Jazz breaking news: Jamie Cullum Pays Poignant Tribute To Amy Winehouse

Cullum had come up as a singer with Winehouse, touring with her and getting to know her, even at one stage during the performance imitating her broad London accent as she told him in no uncertain terms to “stop playing that stuff, and do your own thing”. The occasion was the launch of new Pizza Express initiative The Big Audition With Jamie Cullum and the diminutive one was appearing with his regular band which featured a drummer Winehouse often worked with, Brad Webb. It was especially fitting that this was on Dean Street in a club just yards away from her favourite late night Soho spot, the louche Jazz After Dark on nearby Greek Street. Pizza Express Jazz Club was also the place that Cullum got his big break where record executives from Universal and Sony sat on either side of the stage ready to sign the young singer at the start of his career on the back of promise shown by his album Pointless Nostalgic.

A full house was in attendance to hear the singer, who has been touring the major European jazz festival circuit recently with standout performances, according to reports, at Vienne and Juan les Pins in particular. With a screen running live Tweets to Cullum’s side allowing fans to suggest songs for him to sing during the set, it was nonetheless a familiar song choice to kick the set off in his up-and-at ’em version of Rihanna’s ‘Don’t Stop The Music’ from his last album The Pursuit.

Frankly the Tweeting thing was a bit of a gimmick as most of the songs sung feature regularly in Cullum shows, although he cheekily responded to one fan’s suggestion of the Kings of Leon’s ‘Sex On Fire’ with a brief burst and later self deprecatingly made a joke of forgetting the words to the White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’.

Cullum knows how to do modest, and he spoke at the beginning of his early days playing Pizza Express restaurants and clubs around London and before that in Swindon in his native Wiltshire. Indeed the evening was a bit of a nostalgia trip as in the audience was the former manager of the famed Dean Street venue Peter Wallis, who during his time in the mid-noughties apart from Cullum promoted early appearances by the likes of Norah Jones and Gywneth Herbert under his benevolent eye. Herbert was even there among a throng of singers who had turned out, sitting at the back of the club, resplendent in a lovely green dress, and gaining a name check from Jamie on ‘Wind Cries Mary’ at the end.

Also in the club, and quite remarkably so was the founder of the Pizza Express chain itself, jazz entrepreneur Peter Boizot MBE, now in his eighties and retired, who spoke charmingly of his memories of the club, then a much smaller space, and of its early days putting on the likes of Bud Freeman, a time when revered Melody Maker writer Max Jones and his wife Betty, he told us, often came down to the club, as fixtures on the colourful jazz scene of the day that Boizot did a great deal to encourage.

The purpose of the evening was to promote the new initiative which aims to encourage fresh new jazz talent with a prize of £5,000 and a chance to play in the club. Musicians can enter online and upload examples of their music with qualifying rounds later in the year leading to a high profile final. Cullum certainly got the ball rolling with characteristic aplomb. – Stephen Graham

For more go to www.pizzaexpress.com/thebigaudition