[BITList] In a big band, on the big screen

[John Feltham]

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Dankworth, Sir  John Philip William  [Johnny]  (1927-2010), jazz musician and composer, was born at 38 Beech Hall Road, Walthamstow, Essex, on 20 September 1927, the only son and younger child of William Henry Dankworth (1890-1972), sales manager for an electrical insulator works, and his wife, Alice Elizabeth, nee Houchen (1897-1981).

Musical beginnings

Growing up in Walthamstow, he showed an early interest in music (exploring piano from the age of five, and writing his first tentative arrangement of 'The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze' at the age of eight) before attending Sir George Monoux Grammar School, a historic centre of education which-predictably for the period-banned jazz entirely from its musical curriculum. Following both piano and violin lessons, he took up the clarinet in his early teens after buying Benny Goodman's recording of 'Tea for Two' and taught himself to play while forming school groups, and then a quintet for dances, functions, and clubs in both east and central London. Around this time he acquired his first alto saxophone. He enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music in London in September 1944 (graduating in 1946), and in the meantime played clarinet for the jazz cornettist Freddy Randall and bandleader Freddy Mirfield's Garbage Men, recording with the latter ('Good Old Wagon Blues/Miss Annabelle Lee', 1944) and winning 'best clarinettist' award in the Melody Maker's national dance band championship competition in the same year.

Following national service with the Royal Army Service Corps (from July 1946 to June 1947, in an army dance band in Cirencester), Dankworth joined Bobby Kevin's dance band as saxophonist/arranger on the Queen Mary as part of what was known as 'Geraldo's Navy' of shipboard musicians. During trips in and out of New York over the next year with Ronnie Scott and other young contemporaries, he heard, met, and was inspired by the bebop founders including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis, while working between cruises back in London with Les Ayling, Tito Burns, and Bert Ambrose.

Through his London engagements Dankworth met the agent/promoter Harry Morris, who, in December 1948, thought up (and subsequently ran) the Club Eleven at Mac's Rehearsal Rooms, Windmill Street, London. Featuring a sextet led by Scott (including the saxophonist Johnny Rogers and the bebop adviser-cum-guru, the pianist/trumpeter Denis Rose) and Dankworth's quartet, the club became 'a Bauhaus for progressive jazz thinking'  (Jazz in Revolution, 63). In 1949 Dankworth visited the Paris Jazz Festival (where he played alongside Parker) and Sweden (where he played with Arne Domnerus and Sidney Bechet), and accompanied his first hero, Benny Goodman, at the London Palladium as a temporary member of its resident Skyrockets Orchestra.

The Dankworth Seven and the Johnny Dankworth Orchestra

In December 1949 the handsome Dankworth assembled his Johnny Dankworth Seven, which made its debut at the London Palladium in March 1950 and with the enterprising aid of the publicist Les Perrin immediately hit the national headlines. Thereafter broadcasting, recording (first for Esquire and later EMI), tours of the UK and Germany, and a string of personal wins in jazz popularity polls established Dankworth's septet as 'tops in our field'  (Jazz in Revolution, 91). Their reputation was enhanced in the summer of 1951 by his hiring of the singer Clementine Dinah Langridge (b. 1927), quickly to be re-christened Cleo Laine, whom Dankworth married on 18 March 1958. The daughter of Alexander Campbell, machine operator, and former wife of George Langridge, roof tiler, she had a very successful career as a singer and actress, both with and separately from Dankworth. They had a son and a daughter, and Dankworth became stepfather to the son of her first marriage.

In July 1953 Dankworth disbanded the Dankworth Seven and in the following October (at the Astoria Ballroom, Nottingham) launched his first big band, the Johnny Dankworth Orchestra, which toured throughout the UK and Europe for seven years. Despite the initial manifestations of rock 'n' roll, jazz was still dominant in the more intellectual manifestations of youth music culture. Alongside Ted Heath's big band Dankworth's orchestra led the field and in 1956 (following instrumental redesign, and in a collaboration between Dankworth and his long-time creative partner, the arranger David Lindup) achieved a hit record of its own: 'Experiments with Mice' which, based on the nursery rhyme 'Three Blind Mice', and complete with his commentary, humorously parodied the styles of other famous bands including those of Benny Goodman, Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan, Billy May, Eric Delaney, and Stan Kenton. (It would be followed in 1961 by a second hit, 'African Waltz', written by Galt McDermott.) At this time Dankworth's orchestra was also the first choice to play with a premier-league cast of American visitors to Britain including Ella Fitzgerald, Anita O'Day, Sarah Vaughan, Nat King Cole, Sophie Tucker, and Johnny Rae. In 1959 Dankworth's orchestra created an international sensation with a trip to America including critically acclaimed performances at the Newport Jazz Festival and concerts in New York opposite Duke Ellington and his band. By his own reckoning his big band 'lasted on a fulltime basis from 1953 to 1964 and played in the region of a couple of thousand dates-dances, concerts, recordings, and radio and TV airings'  (Jazz in Revolution, 137). There were countless reformations thereafter for concerts, recordings, and broadcasts, including, from 1992, the Dankworth Generation Band, co-led with his son, the double-bassist Alec (an ensemble irreverently described by its senior leader as 'a mixture of doddering senility and youthful incompetence'  (The Times, 8 Feb 2010)).

