[Dixielandjazz] Eddie Harvey RIP

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

DAILY TELEGRAPH THIS MORNING 


Eddie Harvey, who has died aged 86, was a jazz musician renowned for his  versatility, easy-going manner and considerable gifts as a teacher. 

Harvey was the first of his generation to ignore the strict division between  “traditional” and “modern” which typified British jazz in the early post-war  years, and throughout his career he played happily and successfully in  virtually any style. 
Edward Thomas Harvey was born in Blackpool on November 15 1925 and grew up at  Sidcup, in Kent, where he attended Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School. At  16 he became an engineering apprentice at the Vickers Armstrong armaments  factory in nearby Crayford. 
Having already become captivated by jazz, and acquired a trombone, he joined a  band assembled from among the workers by a pianist and machine-gun fitter,  George Webb. This eventually became George Webb’s Dixielanders, Britain’s  first “revivalist”, or traditional, jazz band. 
During National Service in the RAF, Harvey found himself stationed in a remote  part of Cumbria with nothing much to do except practise the trombone. When  he emerged, his technique was of a professional standard and he joined the  band led by the trumpeter Freddy Randall. 
Along the way he fell in with John Dankworth, Ronnie Scott and other modern  jazz pioneers and was absorbed into their milieu, whose headquarters was  Club Eleven, housed in a basement in Windmill Street, Soho. There they made  their first attempts at coming to grips with the complex new form of jazz  known as bebop. 
With the new style of music Harvey found it necessary also to make some  sartorial changes. Out went the rumpled “bohemian” look; in came the suit  and dark glasses — “even at dead of night!” 
Harvey was a member of the Johnny Dankworth Seven from its formation in 1950  until 1953, when it turned into the 16-piece Dankworth Orchestra. He  remained with the big band for a further two years before leaving to join a  succession of outfits, including the Don Rendell Sextet and the Jazz Today  Unit. 
In 1959 he toured as a member of Woody Herman’s “Anglo-American Herd”. Harvey  was now playing both trombone and piano, and becoming increasingly  interested in arranging and composition. He studied briefly at the Guildhall  School of Music and began working as a freelance arranger, notably for Jack  Parnell’s orchestra at Associated Television. 
Between 1963 and 1972 Harvey played piano in Humphrey Lyttelton’s band and  assembled a part-time orchestra of London professionals to rehearse and  perform new music at the City Literary Institute. 
He also began to take an interest in the tricky matter of teaching jazz,  beginning with a jazz piano course at the City Lit. One of his students  there, who worked for the publisher of the Teach Yourself series, suggested  he should write a Teach Yourself Jazz Piano, based on the system he had  devised for the course. The book was published in 1974, remained in print  for many years, and is still in demand at  libraries. 
In 1972 Harvey took a post as assistant music master at Haileybury College, at  the same time continuing to play on the London jazz scene, as well as  teaching at summer schools and serving on the Arts Council’s music panel. 
He left Haileybury in 1985 to take up the post of Head of Jazz at the London  College of Music. This prompted John Dankworth to observe that things had  changed somewhat since he himself had been a clarinet student at the Royal  Academy, and been obliged to conceal the fact that he even owned a saxophone. 
Eddie Harvey went on to teach at the Guildhall and the Royal College of Music,  and to devise the syllabus for the grade examinations in jazz piano for the  Royal Schools of Music. 
He is survived by his wife and daughter. 
Eddie Harvey, born November 15 1925, died October 9 2012