[Dixielandjazz] Dankworth Obit

[Stephen G Barbone]

Here is a more complete obit of Sir John Dankworth. From Telegraph.co.uk
Sir John Dankworth, who died on February 6 aged 82, was a pioneer of  
modern jazz in Britain, a leading composer of film music, a tireless  
champion of musical education, regardless of genre, and a superb  
instrumentalist in his own right.
Dankworth's care over the shaping and presentation of his music led  
occasionally to complaints that it was clever, lightweight stuff,  
lacking the rough passion which many regarded as the mark of authentic  
jazz, a view summed up by the critic Kitty Grime in the much-quoted  
phrase "couth, kempt and shevelled". On the other hand, his admirers  
included such notable figures as Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie.
John Philip William Dankworth was born in Walthamstow on September 20  
1927. Smitten by jazz at an early age, he acquired a second-hand  
clarinet and was playing in semi-professional dance bands while still  
at school. In 1944 Dankworth passed the audition to study at the Royal  
Academy of Music.
His extra-curricular interests had to be kept a closely guarded  
secret, in particular the fact that he now owned a saxophone, an  
instrument which was rarely even mentioned within the walls of the  
Academy. Even so, during his final year he contrived to work regularly  
as a member of Freddie Mirfield's Garbage Men, a novelty band which  
toured the lower-echelon music halls.
Following National Service in the RASC, much of it spent playing with  
an army dance band in Cirencester, Dankworth, along with Ronnie Scott  
and other ambitious young jazz players, joined the Queen Mary as a  
musician and sailed for New York on the liner's first post-war  
civilian voyage. The attraction of the job was the ship's fortnightly  
turn-round period in New York, during which they were able to hear  
some of the greatest jazz artists at first hand. For the rest of their  
lives, both Scott and Dankworth were able to recall these brief visits  
in vivid detail, in particular the revolutionary bebop of Charlie  
Parker.
Back in London, Dankworth took casual jobs in dance bands and played  
jazz whenever the opportunity arose. Dankworth, Scott and other young  
players would hire a rehearsal room to work on their bebop skills.  
Eventually, in 1948, they formed themselves into two bands, hired a  
studio in central London, called themselves Club Eleven (10 musicians  
and a manager) and began charging admission. Extremely avant garde for  
its time, Club Eleven attracted enough patrons to continue for several  
years.
In 1950 Dankworth formed his first band, the Johnny Dankworth Seven,  
containing some of Britain's leading young soloists. The style was  
neatly arranged bebop, inspired by Miles Davis's band of the time.  
Although this enterprise almost collapsed in its early days, a modest  
growth in the audience for modern jazz allowed it to gain a foothold.  
Within a year, the Seven, and Dankworth himself, figured among the  
winners in the annual polls conducted by the music press. In 1951 the  
Seven appeared in one of the two inaugural jazz concerts at the Royal  
Festival Hall and recruited a young and totally inexperienced singer,  
Cleo Laine.
Dankworth broke up the Seven in 1953 and launched his first big band,  
consisting of eight brass, five saxophones, rhythm section and three  
vocalists. It was the first serious and deliberate challenge to Ted  
Heath, Britain's reigning bandleader, whose immaculately polished,  
bravura style had never been entirely satisfying to dedicated jazz  
listeners. Although much of its time was spent in playing for ballroom  
dancing, Dankworth's band was essentially a jazz orchestra, with a  
notable contingent of fine jazz soloists.
But Dankworth was not happy with the conventional big-band format. In  
1956 he disbanded and redesigned the orchestra, with a mixed ensemble  
of soloists in place of the saxophone section. For this imaginative  
combination Dankworth and his chief arranger, Dave Lindup, created a  
uniquely light but firm jazz sound. In its first year the new band had  
a hit single with Experiments With Mice, the nursery rhyme Three Blind  
Mice arranged in the styles of various well-known bands.
In 1960 Dankworth gave up full-time bandleading in order to  
concentrate on composition. He had already made an impressive debut  
with the score to Karel Reisz's documentary film We Are The Lambeth  
Boys (1959). Now he composed and conducted the music for Saturday  
Night And Sunday Morning(Reisz, 1960) and The Criminal (Joseph Losey  
1960). So successful were these, and so distinctive the music, that  
the Dankworth sound became inseparably linked with the new wave of  
British cinema in the 1960s.
Among the best known are The Servant (Losey, 1963), Darling (John  
Schlesinger, 1965), Modesty Blaise (Losey 1966) and Morgan, A Suitable  
Case For Treatment (Reisz, 1966). To these were added television  
themes such asTomorrow's World (1966), and an endless stream of  
advertising commercials.
Amidst all this activity, Dankworth contrived to assemble ad hoc  
bands, to write music for them and to record it. What The Dickens  
(1963), Zodiac Variations (1964), The $1,000,000 Collection (1969) and  
Lifeline (1974) were among the most successful.
John Dankworth and Cleo Laine were married in 1958 and their careers  
were intertwined thereafter. From the mid-1970s, in particular, much  
of his time was taken up by acting as his wife's musical director. A  
Cleo Laine song is, generally speaking, a John Dankworth arrangement  
and some of his most beautiful and delicate writing is to found in the  
accompaniments he devised for her: the voice-and-clarinet duet version  
of Thieving Boy, the settings of Shakespeare songs, especially the  
mind-boggling Compleat Works, the innocent I'm On A See-Saw.
They were also equal partners in the Wavendon Allmusic Plan, an  
educational and cultural programme launched in 1969 and based at their  
Buckinghamshire home, dedicated to bringing together musicians of all  
styles and cultures. Also on the premises is The Stables, a concert  
hall presenting international artists.
In later years, Dankworth joined with his son, Alec, in forming the 12- 
piece Dankworth Generation Band, made up of their favourite musicians,  
regardless of age.
John Dankworth was appointed CBE in 1974 and knighted in 2006.
He and Dame Cleo Laine had two children: the double-bassist Alec  
Dankworth, and the singer and actress Jacqui Dankworth.