Johnny Dankworth (1927 – 2010)

I have mentioned Johnny Dankworth and his jazz-based theme for The Avengers, before, in passing. It was the first theme I had heard for the series, and it impressed me. Yes, this theme inspired me to write this weblog series, a place where I could provide biographical information about film composers that avoided the hyperbole so often found in biographical articles.

The other reason for this series, is that I have a vague impression of a theme for a nature/ science television series on CTV = Canadian Television, the alternative to the CBC = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This theme, with its saxophones, resonates in my mind, but I am still unable to identify it. Visually, the theme featured what I can only refer to as a small, but fake, island. If anyone knows what it is, please advise. Note: The series is not CBC’s The Nature of Things, with David Suzuki, which started 1960-11-06.

Johnny Dankworth was described as part of a musical family. I looked at some data showing his ancestry. I could find nothing about music in it. They lived in England, but his father originated in Hanover, and was a sales manager. His mother was from Berlin, and was a housewife, a common occupation for the time period, in middle-class families. He was given violin and piano lessons. He settled on the clarinet at age 16, after hearing a record of the American Jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman (1909 – 1986) with his Quartet. He made his first recording in 1944 playing the clarinet on Good Old Wagon Blues by Freddie Mirfield (1908 – 1974) and his Garbage Men. Soon afterwards, inspired by Charlie Parker (1920 – 1955), Dankworth learned to play the alto saxophone after hearing Charlie Parker’s Cherokee (1943) on the BBC’s Radio Rhythm Club. In 1945-05, at 17, he led a quartet that won the North-West London Melody Maker contest. In 1949, he played alongside Parker at the Paris Jazz Festival.

His mother took a mature view: If her son was going to play jazz for a living, he might as well learn in a way that would prepare him for any kind of music. As a result, Dankworth was one of the few British jazz players of his generation to have had a formal musical education. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, in London, where his interest in jazz was discouraged. (What does what one expect schools to do? They are poorly designed to encourage subversive expression, musical or otherwise. In America, Jazz is learned on the street, if not in a local speak easy, when they existed, or equivalent humble locations, commonly referred to as bars. Dankworth’s compulsory military service involved playing the alto sax and clarinet for the RAF Music Services.

In 1950, Dankworth formed an ensemble, the Dankworth Seven. Apart from himself on the alto sax, it included Jimmy Deuchar (1930 – 1993), a Scottish trumpeter, Eddie Harvey (1925 – 2012), an English trombonist and pianist, Don Rendell (1926 – 2015) an English tenor saxophonist, Bill Le Sage (1927 – 2001) an English pianist and vibraphonist, Eric Dawson (? – ?), a bassist and Tony Kinsey (1927 – 2025), an English jazz drummer. Guyanese jazz singer and percussionist Frank Holder (1925 – 2017) also worked with this ensemble, as did Cleo Laine (1927 – 2025) who was a jazz/ scatt singer, known for her vocal range.

Dankworth and Laine married in 1958, producing a son Alec (1960 – ), a jazz bassist and composer, and a daughter Jacqui (1963 – ), a jazz singer and sometime actress.

In his 1998 autobiography, Jazz in Revolution, Dankworth argued that “It [jazz] is not governed by the senseless world of current style that pervades and pollutes popular music … nor is it part of an established hierarchy, so that it is cloistered and protected.”

Dankworth devoted much of his career to putting jazz and classical music on the same stage. He claimed that symphonies were the great novels of western music, while jazz was journalism; one embraced the spirit of an era, while the other caught the intensity of the moment. He admired the uniqueness of jazz, and relished improvisation. Dankworth concluded his book with: “Jazz today can be spiritual, cerebral, motivating or moving. It can evoke tension, relaxation, laughter, tears. Surely jazz is truly the music of the era, combining stature, dignity and emotion with the highest musical ideals.

In 1958, the film director Karel Reisz hired Dankworth to write his first film score for We Are the Lambeth Boys (1958). This was followed by jazz scores for The Criminal (1960), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), The Servant (1963), Darling (1965), Return from the Ashes (1965), Morgan (1966), Modesty Blaise (1966), Fathom (1967) and Accident (1967).

Television and radio themes and incidental music included: The Voodoo Factor (1959), Survival (1961), The Avengers (1961), Rediffusion London startup theme and callsign (1964), “Beefeaters” (1964 theme for the ITV series Search for a Star), Tomorrow’s World (1965), Telford’s Change (1979), Today (BBC Radio 4, 1983), Mitch (1984), No Strings (1989), Money for Nothing (1983 by Mike Ockrent), ZingZillas (2010, posthumous appearance).

Dankworth also composed for the theatre: a musical life of George Bernard Shaw = Boots with Strawberry Jam (1968) with American jazz trombonist Benny Green (1923 – 1977). In the 1970s, the musical Colette, worked as a vehicle for Laine. The London Philharmonic Society commissioned him to write Improvisations for Jazz Band and Symphony Orchestra, and the National Theatre requested a score for its production of Christopher Marlowe’s (1564 – 1593) Edward II (1968 version, originally created 1592). George Etherege (c. 1636 – 1692) wrote the Restoration comedy, The Man of Mode (1676). Dankworth provided music for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1971 revival.

