[Dixielandjazz] Tommy Whittle RIP

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

I remember him with the Big Band got together for Benny Carter 

at the Glasgow Jazz Festival where Benny suddenly started writing 

the Glasgow suite Ken Mathieson has been reviving


Robert R. Calder 



AND HERE FROM THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
Tommy Whittle
Tommy Whittle was a saxophonist who abandoned dance bands and became one of  the best-known modern jazzmen in Britain 

6:28PM BST 23 Oct 2013
Tommy Whittle, who has died on his 87th birthday, was a saxophonist of  outstanding flair and technical command; a prominent member of the British  jazz generation that arose in the immediate post-war years, he combined a  high reputation as a soloist with a successful career as a bandleader and  studio musician. 
Thomas Whittle was born on October 13 1926 at Grangemouth, the second son of a  Firth of Forth river pilot. He began learning the clarinet aged 13 and a  year later acquired a tenor saxophone from a neighbour, the future  celebrated painter Alan Davie. He played his first professional engagement,  in a dance band at Bo’ness Town Hall, when he was 15. 
Concerned that their son had achieved nothing at school and seemed to be  getting into louche company among dance hall musicians, his parents sent the  16-year-old Whittle south, to live with his maternal grandparents at Chatham  and seek a respectable job. Almost immediately he fell in with another  teenage musician, the drummer Ronnie Verrell, and soon the pair of them were  fully employed playing in the band at The Pavillion, Gillingham. 
Tommy Whittle at Ronnie Scott's in 2010 (DAVID SINCLAIR)  
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In 1944 Whittle moved to London to join a band led by the Dutch trumpeter  Johnny Claes, from which he soon moved to the Lew Stone Orchestra, a touring  show-band which topped the bill in variety theatres. “My call-up papers  followed me around from town to town, and finally caught up with me at  Green’s Playhouse, Glasgow,” he recalled in an interview many years later.  Rejected for military service because of an old shoulder injury, he was told  he would probably be sent to work in munitions, but Stone arranged to have  him issued with an Ensa card and registered as a Forces’ entertainer. 
From Lew Stone, Whittle moved through a series of nightclub and dance-band  jobs until, in March 1947, he joined Ted Heath and his Music, Britain’s most  popular dance band (“although not many people danced to us; mostly they just  stood and listened”). With Heath, Whittle led a seven-piece jazz  “band-within-a-band”, which was featured in each set. Three Whittle  compositions, recorded by this group in 1951 for the Melodisc label, reveal  him as an assured soloist in the Stan Getz style and adept at scoring in the  close-voiced bebop manner. 
After five years, Whittle gave in his notice. “Ted just couldn’t understand  it. He thought I’d gone mad,” he recalled. But, as others were later to  discover, playing in the Heath band, with its rigid routines and lack of  opportunity for self-expression, could become unbearably tedious to a young  musician with a spark of creativity — money and prestige notwithstanding. 
He escaped to Studio 51, a basement in Great Newport Street, where he joined  the Tony Kinsey Trio for three sessions a week. As his jazz muscles loosened  up, he recalled, “I began to feel good about what I had done — that I had  made the right move.” And so it turned out. 
A few months later he joined the newly formed BBC Showband, led by Cyril  Stapleton, recruited specifically for his talents as a jazz soloist. The  Showband was permanently based in London and made three broadcasts a week,  leaving plenty of scope for freelance jazz activities. These included  forming his own quintet for jazz club appearances. 
As a featured soloist with the BBC Showband, Whittle became one of the  best-known modern jazz players in Britain. He was voted “Top Tenor Sax” in  both Melody Maker and New Musical Express readers’ polls in 1955 and 1956.  Encouraged by this, he formed a 10-piece touring band, but soon discovered  that the growing British audience for modern jazz, while enthusiastic, was  too scattered to support the venture. It folded after little more than a  year. 
In 1958 Whittle took the job of musical director at the Dorchester Hotel, with  a brief to “modernise” its musical profile. This proved difficult with a  conservative clientele, and Whittle twice offered to resign; but his  misgivings were waved aside and he was assured that all was well. In the  event he remained in the post until 1961, when the ballroom closed for  rebuilding. 
He moved to Jack Parnell’s ATV orchestra, based at Borehamwood Studios, which  at that time was virtually the old Ted Heath band in exile. During Whittle’s  12 years in its ranks it accompanied every major star in popular music and  light entertainment. For several years during his tenure with ATV he also  ran a weekly jazz club at the Hopbine pub in Wembley, which unashamedly  declared itself as a showcase for British jazz. Simply to appear there came  to be regarded as a mark of distinction. 
Whittle’s later career included periods with the BBC Big Band, the posthumous  Ted Heath orchestra (directed by Don Lusher), the Pizza Express All-Stars,  and innumerable appearances as a guest jazz soloist, as far afield as  Australia. He also recorded a number of albums, notably Grace Notes  (Spotlite Records, 2004). At the same time he was much occupied as musical  director of two shows, The Ella Fitzgerald Songbook and Ladies Of Jazz,  devised by his second wife, the singer Barbara Jay. 
Tommy Whittle was twice married. His first wife predeceased him, and he is  survived by Barbara Jay and two sons of his first marriage. 
Tommy Whittle, born October 13 1926, died October 13 2013