Peter Eden

Jackson Sloan

"Rent Party started around about 1979/80. The idea of the band started to fuse in my head. I was sort of collecting albums and records and I used to go to places that you used to go to like Pete Eden's in London Road and the Record Museum in Warrior Square. I often used to see you and your brother in there buying Doo Wop and I was buying Jump Rhythm and Blues and Big Band Swing stuff, and I was really interested in forming that type of band that covered sort of Swing and Jump Blues and Rhythm and Blues from early 40's and 50's sound. So it would have been around about 1980. The first single was with Dave Hatfield, who was the bass player in the Kursaal Flyers. He had a label called Waterfront and he approached us and we recorded for him . The first single was an original track called Rent Party. The flip side being a track called Letter Of Love. Two original tracks actually. The band Rent Party started off with myself. I knew Gary Plumley, the tenor saxophone player who was well known in the Essex area, and I asked him if he had any students and he told me about John Wilmott. I met John Wilmott and had a bass player and we did not have a guitarist or drums. We sort of fell upon people. There was a drummer who used to live in a newsagents. His Mother said he plays drums so I told him about the band and he joined. Then I had a couple of old school friends, Keith Harris on guitar and Kevin Elson on bass come along. We had a couple of other guitarists."