[Dixielandjazz] Brian Lemon

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Very sad to hear about Brian.  The first day I attended an Edinburgh Jazz Festival gig long long ago, I stopped off for a pint just round the corner from my pied-a-terre and found myself propping up a bar beside an instrument case and its proprietor.  We started chatting, me and the musician, and I happened to mention Brian Lemon, who first made a mark with me when I heard him accompanying Oscar Brown Junior on a lengthy TV gig, a case of start listening for the witty words, and keep listening to the pianist.  

The guy at the bar had actually had a gig with Brian during the day, and waxed extraordinarily enthusiastic.  Ken Mathieson will recognise the name Brian Keddie.  Mr. Keddie was excited that he'd another gig with the senior Brian in a couple of days. 


I remember the solo piano afternoon at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival almost twenty years ago, preceded by Dick Hyman doing his history of jazz piano thing.  There were a lot of piano players, and periodically a chin would drop in the queue, as a pianist realised that more and more of the things he'd hoped to do had been done.  On comes Brian, and for all that Dick Hyman had studied with Teddy Wilson and had included Teddy obviously enough in his history, I was hoping for the Lemon Wilson, and Brian obliged, in a Wilson style but with a hard clean sound the very antithesis of latterday Teddy.  (I first heard Lemon Wilson in a BG3 ensemble with Roger Nobes on vibes and Dave Shepherd on Clarinet). 

He opened the gig of many pianists by telling the audience how pleased he was to be in the hometown of Sandy Brown, and announcing a very original composition, picked up from hearing Sandy, with things Sandy liked to play when at a piano, kept together by a fond and frequent collaborator. 

Of course there is at least one excellent quartet set of Brian with Sandy, who was long gone when the series of CDs with Brian and a succession of thoroughly admirable partners began to appear. 

I did once turn up at a gig in Peartree House, Edinburgh, I suppose thirty years ago, with small sight of the band because rain had crowded everybody in from the beergarden. I was with a friend of strong Scottish patriotic tendencies, and bad habits of thinking no British musicians could play as well as Americans.   "You see what I mean," he observed of a piano solo, he didn't know by whom, after resuming his lecture (as he did at the end of each number).
"I see Brian Lemon," I said (it helped to be six foot five) "and we've both just heard him." 


he will continue to be heard, 

Robert R. Calder