BIG Bear boss Jim Simpson holds a unique place in Britain’s music business. A promoter, record producer, festival director, rock-band manager and photographer, his Big Bear Music Group celebrated half a century in business last year and this memoir, written with his brother Ron, tells an amazing story.

Known to hard-core heavy-metal fans as the man who discovered Black Sabbath, he managed the band for their first two years but the genre wasn’t typical of the music Simpson promoted and recorded over five decades.

In the 1960s, he played trumpet in jazz bands such as the Kansas City Seven before joining the Birmingham band Locomotive, who hit the charts in 1968 with ska-based numbers such as Rudy’s in Love and Message to You Rudy.
 
He stepped aside from playing to manage Locomotive and another Birmingham group, the blues-rock Bakerloo band, as well as editing the music magazine Brum Beat from 1968 to 1982.