Certainly Ernie was co-proprietor of Club 43 in Manchester, but I don't know about him and the Peel Hotel in Leeds, which had some amazing visiting artists. At the Peel, as well as Cecil Payne, I saw Tubby Hayes, Joe Harriott, Phil Seamen, Lee Konitz, Johnny Griffin, Jimmy Witherspoon, Chris McGregor's Blue Notes with Dudu Pukwana and the Polish Modern Jazz Quartet, to name a few. Those were also the early days of the now well established Leeds College of Music's jazz course (first in the UK) with Dave Cliff (and later Alan Barnes and David Newton) as students and Peter Ind on the staff.
Bryan Layton was resident pianist at the Peel and also taught on the jazz course. I recall an evening when we retired to Bryan's house next door to the Headingley cricket ground for a spontaneous session in his front room featuring piano and two basses - Peter Ind and Bernie Cash (jazz and Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra.)
I have already written about how Peter took me to hear and meet Lennie Tristano, so I won't repeat that.
In those days of great tours by American groups Leeds lacked a concert hall like Manchester's Free Trade Hall, but I still managed to hear the Ellington orchestra, George Shearing and the Junior Mance Trio in cinemas.
For concerts we usually went to nearby Bradford with its St George's Hall, where I saw Jack Teagarden with Earl Hines and a package show with the Brubeck Quartet, the Gillespie Quintet (Have Trumpet Will Excite) and a Buck Clayton group with Emmett Berry, Dickie Wells, Buddy Tate and Earl Warren.
Leeds also had a club, the name of which I don't recall, where I saw, among others, Lucky Thompson with a Ronnie Scott group and the young Kenny Wheeler with a band of Dankworth sidemen.
So, yes, Leeds and district in those days was buzzin' (as they say in Manchester).
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Yes, it's a good one!