[Dixielandjazz] Glenn Miller sideman Lol Coxhill

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

The idiosyncratic saxophonist Lol Coxhill's recent death reminded me of an afternoon in London attending the Greenwich Jazz Festival, specifically a gig in which the late Lol had been engaged to serenade shoppers at Greenwich Market, with decidedly non-OKOM eccentric solo performances on soprano saxophone --
except it was wet. Very wet. 
Four or five of us wandered the empty area under awnings and other lofty projections which kept the rain off, or left and came back after a warming coffee, and between bouts of playing Lol chatted. He was glad of the gig, he said, as the fee would, and he paused, let him get his horn re-sprung. The reason he paused was to re-tighten the twist of polychrome rubber bands he had rigged up to compensate for the limpness of his saxophone keys.
Recently, he said, he'd got a call to fill in for a member of the Glenn Miller ghost band -- there had been a slight problem, because they wanted a baritone player and all he had was a tenor. Then he'd remembered someone of his acquaintance owned a one-time trendy device called the Varitone (which Clark Terry played around with for a time, demonstrating his sense of humour). Lol could play the baritone part on his tenor using the varitone, and sound like a baritone player.
Which he did.
Of course Lol was of the hue conventionally categorised as white, including from ear to ear and eyebrows to the nape of the neck -- a magnificent head of skin. 

I bet you never got stories like that from Tex Beneke ...

Real Nostalgia, talk of a colour bar applying in Big Bands.
Who says the bad old days are in the past?

Who cares how a band sounds so long as it looks right!

Robert R. Calder