‘An Unexpected Pleasure’

In his heyday, Tubby Hayes was universally accepted as the the finest jazz musician Britain had produced. Good enough to perform at the Half Note in New York in 1961 (in front of an opening-night audience including Miles Davis) and to take the place of an indisposed Paul Gonsalves in Duke Ellington’s saxophone section at the Royal Festival Hall in 1964: these were the sort of accolades that entered local legend.

There have been several generations of British jazz musicians since Hayes died in 1973, aged 38, after a heart operation, and it’s no longer unusual to hear world-class music from local players. There’s also no shortage of recordings from remind us how good Hayes really was, and now there’s a new three-CD box, titled An Unexpected Pleasure, containing unreleased studio and live sessions from 1958 to 1972, full of further evidence of his stature.

It was co-compiled and annotated by Simon Spillett, a tenor saxophonist who is the appointed curator of the Hayes story and published a definitive biography, The Long Shadow of the Little Giant, back in 2015. As long as Spillett is around, time will be not be allowed to erase Hayes’s name from the historical record, and the new box does a useful supporting job in that regard.

Based largely on sessions for BBC’s weekly Jazz Club, it opens with half a dozen crackling tracks from 1958 by the Jazz Couriers, the two-tenor quintet co-led by Hayes and Ronnie Scott, with the young Jeff Clyne replacing Colin Bates on bass in the line-up seen in the photo above. Their version of “Just One of Those Things” is about as hip as such things got back then, its rocket-propelled tempo suiting Hayes perfectly. Three tracks recorded as a guest with the Kurt Edelhagen Big Band at a German festival the following year include a gorgeous arrangement of “Round Midnight”. A jump to 1962 shows the influence of Kind of Blue on “Modes and Blues”, a Hayes original from a fine BBC session with his quintet, with Jimmy Deuchar on trumpet, augmented by three extra brass, and the leader doubling on vibes.

The second disc opens with four tracks the quintet in 1964, Hayes now adding flute to his armoury, before the scene switches to Oslo and a 1966 version of “100% Proof”, Hayes’s 12-minute multi-themed big-band tour de force, here performed with the orchestra of Thorleif Østereng — well played if indifferently recorded, showing glimpses of an engagement with the avant-garde in some of the tenor work. The disc closes with four standards recorded by a new quartet with Mike Pyne on piano, Bruce Cale on bass and Tony Levin on drums.

Finally, the third disc covers the period between his arrest and conviction for possession of heroin in 1968, for which he was given a suspended prison sentence and put into a rehabilitation programme, and his death five years later. It begins with an exhilarating — asome might say slightly overexcited — remake of “100% Proof”, now retitled “200% Proof”, with his own big band, packed with British talent, including Kenny Wheeler and Peter King, and a thunderous double bass-and-drums team of Ron Matthewson, Jeff Clyne, Spike Wells and Tony Levin. Two closing quartet sessions, from 1969 and 1972, provide evidence of his interest in the work of John Coltrane and, particularly, Joe Henderson.

The set is a reminder of the days when the BBC recorded jazz groups at such places as the Aeolian Hall in Bond Street, the Paris Theatre in Bond Street, the Maida Vale Studios and the Hippodrome in Golders Green, with sympathetic producers and skilled sound engineers. It’s a blessing that many of these recordings, some of them taken home after the sessions by the musicians as copy tapes, are being brought into the light once again.

Hayes also features — along with Scott, Stan Tracey, Ronnie Ross, Dudley Moore, Tony Coe and many others — in Spillett’s latest book, Further Shadows. Subtitled “Essays on British Modern Jazz 1950-1975” and rich in anecdotes, it’s out this month, published by Jazz in Britain, on whose label An Unexpected Pleasure also appears. The book is accompanied by a two-CD set of its own featuring the stars of the time in various BBC and club locations, providing glimpses of many whose reputations might not match that of Hayes, but who were certainly worth their place alongside him.