Beryl Bryden (1920 - 1998)

JOHN LENNON, BARCELONA, 1965. Silver gelatin press print, image/sheet size 255 x 205mm, with a hand-annotated Redferns credit/copyright label and a Granata Press Service lable and stamp verso.

Beryl Bryden was an English jazz singer and washboard player, once referred to by Ella Fitzgerald as 'Britain's Queen of the Blues'. A keen photographer, Bryden would photograph fellow musicians, and in July 1965, encountered the Beatles in Barcelona. The next month, she published a 'special report' of the meeting in the New Musical Express (Issue number 970, August 13, 1965): 'I was sure I hadn’t met the Beatles before, so you can imagine how amazed I was when they saw me and shouted: “Hi Beryl, where’s your washboard?” Seems they remembered me from their old days in Hamburg, when I dropped in to see their show after a jazz concert...At their hotel after the evening show, John got me to sing “Movin’ On” to his guitar accompaniment, then Paul played some flamenco. But they kept asking me to play my washboard and after a while I made a 20-minute dash to my hotel just to get it. It was a session too good to miss! It kind of worked out skiffle and blues, with George and Paul on guitars, John on the harmonica and Ringo playing maracas. I played the washboard, and an unknown spectator worked out on the spoons!I guess it was about 5am when I left – nine and a half hours in which the marvellous Beatles really warmed my heart and I left thinking what charming, natural, humourous and down-to-earth people they are.'