Jack Sels dreams and adventures
Jack Sels was born in Antwerp on the 29 of January 1922. His parents were fortunate people working
in the shipowner business and living in a nice villa in the Della Faillelaan (where later the jazz Middelheim started).
Jack was the only child, shortly he missed nothing. He started playing the piano when
he was 6. A saxophone promised he followed his courses 3 years ending without a sax but
three years musical education. He studied in French at the Lycée d'Anvers (where he met
Roger Asselberghs and Mickey Bunner). His mother died when Jack was 14, two years
later his dad followed, another two years he was put under child custody.
And then the war began and Jack was no child anymore and miljonair. Soon he began to expand
his record collection and sought a way with the saxophone in the music world. The wealth
his parents left him shrimped without noticing. Jack tried to open an ice cream salon and
with the arrival of the Americans he tought of finding a way to the big apple. He worked
as a stoker on a trampship towards the States but these ships were unloaded before the coast.
A lot of adventure but no opportunity to see jazz florish in its home country.
He learnt to read the sheets of big formation in the 391 Army Services Forces Band. The war is a
period of a lot of noise and often a lot of silence are its memories. Just for the end
of the war. At the end of the
war he was into the Antwerp jazz environment. He made his professional debut in
the belly of the orchestra of Mickey Bunner. During this period he joined a lot of formations
to play for the American soldiers in hotels and casinos at the Belgian coast.
