[Dixielandjazz] Maurice Rose RIP

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi Folks,

I'm writing to mark the passing of a remarkable clarinettist and saxophonist from Glasgow, Scotland, who was a legend locally and deserved to be known world-wide. Maurice's father had been a well-known theatre and dance band clarinettist and saxophonist, and Maurice had been well taught from early childhood, so when he emerged onto the Glasgow jazz scene in the 1950s, he was a complete master of his instruments. This mastery was allied to a marvellous dead-pan sense of humour, a marked eccentricity, a marvellous pair of ears and a chameleon-like ability to play in any style, so he quickly became a much-sought after musician as well as a "character" on the scene.

His primary influence seems to have been Sidney Bechet and certainly, when I first heard him with the Clyde Valley Stompers in the late 1950s, that's what I heard, although by that time he was already a master of "off-the-horn" harmonics, so his range on soprano was much greater than Bechet's and frequently used for comic effect. His playing was once memorably described as comprising the entire history of jazz reeds from Johnny Dodds to Albert Ayler, and that was just in the first 4 bars of his solos!

As well as working professionally with the Clyde Valley Stompers, he worked in Europe with Bob Wallis's band and with a wide-range of local bands in Scotland. He played all the saxes from baritone to soprano, and his baritone playing was a bit special. He never lavished any care on his horns, so the bari was known to the rest of us as "the big green thing." On one gig, I remember high note specialist trumpeter, Bruce Adams, finishing his solo on a supertop X, which brought the house down. Maurice was next up, on the big green thing, and his solo started on supertop X# and went flawlessly on up into harmonics territory for the soprano, except he was doing it on the bari. The audience didn't get it, but the band was helpless with laughter.

I won't start on Maurice's eccentricity here, because the stories about him have tended to eclipse his massive musical talent, but some day I hope someone will write about him and give his music at least an equal billing with the crazy stories about him, some of which are printable, but others alas are not.

A measure of his ability is to be heard on a private recording I have of Wild Bill Davison at the Black Bull Jazz Club, Milnagvie, near Glasgow in the late 1970s. Bill was playing in a very good band of local musicians assembled for him and everything was going fine when Maurice arrived part way through and came up to sit-in. Bill was immediately astonished by Maurice's "Bechet-on-Speed" solos and, between numbers, he'd look skywards and say into the mic things like "Do you hear that Bashay? You better start woodshedding now!"

RIP Maurice and thanks for all the great music and extra-terrestrial fun!

Cheers,

Ken Mathieson