[Dixielandjazz] Stan Greig RIP

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Peter Vacher's Guardian obit is below
 
It's a long time since I last saw Stan, one Monday night at King's Cross when he was playing the weekly gig as one of the forequarters of the Fawkes-Greig quartet, Wally in the interval singing his praises as a master of tempo, setting things up at an interesting pace regardless of whether it was a fast number or a slow or anything. 
I remember him gigging at an Edinburgh jazz festival, with maybe Dave Green on bass doing one of the Ellington-Blanton duet numbers, and very interestingly not being a 'clean' player, the very opposite of what listmakes disapprove of in J.J. Johnson's trombonism. It was all go.  
I thought he was under-appreciated as a straight jazz pianist, a non-virtuoso doing things harder for some people than playing a lot of notes.  When he took over from the amazing Mick Pyne in Humph's band there was a change of character -- nothing collossal, but what happens when one individual replaces another individual. 
The last I heard about him, from a regular southern visitor to Edinburgh, was of I think some sort of benefit for a colleague or colleague's family, where -- according to my ever-reliable friend -- Stan was hampered by the onset of what I now see was Parkinson's disease, and delivered blues on a model of Jimmy Yancey.  
 
I could amuse a few people with an example of the personable Stan being drily witty, but I'd have to cite a name, to protect the guilty.  The man had rhythm. 
 
Robert R. Calder 
 
Stan Greig obituary
Brilliant blues pianist, drummer and founder of the London Jazz Big Band
    * Peter Vacher 
    * The Guardian, Friday 23 November 2012 18.43 GMT 

The jazz pianist – and occasional drummer – Stan Greig, who has died aged 82 after suffering from Parkinson's disease, performed with such leading lights of British traditional and mainstream jazz as Sandy Brown, Ken Colyer, Humphrey Lyttelton and George Melly. He was renowned for his conviviality, his brilliant blues and boogie piano playing, and his professional skills as a piano tuner.
Greig was born in the Edinburgh suburb of Joppa, the son of a piano tuner and repairer. "I got into boogie-woogie first and didn't really move into jazz until I met the Sandy Brown crowd at school," he told me in a Melody Maker interview, before explaining that the pianos he encountered were so poor that he felt impelled to take up the drums. Greig was part of a circle at the city's Royal high school that eventually launched Greig, clarinettist Brown and their trumpeter friend Al Fairweather to enduring jazz fame.
Listening to Louis Armstrong and King Oliver on record fired their enthusiasm, and this happy teenage collective – sometimes with Alex Welsh in place of Fairweather – began to play local jobs, with Brown ready to take on the world.
When the trio gravitated to London, Fairweather joined Cy Laurie's band, Brown pursued his studies as an acoustic architect (he kept both careers going), and Greig, as a drummer, joined the Ken Colyer Jazzmen in 1954, just as the dedicated Colyer netted a four-month residency at the New Orleans Bier Bar in Düsseldorf.
Back home and with a successful album, Back to the Delta, behind them, Colyer's band began to capitalise on their emerging reputation. Even so, keen to extend his range stylistically, Greig accepted an offer to join Lyttelton's band: his brushes are to be heard prominently on Lyttelton's hit recording of Bad Penny Blues, as engineered by Joe Meek.
The single reached no 19 in the 1956 hit parade, the first out-and-out jazz record to enter the top 20, before, in Lyttelton's words, "falling back exhausted". In what was a successful period for the outfit, Greig recorded often until the Suez crisis led to him being called up as a reservist. According to Lyttelton, "He played a vital part in the campaign as an officers' mess pianist." Back with the band later in 1956, he shared drum duties with his eventual replacement, Eddie Taylor, who fitted the band's evolving style better. Greig left to go on tour with the US gospel singer Brother John Sellers.
Having played off and on with Brown again, in 1960 Greig joined Acker Bilk's Paramount Jazz Band as its pianist, touring the world on the back of Bilk's international success with Stranger on the Shore and appearing in Dick Lester's film It's Trad, Dad! (1962). He stayed until 1968, eventually leaving to run a cafe in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, which "lasted a year".
Always able to fall back on his tuning skills, Greig had regular clients including Mick Jagger. He picked up trio jobs, formed his swing band and remained active in the outer reaches of the London jazz world before joining John Chilton's Feetwarmers to accompany the mercurial vocalist George Melly for three years from 1977, playing at Ronnie Scott's club in London and appearing in New York.
Arguably Greig's finest achievement was the formation, with Fairweather, of the London Jazz Big Band in 1975. On its debut at the 100 Club in central London, this splendid all-star ensemble had just six tunes in the book, each played with solo spots for all 16 band members, and then repeated the same six pieces with even longer solos. Gradually more repertoire was added by Fairweather and others, and their 100 Club sessions remain firmly in the memory as hugely enjoyable events.
Later, Greig was to return to the Lyttelton band, by now more of a mainstream unit, to play the piano, and stayed for 10 years until 1995, his albums on Lyttelton's Calligraph label including a solo recording and a band collaboration with the singer Helen Shapiro. The onset of Parkinson's hampered Greig's ability to play, and Jools Holland was on hand to support him at his benefit concert at the 100 Club in 2002.
Visiting US instrumentalists always valued Greig for his solid swing playing – he toured Europe in 1985 with a group of Harlem veterans – and his many recordings attest to his status as one of the finest blues and jazz pianists.
Twice divorced, he is survived by his first wife, Jean, their daughters, Alison and Lindsey, and son, Duncan.
• Stanley Mackay Greig, jazz pianist and bandleader, born 12 August 1930; died 18 November 2012