[jazz_guitar] RIP: Jeff Clyne, Jazz Bassist

[akmbirch]

Sadly I have to report that Jeff Clyne has passed away.
He was a great musician and a great guy. A sad loss for the UK's Jazz scene.

Charles Alexander of Jazzwise puublications forwarded the obituary he wrote about Jeff:

Jeff Clyne, who died of a heart attack on November 16th, was one of the UK's greatest jazz bassists. Born on London on 29 January 1937, Jeff was renowned for his excellent sound and execution on the double bass and was first choice for many jazz artists, British and American. In 1958 he joined the Jazz Couriers, led by Tubby Hayes and played on the classic 1965 Stan Tracey album Under Milk Wood. Very much at the sharp end of the 1960s jazz scene, he was interested in the free jazz movement and played with Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Amalgam alongside John Stevens ad Trevor Watts and was the bassist on Gordon Beck's album Experiments with Pops, which also featured John McLaughlin. After taking up the electric bass he joined Ian Carr's newly-formed Nucleus in 1969, appearing on its three first albums Elastic Rock, We'll Talk About It Later and Solar Plexus, and later played with Keith Tippett's sextet, with Gary Bole's Isotope before forming Turning Point with vocalist Pepi Lemer and keyboardist Brian Miller. Jeff accompanied many singers including Blossom Dearie, Marion Montgomery, Annie Ross and Norma Winstone, and worked with many visiting US musicians, including Lucky Thompson, Zoot Sims, Phil Woods, Jim Hall, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Tommy Tedesco and Tal Farlow. From the late 1960s, Jeff was active in education teaching at the Barry Jazz Summer School, at the Wavendon courses and at the Marion Montgomery / Laurie Holloway courses. He was on the faculty of the Guildhall School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. He worked regularly with drummer Tomkins, both on the bandstand and in the classroom and was often to be heard with pianist John Horler and guitarist Phil Lee. A lifelong Arsenal fan, he had a wide circle of friends and musicians and took a keen interest in all the new players on the scene.

--
Alisdair MacRae Birch
Guitarist/Bassist/Educator/Arranger
http://www.alisdair.com



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[akmbirch]

Jeff Clyne who died on November 16 aged 72, had a reputation among British jazz musicians as the country's finest all-round bass player.
Published: 6:16PM GMT 23 Nov 2009
Jeff Clyne
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/6637996/Jeff-Clyne.html

Along with a fine technique, incisive tone and unshakeable rhythmic sense, Clyne commanded a unique range of styles, from swing and even cabaret accompaniment at one extreme, to the avant garde at the other. In later life he discovered a gift for teaching and instructed many of today's young professionals.

Jeffrey Ovid Clyne was born in London on January 29 1937 and took to jazz as a teenager. After first trying the tenor saxophone, he settled on the double bass. During his National Service, from 1955 to 1957, he played with the band of the 3rd Hussars, doubling on tuba.

On release, his first civilian job was as a member of Tony Crombie's Rockets, a bunch of disaffected jazz musicians playing rock and roll and hating it. For Clyne, it served as an introduction to the British professional jazz world and some of its principal figures. This was followed by a period as a ship's musician aboard the Cunard liner Mauretania.

Clyne first came to the notice of the jazz public in late 1958, when he joined the Jazz Couriers, a quintet jointly led by the foremost tenor saxophonists of the day, Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes. This was a good period for British jazz of all styles, and from then on Clyne consistently featured among the shifting personnel of leading bands, notably those led by Tubby Hayes.

In the early 1960s Clyne also played in the jazz-and-poetry group New Departures, containing the poets Michael Horovitz and Pete Brown, the tenor saxophonist Bobby Wellins and the pianist-composer Stan Tracey. From this came Tracey's own quartet, which in 1965 recorded his suite, Under Milk Wood.

This work, by common consent a masterpiece of small-band jazz, still sells steadily to this day. Clyne's sonorous double bass is particularly prominent in its most popular movement, Starless and Bible-Black.

At this time Stan Tracey was leader of the house trio at Ronnie Scott's club, where Clyne joined him for most of 1966. He then took several months off to study in New York, before returning in February 1967 to play with the Dudley Moore Trio, among others. At the same time, Clyne took a keen interest in the experimental and "free" jazz movement, playing with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and various groups centred around the Little Theatre Club in St Martin's Lane, London.

During a stint in 1968 with the Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet, Clyne struck up a particular friendship with Carr, a trumpeter and composer whose interest was turning towards a fusion of jazz and rock music. As Carr laid plans for launching his own band, Clyne taught himself the bass guitar.

By the time the band, Nucleus, made its debut, Clyne had achieved a mastery of the new instrument which entailed not merely transferring double-bass ideas to the electric instrument but also developing a whole new approach to the role of the bass.

Nucleus had worldwide success, including in America, and Clyne remained with it until 1971. Thereafter he resumed the life of constant variety which seemed to suit him best – experimental music with Amalgam and the London Composers' Orchestra, modern jazz with Alan Skidmore's quintet, and rock-flavoured jazz with bands with such archetypal 1970s names as Gilgamesh and Isotope.

To this he added teaching. He became a co-director of the Wavendon summer jazz courses, held at the home of John Dankworth and Cleo Laine and, as the London music colleges began setting up jazz departments during the 1980s, he taught at both the Guildhall and the Royal Academy.

Jeff Clyne worked at full stretch until the end. Indeed, listings magazines advertised him as scheduled to appear at gigs several days after his sudden death.

He is survived by his wife, two sons and one daughter.