signs was placed under suspicion by the Republican powerbrokers.
His casual, confident,' don't give a damn ' attitude, dubious UK service background and ability to look after himself raised a few local eyebrows, and he was summarily set up for a fall. A late night pull from the local Guardia and a quiet word in the wrong ear and Jim, by the skin of his teeth, was on the next boat back to England

A successful business followed with jet set salaries, champagne lifer style, birds, booze and flash lodgings were all part of the game. Predictably, he hated it, and after a while got out. Money was no substitute for music!

So, from the early seventies it was the road, the road and even more road, and Jimmy's unique interpretation of folk and country were being blended together into what we now know as ' Americana '. Typically he was hounded out of some folk clubs as a ' country music heretic ' and was only slightly less welcome in the country venues , where his music was reviled as '' effing folk/country--- get off ! '' Remember Dylan's '' Judas anyone?''... Yep , there was no pleasing anyone back then , his lack of support for his vision wasn't too good for the bank balance either spawned Jimmy's favoured expression ' I could get everything I owned into a suit case, only I didn't have one!

The discovery of the ' 'White Mansions' album hit him ' like a hammer blow ' and gave him the focus he'd always wanted but never found. Creative meetings with Derek Green (head of A&M), Glynn Johns (Beatles and Stones producer) and Mansions writer Paul Kennerley (Emmylou's other half) followed and led to Jim and his band taking the album to the States as a complete show, where he toured it for a year , ending with a four month stint in Nashville. His first single from the project 'Confederate Money' hit the ground running in the southern States and then crashed the Billboard Charts. Unfortunately Jim's Nashville publishers, holding a six figure cheque for his first royalties, disappeared overnight and Jim's career was stalled right out of the blocks, Shell-shocked Jim did one more US gig, but his heart was gone. He left for England where his final gig was topping the bill at Wembley in Mervin Conn's fabled Country Music Festival.

One last show and then he was gone......and for the second time in his life Jim turned his back on a promising music career and now sought success and recognition in the commercial world - one with a difference - making life fun!

He bought a forest near his home town and 'sat in it'. Over the years he and his family were to use there considerable skills to create a small but successful sporting estate , entertaining 'Blue chip' companies with riding, shooting and fishing .But he missed the music . The old shoot lodge was the perfect music venue so he started the Blue Coconut Music Club. We never advertised but the list of audience and performers grew steadily by word of mouth.... It's a wonderful place, the rules are quite simple ... You Play.... We Listen.... A unique warm and friendly place developed and you really were transported to that special place that is within all of us but so difficult to find... and ANYONE who was in the least ' vexatious to the spirit' was unceremoniously shown ' the door'. Quietly, and without fuss, over the last 15 years the Blue coconut club has provided music and magic for all playing host to such luminaries as Tom Paxton, Ralph McTell, The Pretty Things, Richard O'Brien (rocky horror) ,Carolyn Hester (Dylan's muse and harmony partner) and many others. Matched with the world's widest range of patrons, Lords, Ladies, Villains, Judges. Tramps, The Floyd, Genesis, the good the great and the damned--- they all have the Blue Coconut Club in common.

And now…. Round three……The Edge of Chaos Orchestra, a brilliant concept, which was formed in 2009 to play his very own style of music, the fulfilment of long held ambition, and the result of a ' driven tough old nut' that is now easier to make cry than a new born baby. The time has now come to understand and appreciate where the emotion in this man and his music comes from.........!