Sir John Dankworth 1927-2010

A Valediction by PETER VACHER

It's tempting to see JD’s transition from Johnny to John and eventually to Sir John as a kind of metaphor for his career trajectory. First, there was the bebop-besotted saxophonist, playing his way across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary as part of Geraldo’s navy and sitting at the feet of Bird and Diz in New York’s 52^nd clubs. That was Johnny, the clean-cut boy wonder, barely 20, an Archer Street regular, and soon a founding member of Club Eleven, London’s bop haven.   

Principles turned into practice in 1949 with the formation of the Johnny Dankworth Seven, the nation’s first out-and-out touring modern jazz group, newly-acquired vocalist Cleo Laine in tow, its music largely shaped and directed by JD himself, by now a multiple poll-winner as player and bandleader. Critics knew his worth too, liking what Charles Fox called his ‘careful and well-behaved’ music. The public weren’t always so sure; dancing to modern jazz proved problematic. Compromises were inevitable; even so the Seven created a body of work that stands up well to detailed examination today, Johnny’s perky, well-ordered compositions like an augury of tuneful things to come.

Dignity dictated the change to plain John when he turned the big band (successor to the Seven) loose in the 1960s and became the composer of choice for UK-made movie soundtracks. Still, the Americans liked him best as Johnny, most notably in 1959 when the orchestra made a ground-breaking appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1959, Willis Conover lauding the band as ‘England’s finest orchestra’. Chart successes in the UK with ‘Experiments with Mice’ and ‘African Waltz’ showed off Dankworth’s flair for musical populism, clever voicings and instrumental juxtapositions pointing the way to his vividly distinctive sound-track pieces.

Star director Joseph Losey used John regularly, and memorably, for films like The Criminal, the Servant and Modesty Blasé; in all, he scored nineteen feature films in a single decade, finding time to appear in three more and to write for short films, theatre productions and TV shows. His were the themes for ‘The Avengers’, Tomorrow’s World and the Frost Report, the sheer fecundity of his output further augmented by a series of concept albums including ‘Zodiac Variations’ (with guests Clark Terry, Zoot Sims and Bob Brookmeyer) and the jaunty ‘What The Dickens!’.

Occasional bands came and went in between these heady moments, their members often younger and more assertive, indicating JD’s abiding respect for contemporary players and his own desire to stay ‘modern’, this furthered with the formation in the 1990s of the Dankworth Generation Band (co-led with bassist son Alec).

As if all this were not enough, there was more. Back on the road, he acted as musical director for his super-star wife Cleo Laine, by now a vocal diva guaranteed to play to capacity audiences wherever she/they went. American was the happiest of hunting-grounds for them but home was where the heart was too. They turned the rectory at Wavendon in Buckinghamshire and its grounds into a centre for musical education and performance via WAP (Wavendon All-Music Plan). Youngsters came in numbers to learn and play, WAP’s legacy the burgeoning careers, jazz or classical, of many past participants.

The rectory’s old stable block was a cosy place to hear music; its successor, the Stables Theatre, a superb facility, is a monument to this exceptional couple’s vision and drive. Sir John from 2006, JD resisted any desire to sit back, carried on composing and playing to the end; the numbers who came to pay tribute at his post-funeral Celebration an apt testimony to a life well-lived and overflowing with achievement. RIP Sir John.

© Copyright Peter Vacher 2010. This valediction first appeared in Issue 92 of Jazz UK, whose courtesy in allowing its reproduction is gratefully acknowledged.

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