The children’s entertainer on site was a bloke called Benson, although he is now better known by his full moniker: Dave Benson Phillips! He was a great mate and covered my solitary night off in those six months, which was to celebrate my eighteenth birthday. He was teetotal and told me the next day he’d never drunk so much Appletize in his life! It was around then I realised where my early drink problem had come from, boredom!
When the venue was quiet, or you had a couple of minutes until the track ended, you’d pick up a drink and have a swig! This came to a head one Saturday afternoon when I fell asleep on the sofa and woke ten minutes late for the early evening children’s disco. As I sat up, I noticed the bottle of Bells I’d bought with the weekly shopping was already two thirds empty. I felt fine after my nap and was about to go to work and get through another seven or eight pints of snakebite & black, as I did every night of the week.
However, realising how big an issue this could become, I challenged myself to drink no alcohol at all for two weeks to see whether I craved it or whether it was simply a habit I had picked up. Fortunately, I didn’t miss it at all, but at eighteen, that was the shock to the system I needed. Without that kick up the backside my life could have been so very different - and a lot shorter! I learned so much in 1987.
In fact, it was only when the season was over, and I thought back to what I’d been like at the start of “ IN SPRING 1987, I QUIT COLLEGE TO TAKE THE OFFER OF A SUMMER RESIDENCY IN NORTH WALES AT THE TY MAWR HAVEN HOLIDAY PARK, TOWYN ” The next week we took our earnings to Step Up Sound Records in Burscough where we spent every penny, and a little more, on as many top 40 records as we could. We also got to know the store owner, Bryan Sewell, who took us under his wing to train us with his mobile disco.
He would take the door money at under-18 discos while we did the gig with his Citronic Thames II console. We decided we would dress identically and call ourselves Double Vision Discos. This partnership lasted until we turned 16 and I received a set of Fal Phoenix decks and a Linear light arch rig as my present, while my mate got his own rig, so Double Vision Discos was dissolved. The other half of that duo remains one of my closest friends, Graham Soutar.
Paying tribute to those early years, he now owns and operates One Vision Discos covering the Northamptonshire area out of Kettering. Our early days together moulded every major part of my life since, and I am eternally grateful to Graham for our teenage collaboration. After school finished, I was in college and playing football for the local team while the DJing was taking off with a Southport agency providing a lot of the work on top of my direct bookings.
Unfortunately, my college work soon began to suffer, so I was told I needed to drop one thing. I chose football, but the college was still unimpressed with my lack of application (largely because the languages I loved were being taught boringly!). Eventually, this led to my mother once more suggesting one thing needed to be dropped so I could fully focus. She was convinced it would be DJing but promised to back me whatever I chose and, reluctantly, did so when the turntables won!
In spring 1987, I quit college to take the offer of a summer residency in North Wales at the Ty Mawr Haven Holiday Park, Towyn. Being seventeen years of age and the resident DJ in an over 21s nightclub was the sort : JIMMY LEE summer, that I realised how much I had improved as a performer. When I started my residency I had thought I was great, but with hindsight, I think I was pretty awful. That was my first and most important lesson: in much the same way as a professional sportsperson, if you believe you are at the top of your game at any given moment, you most likely never will be.
We should always search for how to improve and always remember that every day is a school day! My parents had swapped roses, from Lancashire to Yorkshire, during that summer, so I had a choice to make. Return to my home town, get a place of my own, pay my own bills and restart where I wasn’t well known as a DJ anyway or move to Yorkshire for free accommodation with the parents and start again in a new place. It was an easy decision… hello Huddersfield!
I quickly discovered the main DJ agent in the area was a bloke called John Simms, and he supplied most of the town’s bars and clubs. I soon became one of John’s main DJs along with much-respected and well-established local jocks such as Tim ‘James’ Garbutt and the sadly recently passed local legend, Carl ‘Carlton’ Butterworth. This was in an era when licensing was 11am to 11pm in pubs and bars. Saturdays were amazing back then, as a handful of us would do threehour sets rotating with each other at The Pen & Cob, Shoehorn, Crown and Piggy’s Notion.
We would grab our records and rush to the next pub in the town centre to tag-team the DJ for the following three-hour shift. That town really knew how to party back then as they were all packed, except for the 5-8pm slot when customers would go home for tea and to change before heading back out that night. In early 1989 the son of Piggy’s Notion’s owner invited me, along with my then girlfriend, to work in Miami. He had sorted everything, and all we needed to do was book flights.
We were to work in a hotel’s cocktail bar with accommodation provided. Chance of a lifetime, right? Wrong! He was the first of many ‘chancers’ I’ve encountered over subsequent years.
Fortunately, recent experiences have proven I am a little better at sniffing them out these days! Back then I was certainly naive, but how he thought his fantasy wouldn’t be uncovered the moment we arrived in Miami and discovered that ‘The Hotel Sensi’ didn’t even exist I will never know. Despite this bombshell, we decided to stay in Miami. After doing whatever work we could find to pay our hotel bills, a friend, from one of the cocktail bars I was doing bar and DJ work in, put us up in his apartment for a few weeks while we got ourselves established.
