Regent House Hotel

The basement of the Regent Hotel was the home of the Hastings Traditional Jazz Club in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and as the clarinettist with the resident Dolphin Jazzband, which later reformed as the Jazz Caverners, I have many happy memories of this place. I met my wife there, but our fans, if still alive, will no doubt recall entering from the main hotel entrance, down a stairway which had a door at the top with ornamental glass in it. The owner of the hotel, Pete Lane, had a metal hook for an artificial arm, and he would scare the living daylights out of our young fans as they descended to enter the basement where we played, by dragging his hook over the glass door, creating an alarming sound ! Happy days !