When Wynton Marsalis appeared at a Barbican tribute concert to the late Sir John Dankworth in June, it felt like a symbolic convergence of creative forces – those of jazz's American homeland, and of its many and varied descendants in Europe.
Jazz arrived early in Britain, when the Original Dixieland Jazz Band – the white New Orleans group that cut the first jazz records in 1917 – played a London residency, inspiring local players to follow in their footsteps. But throughout the 20s and 30s British jazz (and that of continental Europe) was widely sidelined as a poor imitation of the real thing, with Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt one of the few undisputed international stars.
The Barbican concert attended by Marsalis provided spectacular snapshots of British big-band history from the 30s to the present. It showed there was a lot more to early British jazz than had been previously credited – but it was octogenarian London pianist Stan Tracey and his atmospheric tenor-sax partner Bobby Wellins who furnished one of the highlights of that night with a reprise of their classic 1965 original, Starless and Bible Black (see clip above).
Tracey's roots were in Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington, but he was one of a crop of creative British players inspired by the bebop revolution of the 40s (including saxophonists Ronnie Scott and John Dankworth) who were discovering their own sound. By the 60s, some of that generation – and a younger one close on its heels – began to shift British jazz from skilful imitation to genuine independence by replacing respectful covers with original material. The British DJ Gilles Peterson (with his Impressed series of reissues) and a raft of small indie labels have extensively documented this development now, and the 60s and 70s saw the UK jazz scene on a remarkable roll, with Dankworth, pianist Michael Garrick, bandleader/composers Mike Westbrook, Mike Gibbs and the South African Chris McGregor, and many others generating new music that no longer sounded like a clone of an American model.
Among these, Stan Tracey's Under Milk Wood still seems particularly emblematic. Sonny Rollins, who often worked with Tracey in his years as house pianist at Ronnie Scott's in the 60s, once asked: "Does anybody here know how good he really is?" It took a long time for that question to be answered in the affirmative, with the disillusioned pianist almost quitting the business in the next decade, before being rediscovered by a younger generation of players who pulled him back to the bandstand.
As a teenager Tracey had been an accordion entertainer for the military during the second world war, then a sideman with the famous Ted Heath jazz/dance band, then a Monk-esque pianist with an increasingly quirky compositional ear. But it was his six years as house pianist at Ronnie Scott's, backing the biggest stars in jazz from Rollins to Stan Getz, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Anita O'Day, Wes Montgomery and many more, that really fired his imagination. The thrill of those encounters, and the musical ideas they sparked night after night, set him composing prolifically – often on the night bus home after the gigs. Under Milk Wood was an evocative collection of sparky themes inspired by the Dylan Thomas radio play (it's sometimes performed with a narrator reading the parts). And thanks to Tracey's sparing piano and Wellins's softly hooting sax, the rippling tone-poem Starless and Bible Black is widely acclaimed as one of the great jazz performances.