However, after several months, it was clear we were just existing and living hand-to-mouth, so we decided to come home. By then Tim James had bought John’s business so whilst setting up my own agency I did some gigs for him too. I picked up a lucrative restaurant residency as well as some pub ones and my own agency began to grow. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before my personal relationship disintegrated.
So I did what any newly-single and emotionally-scarred DJ would do, I gave everything up and went to DJ in Ibiza! It was early 1994 and I auditioned in Birmingham in response to an ad in DJ Magazine’s Classifieds section. This involved playing a fifteen-minute set to a panel including the bar owner’s girlfriend and business partner while it was all videoed for him to watch back in Ibiza later. Where other applicants played the full songs, so could only fit four or five into their set, I played the beginning of the track (7” vinyl, of course) then skipped the stylus to the end and brought in the next one straight away whilst talking on the mic, spinning records on my finger, throwing them in the air and catching them behind my back (a trade-mark routine I did for many years).
I also did everything else I could think of to cram that fifteen minutes with all the things I believed made me stand 17 " IF YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE AT THE TOP OF YOUR GAME AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT, YOU MOST LIKELY NEVER WILL BE. WE SHOULD ALWAYS SEARCH FOR HOW TO IMPROVE AND ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT EVERY DAY IS A SCHOOL DAY! " "I DID WHAT ANY NEWLY-SINGLE AND EMOTIONALLY-SCARRED DJ WOULD DO, I GAVE EVERYTHING UP AND WENT TO DJ IN IBIZA!" PROFILE: JIMMY LEE out.
And it worked, as I was told in no uncertain terms that I was the unanimous first choice out of the 80-some auditionees. This meant that I spent the summers of 1994 and 1995 playing in Playa D’En Bossa at The Jungle Bar as well as making some cameos at the adjacent Disco Konga nightclub. To make a bit of extra cash on the side, I used to sell cassettes of the most popular current songs (thank you Whigfield for making it a very lucrative 1994) and, because I was also a karaoke host and sang a bit, a cassette of me singing too.
For a bit of a giggle, I decided my album of cover versions would be called ‘Jimmy Lee Covers Up’ and had a cheeky photo taken – of me holding just a 12” single to protect my limited remaining modesty – for the cover. Don’t judge, I was young and needed the money! Just be glad I never did the second album with a picture of me wrapped in a duvet on a bed next to a pig: ‘Jimmy Lee Hogs The Covers’ . I never said I was a comedian, did I?
My time in Ibiza is also when I first discovered mixing and learned how to do it. I was very limited at first, relying on the same handful of tracks to mix between and mash-up. These mixes didn’t always go well, but the practice helped hone the craft to the point that I could become more creative and experimental. To this day I still love playing the 12” mix of Living Joy’s ‘Dreamer’ , bringing in David Morales’ remix of Jamiroquai’s ‘Space Cowboy’ and letting the two songs play together for well over a minute.
It remains a staple of my ‘90s dance retro sets! All that said, I have never considered myself a ‘mix jock’ . I am confident in saying I am capable and can hold my own in that sphere, but it’s not what I am about. For me, what’s important is entertainment and the reaction I can create, whether that is via the software and hardware I use, my microphone technique, mixing abilities, or hosting skills.
All that matters is the audience reaction, and that’s why I have always said the most important two words any DJ can ever learn are: LOOK UP! By late 1996 my parents had relocated again to Peterborough, so I had the same dilemma at the end of the season. As I had no intention of returning to Huddersfield, I regressed six years and once more, for a short time, lived with the olds. One of the busiest places in that city was The Red Lion pub.
I started going in there and got to know the landlord and landlady, but was well aware that every other hour some chancer would be coming up to them (as happens everywhere) saying they were a great DJ who should be given a set. I have never believed in the idea of taking someone’s gig. My philosophy has always been: I’m happy to fill a vacancy, but I have no interest in creating one, so I never tread on someone else’s toes. However, I knew if I could get a foot in the door at The Red Lion, I would grow in reputation locally.
So, I asked what was a quiet night for them when they had no entertainment, and they said Monday. “Right,” I said, “let’s set up a quiz night where I will work for just a quarter of my normal rate [£30 at that time], plus the profits for an unlock the box prize.” They agreed, and I bought a cash box and twenty-five identical-looking keys, of which only one fit the box. The quiz entry was £5 per team if I remember rightly. I put up the cash prize of £250 and each week the winning quiz team would get a case of Becks supplied by the venue and the chance to draw out a key.
