July's Birmingham Jazz Festival, which includes free concerts in the Black Country, will be the last after funding cuts forcing founder Jim Simpson to underwrite the event by taking out a loan.
00:00Jim Simpson from Big Bear at the Barton Arms, and it's Blues at the Bartons the first night, and are you enjoying the night, it's been a success?
00:10It was rocking, people were dancing, the band were rocking, everybody loved it, it's a great room, the problem tonight was, Stan and Ollie didn't come.
00:20Yes, everyone knows Barton Arms has got the Laurel and Hardy connection, and you're looking forward to every Friday night, yeah?
00:27Yeah, great, it's a terrific room, if this room was on Broad Street, it would be the centre of the universe.
00:34Yeah, it's got the acoustics, them Victorians seemed to know what they were doing, didn't they?
00:38Oh yeah, yeah, and the guys are really, they're good folks, they know about it.
00:42Good stuff, and we've got the Jazz Festival coming up as well.
00:45In July 1837, it's our 41st consecutive year, yeah, just seems like 75.
00:52And you need to, you were saying you need to break even with this one, we've got that.
00:56I've had to take out a big loan to do this, I mean, we've lost Scotland City Council last year and this year, that was May, last year, May this year, bloody, we've lost Westside Bid this year, we're 45,000 pounds down, what we need.
01:11But how many people did you get last year?
01:13Nearly 88,000, we did 239 performances, 230 on free admission, in 120 venues, and in fact nearly 88,000 people.
