[Dixielandjazz] Graham Tayar RIP

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

DJML and friends 
A fellow acquaintance of the leader and pianist of the Crouch End All Stars has told me (by e-mail, and from a current location in New Orleans -- sic! -- to where I have copied this) of Graham's recent death. See below for link to Guardian obit by one of his progeny. 

Lovely man, Graham, some years back cooked a brace of haggis I had left with a friend for the impending Burns anniversary celebration, and rather than jazz had endless rugby songs from said friend and the fellow Caledonian and guest Nicol Williamson (of stage and screen fame). 

Graham maintained that he had formed the Crouch End ensemble consequent to the cajolings of his old friend Wally Fawkes, to be a band with or within which Wally could play.  The Lytteltonian parallel continued when rather than supposedly existing as a band with which Wally could perform it became one with which Ian Christie performed (same sequence in which the two clarinetists were with Humphrey Lyttelton.  Graham had his reminiscences of others sometime happily prominent, Bruce Turner sending up our Scottish hero Sandy Brown, when Sandy demonstrated, not that bebop harmonies were horrible nonsense (some would agree with him) but that his own ear was tuned to something different. Bruce parodying Sandy travestying Bop, was how Graham referred to it. 
"Dear Bruce," he actually said. 
One of our listmates tells me Tayar means traveller, and Graham had on his wall a certificate or permit issued to one of his ancestors the century before last, licensing trade on the Mediterranean. The Guardian obituary provides a little more, and Wally is recognisable to eye and ear on the YouTube clip, 

Robert R. Calder 
  



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvrHPSe0MG0

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/may/08/graham-tayar-obituary


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