It was a huge success, we were busy very quickly and for a long time thereafter. Sometimes we “ FOR A BIT OF A GIGGLE, I DECIDED MY ALBUM OF COVER VERSIONS WOULD BE CALLED ‘JIMMY LEE COVERS UP’ ” : JIMMY LEE would get down to the last few keys before someone won the jackpot and others it would be drawn very early (those occasions hurt!). My plan worked, as I had the chance to demonstrate what I could do. This meant that when others moved on, I became their Friday night DJ and Wednesday Karaoke host too.
I’d also secured a nightclub residency in Boston, Lincs at Silvester's on a Saturday, so things were great. In 1997, after being approached by another bar wanting to establish themselves in Peterborough, I went to Broadways. However, this time it wasn’t a successful switch. So, within a few months, I wanted to move on and had the chance to audition for Luminar Leisure’s Chicago Rock Café chain.
I went to their main Northampton venue to meet their DJ coordinator, Martin Eccles, and audition. Though I didn’t get my chance to shine with a set that night, just from my appearance and conversation with Martin, he was happy to give me gigs. He placed me in the Cambridge branch beneath Waterstones where I did a Saturday and the management immediately asked for me as their new resident. This success meant that Martin was not only happy to give me that gig, but he also offered me a residency on a different night in Milton Keynes too.
My standing within Chicagos grew, and, before I knew it, I had quit my day job in sales working for Coca Cola to play for them at least six nights a week. I was all over the place. In one week I would be doing Norwich, Hanley near Stoke-On-Trent, Peterborough and Chelmsford, as well as the Monday student garage night at Watford. I also had residencies at Windsor, Ipswich, Grantham, Worcester, Colchester, Nuneaton and several others over the following years, so it was a wide-ranging area!
It was in Chelmsford, however, where it all came together as that is where I met my wife, Caroline. She loves it when I refer to her as a ‘DJ groupie’! During our early relationship a friend, David Hatch, had the contract to supply DJs at a new venue in Chelmsford to be called The Toad @ The River. He knew my girlfriend lived there and told me: “Pick a night of the week, and it’s yours.” I chose Saturdays so that I could do Fridays at Chicagos and Saturdays at The Toad and be in Chelmsford all weekend.
Almost twenty years later, people still mention how packed those venues were and that they were the core destinations for any weekend night out. Having settled down, I decided to cut back the DJing to just two nights a week and get a ‘responsible’ job in publishing, selling advertising in Country Pursuit and Max Power magazines. It was invaluable spending fifteen years working in marketing, but by 2014 I’d grown incredibly bored of being a full-time desk jockey and only part-time disk jockey.
So I made my best decision ever and switched them back the right way around. My plan was to focus on the lucrative wedding market and I decided the best way to do that was by offering nothing else. This meant missing out on more general bookings but gave customers the reassurance of booking a specialist. To do this, I launched Jimmy Lee Entertainments (being quite well known locally as a DJ, it made sense to name the business after myself in the early years to get established).
My challenge was with the people who didn’t know me. Everyone on Google will, quite rightly, say and believe they will give their clients “ I BEGAN APPLYING FOR WEDDING AWARDS, AND I QUICKLY AMASSED SEVERAL ‘DJ OF THE YEAR’ AWARDS, AMONG OTHERS, AND, WITHOUT A DOUBT, THEY HELPED LAUNCH THE BUSINESS ” the best wedding ever, so how could I stand out? I decided I would do so with wedding-specific equipment and then used all my former day job’s marketing expertise in my promotions. I also began applying for wedding awards, and I quickly amassed several ‘DJ of the Year’ awards, among others, and, without a doubt, they helped launch the business.
From a consumer perspective, awards give the reassurance that an independent body trusts my service, and that helps with a couple’s decision. There are plenty of awards-haters in our industry, and I totally get that. I have my own opinions on which ones I value and which ones I don’t, but they are only my opinions and plenty of others probably disagree. Personally, if I don’t win an award, I want to learn something from the person who did.
As long as I am doing that, the customer benefits, the industry benefits and I benefit. I am passionate about any system that helps people improve what they do, not only for their own sake or that of the industry but, far more importantly, for brides and grooms themselves. Because the business soon grew far beyond just me, last year we decided it was time for a company name change. We switched to Devoted Events in August 2018 and also launched Devoted Photobooths as a separate entity as well as Devoted Holidays (my wife’s travel agency business) to also offer our clients honeymoons!
Since the re-brand our wedding bookings graph has seen a huge incline; in 2019 bookings more than doubled that of an already busy 2018, with 2020 looking even busier again. Thanks to the challenge of managing that growth, I am really excited about the future of the business. I am currently training my 13-year-old son, Theo, to take the reins and he is pictured performing at my 50th Birthday Party in September 2019. In everything we do, it’s always about the long game!
Here’s to an amazing year for us all!! “ I AM CURRENTLY TRAINING MY 13-YEAR-OLD SON, THEO, TO TAKE THE REINS AND HE IS PICTURED PERFORMING AT MY 50TH BIRTHDAY PARTY IN SEPTEMBER 2019 ” : JIMMY LEE
