BIG Bear boss Jim Simpson holds a unique place in Britain’s music business. A promoter, record producer, festival director, rock-band manager and photographer, his Big Bear Music Group celebrated half a century in business last year and this memoir, written with his brother Ron, tells an amazing story.

Known to hard-core heavy-metal fans as the man who discovered Black Sabbath, he managed the band for their first two years but the genre wasn’t typical of the music Simpson promoted and recorded over five decades.

In the 1960s, he played trumpet in jazz bands such as the Kansas City Seven before joining the Birmingham band Locomotive, who hit the charts in 1968 with ska-based numbers such as Rudy’s in Love and Message to You Rudy.
 
He stepped aside from playing to manage Locomotive and another Birmingham group, the blues-rock Bakerloo band, as well as editing the music magazine Brum Beat from 1968 to 1982.

He went on to launch Big Bear Music, the vehicle for promoting four American Blues Legends European tours from 1973 to 1979, as well as promoting individual blues artists, tours and shows that are now part of Britain and European blueslore.

He also recorded many of the visiting artists, sometimes live as well as in the studio and reputedly has over 250 albums worth of material in the can.

Henry’s Blueshouse, which he ran in the late 1960s in Birmingham, was a progressive rock club which also featured visiting US bluesmen and its “intermission band,” playing for a fiver a time, was Earth. They later became Black Sabbath and left Simpson’s management the week their metal classic Paranoid hit number one in 1970.

The artists who appeared on his Blues tours are a Who’s Who of postwar US blues, from Chicago’s Billy Boy Arnold, to “Cousin Joe” Pleasant from New Orleans — whose support band featured Jack Bruce of Cream and Rolling Stone Charlie Watt — Champion Jack Dupree and guitarist Shuggie Otis, son of R&B legend Johnny Otis.

With jazz man Humphrey Lyttelton, Simpson helped set up the Birmingham International Jazz Festival which has run for over 30 years and has featured the likes of Miles Davis, BB King, Dizzy Gillespie and Illinois Jacquet.

There are tales and anecdotes about Muddy Waters, Little Richard, John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, John Peel, Nina Simone, Chuck Berry, the Moody Blues and Stevie Winwood.

But it has not all been plain sailing.

Among the stories of great shows and musicians, Simpson’s gone through bankruptcy and the closure of the prestigious Ronnie Scott’s Birmingham venue, where he was responsible for programming and publicity.

Even so, he’s still busy supporting new acts as well as stalwarts such as the jive and R&B combo King Pleasure and The Biscuit Boys.

A great read for blues, jazz and rock fans.

Don’t Worry 'Bout The Bear: From the Blues To Jazz, Rock & Roll and Black Sabbath is published by Brewin Books, £17.95.