The Griffin Report: Jazz and Blues Festival director on why this year's event could be the last
JIM SIMPSON has been the mainstay of Birmingham’s Jazz and Blues Festival for over 40 years, bringing into the city’s bars, restaurants and hotels 88,000 people every year. But the loss of major sponsors, including Birmingham City Council, has brought the event to the brink of extinction. JON GRIFFIN asked Jim why he fears this year’s festival could be its last.
It’s a cultural feast which has pumped untold millions into the West Midlands economy for more than 40 years – but Jim Simpson fears this year’s Birmingham’s Jazz and Blues Festival could be the last…
The 87-year-old Festival Director – the man who discovered Black Sabbath and an irrepressible mainstay of the city’s music scene for more than 60 years – pulls no punches over the future of the biggest free jazz and blues festival in the UK.
“We have to make this one work financially otherwise almost certainly I don’t see us doing it again. What other event brings 88,000 people in? But I am unable to clock up further debt to do it another year.
“If we don’t get to break even at this year’s festival, I doubt there will be another one after this year.”
The finances surrounding the future of the city’s biggest annual festival are stark. In 2024, the festival received total funding of more than £44,000, comprising £10,000 from Sandwell Council, £15,000 from Westside BID, £1,000 from the Musicians Union, £3,432 from a GoFundMe campaign and a private donation of £15,000.
But this year’s budget has been more than halved to just £20,800 following loss of funds from the Westside BID while Birmingham City Council’s financial difficulties have seen that funding source dry up after many years of cash support.
Against that difficult backdrop, Jim – awarded an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Birmingham for his services to the city’s music scene – is understandably keen to carry on banging the drum for an event which brings in tens of thousands of jazz and blues fans to the city from far and wide.
The distinguished roll-call of musical acts appearing at the festival over the years tells its own story, from Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, BB King and the Count Basie Orchestra to the Blues Brothers Band, Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames and the Spencer Davis Group.
“Last year, we raised £41,000 which was short of our target of £50,000 but we still put on the biggest festival event ever held in this city. It was our 40th year, we presented 239 performances with 230 of them free in 120 venues and we were just a few people short of 88,000 people attending.
“It will happen this year – there will be at least 160 performances with 95 per cent of them free admission. We have got some new clients on board – such as Selfridges – and it is going to be a great festival but if we don’t break even, this is it.”
Jim is now appealing to the city’s business community to back this year’s event. “We are asking companies to consider enrolling as a Friend of the Festival and making a one-off donation of £500.
“It means a business donates £500 and gets acknowledged in all the press and the festival programme as a Friend of the Festival.” Organisers say the support of 50 companies with each contributing £500 would ensure the continued existence of the event into the future.
Jim is also seeking sponsors for a variety of events associated with the festival, from free ukelele lessons laid on at locations varying from the Children’s Hospital to retirement homes to jitterbug lessons and the work of the event’s photographer, Dutchman Merlin Daleman, who flies over every year to capture many of the sights and scenes of Birmingham’s biggest annual musical celebration.
The festival director is proud that the event has never missed a year since its launch in 1985 – even surviving the grim Covid era which wreaked havoc with the entertainment industry.
“This will be our 41st festival – we have never missed a year, even in Covid. We put on live events through both the Covid years, the only entertainment company to do so in the Midlands, maybe in the country.”
But some of those live events could be jeopardised without the support of Birmingham’s hotel sector. “Until we have got a festival hotel – or various hotels contributing rooms – we can’t book people from out of the country.
“We bring in top jazz players – you have got to give them a hotel. You can’t have them drive from London and then drive back at 3am in the morning.
“We have got bands coming over from Estonia, France – I have got bands from Germany and Spain held pending hotels. With the reduced funding we need probably four hotels to each contribute maybe 20 rooms.”
Jim points out that the influx of thousands of people into the city – spending money on hotel accommodation, restaurants, bars and the like – is an integral part of the festival’s commercial value to Birmingham.
“A huge amount of our audience come from outside the West Midlands – the hotels where the musicians stay, that’s where the public want to stay as well. They can go down to breakfast and say, hey, that’s the trumpet player we saw last night – it is a wonderful community.
“Not only do hotels host the musicians and the travelling audience, but we put shows on as well. And a lot of people who wouldn’t normally go into a hotel or a café bar discover these nice locations – and keep coming back.”
Jim says the sheer scale of the festival line-up and performances makes the 18 to 27 July event a unique occasion for Birmingham and the West Midlands. “You don’t have to go into the subdued atmosphere of a concert room to enjoy it – we put shows on in stores.
“We are going into Selfridges this year, Lee Longlands furniture shop, the Bullring, other shops. We go out beyond Birmingham. Every library, museum and art gallery in Sandwell has our music – plus commercial businesses as well – they are terrific. We put musicians on the Metro and they attract everyone’s attention.”
Jim, who combines his work as mainstay of the festival with running Broad Street-based Big Bear Records, the UK’s longest-running independent label, says a main sponsor would throw the event a crucial lifeline. “We would really welcome a core sponsor. If we could get £10,000 from a core sponsor, that would be absolutely brilliant.
“It’s a matter of minimising the debt we have when the festival is over, when the crunch time comes and all the money comes in from the events.
“There is such goodwill from the community for the festival, some people have been coming for 15-20 years – it’s what keeps you going, you feel you can’t let them down. You stand at the back of a room full of people with a band rocking its socks off and everybody enjoying it – it gives you a great feeling, it’s very rewarding.”
Businesses or individuals wishing to support the festival can contact Jim at Big Bear Music or jim@bigbearmusic.com.
