In 1983 I had dinner with Val Wilmer. I had met her in South London at the home of some friends a few weeks before and on discovering we lived 200 yards from each other in Stoke Newington, I’d invited her for a meal. She describes the evening herself in her book ‘Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This.’

I was having dinner one night with a feminist barrister when she suddenly mentioned Peetie Wheatstraw. I nearly fell under the table. A couple of years earlier I would have been hard-pressed to find a like-minded woman who had heard of John Coltrane, let alone this obscurest of bluesmen. Peetie Wheatstraw, ‘The Devil’s Son-in-Law’, sold plenty of 78s in the ‘Race’ market of the 1930s but his was not a name to slip readily off anyone’s tongue these days. I couldn’t get over it for ages.

The thing was, Peetie Wheatstraw was a name I had gleaned from listening to Mike Raven’s show on Radio 390 in my bedroom in the 60s. He played blues on a Wednesday night. Sleepy John Estes was another name that entranced me. I liked the music but really I knew nothing. Val was the real deal. She had been there, she had met them, gone to the gigs, had them to tea round the table in her mum’s kitchen. With her mum.

She had taken photographs, she had done interviews, and she had written articles and books. She had had an exhibition of her pictures at the V&A. And that work has gone on.

She published ‘Mama Said.’ She writes for the Encyclopedia of Jazz. Only very recently she spoke at Tate Modern as part of the Soul of a Nation exhibition.

And now this. Her book, As Serious As Your Life, about black music and free jazz, was republished yesterday (1 March 2018). And on Sunday evening at 6.45 on BBC Radio 3 there is a programme about her extraordinary and eventful life.  Sunday Feature: A Portrait of Val Wilmer investigates how the girl from Streatham who loved jazz became a social historian and acclaimed photographer.

We shall all be sitting round the wireless on Sunday night.

Thanks to Steve Urquhart, producer of the Val Wilmer programme, who alerted me to this clip.