During Dankworth's big band career of the 1950s two important facets of his beliefs came to light. The first of these involved civil rights: in 1954 he publicly refused to tour South Africa to perform to white-only audiences (despite a lucrative offer of £10,000), and in 1959 he chaired the Stars Campaign for Inter-Racial Friendship, which set itself determinedly against the fascist movement of the political agitator Colin Jordan. Second, in the mid-1950s he hosted a long-running BBC radio series which included guests from different musical genres (among them the classical performers Jack Brymer, Kenneth Essex, and Gerard Hoffnung), an early confirmation of his lifelong belief in the validity of music stripped of stylistic walls, which (from 1970) would find concrete realization in his Wavendon All-Music Plan. In the meantime his belief in bridging musical divides found practical (and recorded) expression in collaborations with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hungarian composer Matyas Seiber, with whom Dankworth co-composed and recorded compositions including 'Improvisations of Jazz Band and Symphony Orchestra' (1960).

From the 1950s onwards Dankworth was consistently busy with writing commissions, and it was in 1959 that he began a successful career as a composer of film scores; his first, for We Are the Lambeth Boys (1959), about a south London youth club, directed by Karel Reisz, was quickly followed by Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), and two films by Joseph Losey, The Criminal (1960) and The Servant (1963). Other highly rated scores by Dankworth included those for Darling (directed by John Schlesinger, 1965), Morgan: a Suitable Case for Treatment (directed by Reisz, 1966), Modesty Blaise (directed by Losey, 1966), Accident (also directed by Losey, 1967), and seventeen further films until his last, Gangster No. 1 (directed by Paul McGuigan, 2000). From 1959 to 1993 he also wrote prolifically for radio and television, including the theme tunes for The Avengers (1961; original series only), Tomorrow's World (1965), and BBC Radio 4's Today programme (1983), as well as for documentaries and commercials. From the late 1960s he wrote for the theatre, too, notably Boots and Strawberry Jam (1968, a musical life of George Bernard Shaw, written with the critic/musician Benny Green) and later Colette for Cleo Laine (1979).

In the 1960s Dankworth's writing for his orchestras achieved new and extended levels of creativity, notably with 'What the Dickens' (1963), a musical portrayal of the characters and creations of author Charles Dickens; 'Shakespeare and All That Jazz' (1964, with Laine), ravishing settings of Shakespeare songs, sonnets, and subjects; 'The Zodiac Variations' (1964), a complex exercise in collaboration with his close friend the American trumpeter/flugelhornist Clark Terry, involving American musicians, born under the right sign, dubbing their solos over Dankworth's orchestral frameworks recorded in London; 'The Million Dollar Collection' (1970), based on a selection of Dankworth's favourite paintings; and 'Lifeline' (1973), with Ken Gibson and other new-generation players including John Taylor and Stan Sulzmann. A further prized collaboration was 'Windmill Tilter, the story of Don Quixote' (1968), composed by the trumpeter-soloist Kenny Wheeler but issued under Dankworth's name and featuring his orchestra as Wheeler's vehicle. These collections were superbly crafted, securely rooted in every relevant jazz tradition, and triumphantly devoid of musical art-for-art's sake.

The Wavendon All-Music Plan, international fame, and later years

From 1969 Dankworth's vocational aspirations as both 'all-music' advocate and liberal music educator found a new permanent centre in his Stables Theatre, a set of barns converted by Dankworth, his family, and friends, adjoining his home, the Old Rectory, in Wavendon, Buckinghamshire. The theatre opened in 1970. Over the next thirty years the Stables would become internationally famous, via its charity-registered Wavendon All-Music Plan. In addition to performances by premier performers from all musical genres (forty-seven performances in its first year alone), Dankworth's venue was equipped for seminars, a summer camp for children (run by his sister, Averil), and a travelling road show.

Parallel with the developing performance and educational activities at the Stables (culminating in his summer school educational jazz courses, which lasted for thirty more years in a variety of larger venues), Dankworth's performing career continued apace. From 1971 this centred on a sensational musical partnership with his wife, Cleo Laine. The combination of Dankworth as arranger/instrumentalist and Laine as 'doubtless one of the greatest voices in the world'  (Renault Williams, Cleo Laine: Return to Carnegie, 1976, sleeve notes) cemented their professional relationship and-via musical trademarks including Laine's phenomenal vocal range and all-encompassing musical repertoire, regularly enhanced by Dankworth's unique creation of fast-moving unison jazz duos for his alto saxophone and her voice-turned them into superstars, the only British jazz act to achieve such long-term international status. For three decades they continued touring and recording both with their chosen accompanists and with a roster of fellow American and British stars, with tours to Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, Singapore, and 'the many other parts of the world which show enough interest in our work to warrant a visit'  (Jazz in Revolution, 191).

