Alison Rayner and Deirdre Cartwright met in a shed in Peckham in 1976, alongside other female musicians looking to form a group. They recount to me that neither was very fond of the other at first. “I was more serious and political,” says Alison. “And Deirdre came along and she was very enthusiastic and played quite loudly and very, very fast.” Deirdre laughs: “It was a vegetarian household and I brought along my Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie.”
Alison, 23 at the time, was involved with the Women’s Liberation Workshop, and had seen a newsletter ad placed by drummer Frankie Green looking for women to form a rock group. Deirdre, 19, was living in Twickenham and playing in all-female pop/rock bands. Her sister was playing bass in the Ivy Benson Big Band and had originally been asked to join the group, but was too busy. Deirdre went instead. And in that Peckham shed began a musical partnership that has lasted half a century.
Talking to them, it’s very obvious how deep their friendship runs. They share a knowing familiarity, operating like a seasoned double act. “Like family,” Alison says. Deirdre shares that after her sister died, “I realised how important Alison was to me because she was almost like a sister in a sense, you know the amount we’ve known each other. We love each other.” The pair even scraped together the money to buy a house in Stoke Newington in 1986, where Alison still lives.
Over the years, Alison and Deirdre have performed in many well-known collectives and groups together, starting with Jam Today, formed in May 1976 as a feminist and political collective. “Jam Today was incredibly popular,” says Deirdre. “We did masses of benefits and demonstrations, we played on the back of so many lorries. It was a very political time.” Sisterhood of Spit (what a name) was formed from a saxophone workshop at the Women’s Art Alliance — a cheeky nod to the South African band Brotherhood of Breath. They enjoyed international success with The Guest Stars in the 1980s, touring Europe, the US and the Middle East.
Alexandria
“At the Opera House in Alexandria,” Deirdre recalls of their Egypt tour, “we did this big gig and we were thinking, who’s going to come and see us? Who will know us? Then the doors opened and the place was full, it was unbelievable, everybody came. I think in the Middle East they hadn’t seen anything like it. They couldn’t work out what we were. We slotted into the middle between women and men, you know. They couldn’t get it, a group of professional women playing together. But the music really communicated, that was the point.”
The Guest Stars disbanded in 1988 after a final gig at the Hackney Empire. It was a trip to New York, inspired by the intimate jazz bars they’d found there, that led to the pair founding Blow The Fuse in 1989. “We had friends who ran the Duke of Wellington on Balls Pond Road,” says Alison. “At that time there was a theatre at the back, and they said we could have a weekly night there to run a jazz club.”
Blow The Fuse eventually moved to the King’s Head, Hackney Empire (Pub Next Door), and then held a residency at the Vortex. It became a place where they could also give younger women musicians a platform. “Debbie who’d managed The Guest Stars said to us, ‘I hear there’s a lot of good young women musicians now. It’d be great if you put some of them on using your Blow The Fuse thing, give them their first gig at The Vortex,’” Deirdre recalls. “So we put on two or three years of an extraordinary series of women, people like Nubya Garcia who would now pack out EartH.”
Their contribution to the UK music scene has received widespread recognition. Blow The Fuse won the Services to Jazz award at the 2020 Parliamentary Jazz Awards. Alison also won an Ivor Novello Composition Award (2019) with the Alison Rayner Quintet (ARQ), and ARQ’s fourth album ‘Sema4’ won Presto Music’s 2025 Jazz Recording of the Year, while Deirdre recently launched an acclaimed trio album.
Ronnie Scott’s
This October, the duo will celebrate 50 years of collaboration with a performance at Soho’s iconic Ronnie Scott’s. “We’ve just had this really long hot summer,” Deirdre says. “1976 was a really long hot summer too, so there’s all these kind of echoes. I said to Alison, ‘my god, it’s been 50 years. We’ve got to do something.’”
Tickets are already selling fast for this one-off special event, featuring The Guest Stars (including a cappella numbers and guest Annie Whitehead on trombone), ARQ, and other collaborative sets. “We want to pack out Ronnie Scott’s with all the wonderful people we’ve known for the past five decades,” the pair shared. “This will be a totally unique gig, never to be repeated. We hope you’ll all be able to be part of this epic celebration with us.”
Deirdre Cartwright and Alison Rayner Celebrate 50 Years of Music
Ronnie Scott’s
47 Frith Street, W1D 4HT
25 October 2026, 12pm
