INTERVIEW
HOUSE OF THE BLACK GARDENIA
2020 HAS BEEN A STRANGE YEAR FOR ALL OF US, BUT WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THAT ONE OF THE BEST ALBUMS EMERGING FROM TYNESIDE THIS YEAR WOULD BE AN AUTHENTIC-SOUNDING COLLECTION OF VIPER JAZZ CLASSICS. LEE FISHER SPOKE TO ELISE AND NEIL HOPPER TO FIND OUT HOW THE HELL IT ALL HAPPENED One of the more curious Tyneside demi-mondes is that of the swing-dance enthusiast. Only ever spoken of in hushed tones, these fleet-footed, gin-soaked boys and girls, shuffling and shagging their way round neglected backrooms and ballrooms, have their own styles, codes and sounds. It’s from this netherworld that The House Of The Black Gardenia were born. Or, more prosaically, Neil Hopper found a double bass in a junk shop. “I had to learn how to play the thing after I’d been asked to join Lady
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Koo & Her Kooky Kitchen – there’s nothing like being asked to play a gig to sharpen your practising regime,” Neil explains. Neil and Elise Hopper (respectively bassist/sousaphonist and vocalist/washboardist of The House Of The Black Gardenia) started thinking about forming the band when they were running the highly popular Swung Eight swing-dance night at World HQ. “I guess because we’d been doing swing dance DJing a lot, we’d been listening to loads and loads of this music, from the first half of the
