Granville Edwards; Jamaican saxophonist (GREAT)
Hyfler/Rosner
Jamaican saxophonist who came to Britain on the Windrush
Val Wilmer
Saturday August 21, 2004
The Guardian
Granville Edwards, who has died aged 84, was one of the last
of several Caribbean musicians who travelled to Britain on
the Empire Windrush in 1948. A significant Manchester
community figure for almost 50 years, he confounded
expectations latterly by carving a niche in New Orleans
jazz.
Visitors to Granada TV's Manchester studios in the 1980s
might have been forgiven for believing the resident brass
band's tall black tenor saxophonist was a New Orleans
native. Edwards grew up in Jamaica, some distance from
Louisiana's southern shores, but he fitted the role
stylishly.
Born in Brownstone, St Ann's Parish, the only boy in a
family of seven, his father was bandmaster in nearby
Hanover. He began playing trumpet - until a lip that bled
easily forced him to switch instruments - and listened to
jazz and dance music on the radio, before forming his own
band.
In 1940, he travelled to the US with the intention of
earning enough to buy quality instruments for his men. His
sojourn took him from Denver to California where he worked
on a snake-breeding farm and, in Oakland, met Ella
Fitzgerald. He was inspired by the live music he heard, but
the segregated facilities he encountered in Alabama
disabused him of any notion he might have had about staying.
Returning to Jamaica, he spent two years in Kingston where
he was recruited into the Home Guard to keep an eye open for
enemy submarines and aircraft. He heard bebop, the new
music, on the radio and found it attractive. Then, in 1948,
he decided to try his luck in Britain, making history as one
of the 492 passengers to arrive on the Windrush.
Doing factory work by day, he formed a band with a guitarist
friend who had served in the RAF. In Birmingham they met
other Jamaican musicians, including trumpeter Dizzy Reece,
another Windrush alumnus, then Edwards travelled around,
sampling life in Coventry, Preston and Leamington Spa before
settling in Manchester. There, apart from a brief stay in
Huddersfield, he remained.
Despite carpentry training - and "musician" on his
passport - it was from engineering that he made a living.
Music was his love, but there was little money to be made in
the clubs and shebeens of Moss Side, where he found an
outlet.
Employed by Nigerians, Ghanaians, Trinidadians and Greeks,
Edwards included African musicians in his group as well as
white danceband refugees. All of them wanted to play modern
jazz with an African or Caribbean accent, and for his
double-bassist he had Lord Kitchener, calypsonian, and
another Windrush passenger and Manchester settler.
Edwards' workplace ensured that he remained little known -
except to musicians, and he played with "names" when they
joined his band after-hours, among them saxophonists Tubby
Hayes and Joe Harriot. For a period he co-led a band with
Jamaican alto saxophonist Eric Deans, who had been
Harriott's teacher, but theirs was an erratic association
and when Edwards took a band into a smart city hotel, he
went alone.
In the 1980s, traditional jazz provided him with a more
reliable income and wider recognition. It was a move few
black Britons made - although West Indian rhythms were
important to early New Orleans music. With banjoist Martin
Boorman he played functions, but had greater opportunity for
self-expression with singer Sheila Collier's band which
featured gospel and R&B numbers and more modern material.
Through Jamaican pianist and entertainer Chester Harriott,
his friend and neighbour, he found work at Granada TV, and
was seen on screen, blowing his horn in several productions
in which Harriott was featured.
Trombonist Dave Donahoe's Hi-Life Band gave him his largest
audience. A marching band, they entertained Granadas'
visitors and travelled to festivals, notably the prestigious
Anscona in Switzerland where, in 1990, they shared the bill
with the Olympia Brass Band from New Orleans. There Edwards
jammed with band members, receiving their praise, welcome
vindication for him after purist rejection from some
unappreciative of his oblique Caribbean phrasing.
With his cavalry officer's moustache and military bearing,
Edwards had a compelling dignity and attracted fans from all
races and backgrounds. It was a capacity he never lost, even
after being hospitalised with a blood clot on the lung
following the 1994 Cork Festival. No longer able to play, he
still drew attention while negotiating the streets of
Whalley Range in his motorised wheelchair-especially from
female followers who had known him in his heyday.
He is survived by four sisters, including his twin.
· Granville Mortlock Edwards, tenor saxophonist, born
February 3 1921; died August 7 2004