In addition to these collaborations Dankworth (like Laine) continued to pursue his own projects and, after conducting experience with 'symphony-pops' orchestras in the USA, lent his talents to the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre (1985-90) for similar projects (with guests including George Shearing, Clark Terry, Barry Tuckwell, and Marian McPartland) as well as continuing them with the Rochester Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony orchestras in America. In the mid-1990s, besides performing, he was still tirelessly embracing new work challenges, including chairmanship of the Jazz Development Trust (with Digby Fairweather), practical support (with Laine) of the National Jazz Archive of Great Britain, and writing his autobiography, Jazz in Revolution (1998). Even when he was 'well into his seventies, a journalist trying to catch up with him might find a hasty run-down of his activities left on the Ansaphone in the middle of the night, itemising an appearance on a breakfast radio show, followed by a hop to New York for a Carnegie Hall concert and an overnight return for a gig close on its heels'  (The Guardian, 8 Feb 2010).

In 2000 the newly built (and state-of-the-art) Dankworth-Laine Stables Theatre at Wavendon opened its doors, with a second phase of development in 2007, the year that its creators triumphantly performed their 'Shakespeare and All That Jazz' presentation for the BBC Proms at London's Royal Albert Hall. By then the jazz musician once universally known as 'Johnny' had become Sir John: he was knighted in 2006 (having been made a CBE in 1974), the first jazz musician to receive the honour in Britain. Despite encroaching ill-health (including occasional narcolepsy) he continued to tour, to host lunchtime sessions of 'Jazz in the Garden' and 'Jazz Matters' for his extended family of friends and fans at Wavendon, and to perform at jazz clubs and festivals. However, in October 2009 he was taken ill and hospitalized following a final tour of the USA with his wife. He made his last London appearance in a wheelchair at the Royal Festival Hall in December 2009 to play (perhaps appropriately) Ellington's 'Tonight I Shall Sleep with a Smile on my Face' in the company of Laine, their son Alec, daughter Jacqui, and orchestra.

'Genial, friendly and quick to smile'  (The Independent, 9 Feb 2010), Dankworth was an ever-generous and democratic figurehead of the jazz scene as well as a musician of world standing, who remained throughout his life as receptive and encouraging to newer claimants to fame as to those of his own jazz generation. Senior contemporaries remembered him composing a full score by torchlight in the back seat of his band's coach. His ability, during rehearsals, to correct musical parts from a score from memory, by hand (and upside down), was legendary. His many awards included fellowship of the Royal Academy of Music (1973); honorary degrees from the Open University (1975), Berklee College of Music (1982), and York University (1993); freedom of the City of London (1994); the distinguished artist award of the International Society for the Performing Arts (1999); the Bob Harrington lifetime achievement award (2001); and the lifetime achievement award in the BBC Radio Jazz Awards (2002). He died of liver and kidney failure on 6 February 2010 at the King Edward VII Hospital, Westminster, hours before a concert at Wavendon Stables Theatre to celebrate its fortieth anniversary. Cleo Laine announced his death to a shocked audience after the music was over.

Digby Fairweather 

Sources  J. Dankworth, Jazz in Revolution (1998) + The Times (8 Feb 2010); (15 Feb 2010); (2 March 2010) + Daily Telegraph (8 Feb 2010) + The Guardian (8 Feb 2010); (10 Feb 2010); (19 Feb 2010) + The Independent (8 Feb 2010); (9 Feb 2010) + New York Times (13 Feb 2010) + WW (2010) + personal knowledge (2014) + private information (2014) + b. cert. + m. cert. + d. cert.
Archives  FILM BFI NFTVA, In conversation, P. Bowen (producer), 1971 + BFI NFTVA, 'John Dankworth the show went on', More 4, 10 Apr 2010 + BFI NFTVA, documentary footage + BFI NFTVA, light entertainment footage + BFI NFTVA, performance footage SOUND BL NSA, performance recordings
Likenesses  W. Hanlon, bromide fibre print, 1949, NPG · photographs, 1950-2009, Rex Features, London · photographs, 1950-2009, Getty Images · H. Hammond, bromide print, 1953, NPG · Count Zichy for Baron Studios, half-plate film negative, 1954, NPG · photographs, 1954-2006, Camera Press, London · photographs, 1957-2005, PA Images, London · photographs, 1961-2009, Corbis · photograph, 1962, Rex Features, London [see illus.] · photographs, 1991-2007, Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library · photographs, 1992-2006, Photoshot, London · J. Mendoza, oils, priv. coll.; repro. in www.junemendoza.co.uk/music-gallery.html,  accessed on 30 July 2013
Wealth at death  £561,347: probate, 29 March 2011, CGPLA Eng. & Wales



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