As Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings prepare to open the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Charlie Melvin chews the fat with the band’s pianist Mike Sanchez

Check out the first night of the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival on Wednesday and you’ll be royally entertained with two shows by The Rhythm Kings, the all-star rock ‘n’ roll band led by former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman.

Their line-up for the Festival features Wyman on bass guitar, with guitar and vocals from Amen Corner’s Andy Fairweather Low and ex-Big Town Playboys frontman Mike Sanchez providing vocals and boogie woogie piano. They are joined by Joe Cocker’s old organist Chris Stainton, with Wyman’s right-hand man Terry Taylor playing rhythm guitar, Frank Mead and Nick Payne on saxophones, and back from his stint with Pink Floyd, Graham Broad on drums.

Kidderminster’s Mike Sanchez, now in his third year as a member of The Rhythm Kings, was originally brought in as a temporary replacement for pianist Gary Brooker, who’d become busy with his revitalised Procol Harum.

Mike has fitted into the band so well and proved extremely popular with Rhythm Kings audiences, that he’s become a permanent fixture in the band.

“Gary had come up to me at a gig saying, ‘Mike, I might have a little job for you, there are a few shows I can’t do with The Rhythm Kings. It’ll be a lot of fun for you’” the 39 year-old piano player smiles.

“I’d first met Bill in the late 80s, when we shared the stage together, along with Gary Brooker, Andy Fairweather Low, Ron Wood of The Rolling Stones and a host of other rock celebs, at a charity cricket match. Then, when I was playing with Fleetwood Mac’s Mick Fleetwood at Harrods in London, to launch Mick’s internet auction business, Bill was in the audience. It was a tremendous night. The following week, at The Hard Rock Café, I performed Imagine on John Lennon’s original piano, which was incredibly nerve-racking.

“Ten minutes later, the instrument was bought by George Michael.

“When I was in the Big Town Playboys, Andy Fairweather Low joined the band in 1996 for 18 months. It’s lovely working with Andy again, he’s one of the sweetest guys anyone could wish to work with and he’s such a fabulous guitarist.

He does a lot of thumb-picking and stuff with his fingers, he hardly ever uses a plectrum and it’s an incredible sound he gets.”

Mike Sanchez was born in London’s hackney in 1964, where he started taking piano lessons at ten-years-old. When his family moved to the West Midlands, Mike developed a love for 50s rock ‘n’ roll, teaching himself guitar and forming his rockabilly trio The Rockets. Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant introduced him to former Chicken Shack, Savoy Brown and Steve Gibbons multi-instrumentalist Andy Silvester, which led to the founding of The Big Town Playboys in 1984, who were to earn the description, in the 1993 edition of the Guinness Who’s Who Of Blues, as “the best R&B revival band in Britain”.

Nevertheless, Sanchez quit The Big Town Playboys at the tail end of 1999. “As the year 2000 came in, that was the time I finally sheared off 15 years in a confined space, where I couldn’t really do the things I wanted to, because of all the democracy involved and all of that,” he sighs.

After contributing to the sound track of Robbie Coltrane’s 1991 comedy romp The Pope Must Die, Mike was recently asked to provide the music for the movie I’ll Be There. “Last year, I got a call from the EMI people in London, who’d seen me playing with The Rhythm Kings at The Swan Theatre in High Wycombe,” he relates.

“They said they wanted to recommend me to Morgan Creek Productons in Los Angeles who were making a movie with the opera star Charlotte Church and a guy called Craig Ferguson. It’s about a rock singer who was famous in the 80s, who discovers he has a 20 year-old daughter. She’s got a grandfather who’s an old rockabilly character.

“They would have used me in the movie visually, had I not been 30 years younger than they needed. They asked me to create live-sounding versions of six songs, including Hank Mizell’s Jungle Rock and Elvis Presley’s Trouble, but the real challenge was a band orchestration of Honky Tonk Train Blues by Meade Lux Lewis. People who’ve seen the finished film have said I’ll really like it.”

Sanchez is just releasing his brand-new album Women & Cadillacs, his first record for his own label, Doopin Music, cut in collaboration with Swedish blues band Knock-Out Greg & Blue Weather. “I met Knock-Out Greg when we shared the bill at the Hell Blues Festival in Norway,” he explains.

“I brought them over to England last Easter and we appeared at Merry Hill’s Robin R&B Club together. People couldn’t believe how great this band was. We started recording together at the beginning of last year. I’d fly over to Stockholm and we’d spend a couple of days doing live gigs, followed by a day and a half in the studio. So we’d record several tracks on each visit.”

Since releasing his Blue Boy album in 2001, composed entirely of old rock, blues and country covers, Sanchez has continued to immerse himself in good-time revivalism. “I’ve stuck my head right in the old stuff that we always tried to get right and never felt we did. Once I’ve got that done, and it’s all out of the way, I want to do so many other things. I’m functioning in many ways, as a soloist, as a member of Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings and I have a lot of fun with the four-piece, guitarist Andy Silvester, bassist Al Gare, who spent 15 years with King Pleasure and The Biscuit Boys, and drummer Mark Morgan.

“We also have a three-piece horn section for bigger shows and I’ve got some exciting new plans for the 12-piece Rhythm & Blues Revue. I’m having a great time.”

Bill Wyman and The Rhythm Kings can be seen at The Town Hall, Cheltenham on Wednesday, Apr 30. 7.30pm and 9.30pm. Tickets £19 (standing) Box office:01242 227979.