In 1985 Dankworth founded the London Symphony Orchestra’s pops programme, and became its musical director. He toured and conducted such programmes with the world’s leading orchestras, and he also served as principal guest pops conductor for the San Francisco Symphony, and pops conductor for the Rochester Philharmonic.

Dankworth provided services for the British visits of: American singer and jazz pianist Nat King Cole (1919 – 1965), American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald (1917 – 1996), Ukrainian-American singer Sophie Tucker (1886 – 1966) and Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson (1925 – 2007).

Sometimes, it is difficult to separate Dankworth acting alone and Dankworth cooperated with Laine. The 1969 Wavendon Allmusic Plan, was such a joint project. It combined a studio and concert setting at their house, The Stables, near Milton Keynes, with performances and seminars devoted to Allmusic, Dankworth’s preferred term for world music. In 1984, Dankworth wrote music for Lady in Waiting for the Houston Ballet. The ballet is set in the 1940s when a woman awaits the return of her husband from war. While she passes the time, she sleeps and dreams. Her dream is the story of how women through the ages have had to wait for their men to return from wars. Cleo Laine was the lead vocalist, with the dancers providing vocal backup.

In 2007, as part of the celebrations for their 80th birthdays, Laine and Dankworth performed Shakespeare and All: That Jazz programme, for the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. Later that year, the pair released a retrospective album on 4 CDs with 73 tracks: I Hear Music, Cleo Laine and John Dankworth: a Celebration of Their Life & Work.

Notes:

I often read official records, obituaries and other sources to gain an understanding of the lives of people. I often copy biographical information, then paste relevant portions into a post, before editing. This may explain why I currently have 169 draft weblog posts, many biographical, in addition to 36 that are scheduled, in contrast to the 657 published so far, excluding 52 in the keywords.mclellan.no blog and 1 (a non-fiction post) in fiction.mclellan.no.

Working on this post, I wondered who else I knew who was born in 1927. I like to have age references. On Monday, 2016-06-15 I had begun the day investigating some British Columbia Museum genealogy records, along with death announcements. Only one name appeared.

One of my closest childhood friends was Grant Weldon Henderson (1947 – 2020). His brother James Eldon Henderson (1927 – 2022), was the one person I knew who born in 1927. The Hendersons lived three houses away from my childhood house. Grant had lost his father, Roy Grant Henderson (1890 – 1960), when he was 13 years old. From these records I learned that Grant was not a random given name, but the surname of my friend’s paternal grandmother, and his father’s mother.

My opinion is that Grant never recovered from the loss of his father. His older half brother, Jim had lost his mother, born Vera Zelda Cooper (1891 – 1944) who had died at the age of 53, when Jim was 14 years old. Jim’s maternal grandmother, born Margaret Galbraith (1866 – 1895) had died much younger, at the age of 29. Her husband, Jim’s maternal grandfather, Hugh Cooper (1840 – 1895) died six weeks later, at the age of 54. This meant that Vera was orphaned at the age of 4, as was her brother, Eldon, at the age of 1 year and 3 months. Their uncle = mother’s brother, James Lindsay Galbraith (1867 – 1951) become Guardian for the children. Life does not come with guarantees. The death announcement in New Westminster’s The Columbian described Margaret with two adjectives, faithful wife and devoted mother. How does the writer know? I attribute it to Victorian presumption. Yes, I want to avoid conjectured adjectives in my own writing. Confession: I had typed this second adjective in my notes as demoted, which probably expresses my opinion of a socially oppressive Victorian society. Further comment: I avoid titles such as king/ queen, duke/ duchess, earl/ countess, baron/ baroness, or anything else earned or unearned. I remain a socialist. People should be adjudicated on the basis of their work/ deeds/ efforts, not inherited or bestowed titles.

Jim married Ruby Jane Butler (1930 – 2012) in 1952.

Diligence. Unfortunately, I can no longer describe myself as a diligent worker. I was working on this upcoming weblog post, in a prone position when, somehow, I managed to fall asleep. My excuse was that it was after dinner. I awakened when a pair of F-35 Lightning II warplanes flew overhead, undoubtedly protecting Norway from Russian transgressions. Their flying over our house is a relatively common occurrence, with their main base located about 100 km away. These planes are loud, so overhead should be interpreted figuratively. They could have been up to several kilometers away.

I often find Canadians making apologies for stealing indiginous land. Here is today’s attempt. New Westminster is on the unceded and unsurrendered land of the Qayqayt, a Coast Salish, Halkomelem speaking people, often referred to as part of the Musqueum community. It is located on the west bank of the Fraser River. While Fort Langley was the capital of the Colony of British Columbia betweeen 1858 and 1859, New Westminster, replaced it colonial capital of British Columbia, starting in 1859, until it amalgamated with the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1866, after which, Victoria became the capital. British Columbia became a Province of Canada in 1871.

When I look up people I have known, their origins often surprise me. A large number of people I regarded as local, were born outside of British Columbia. If they were born in Britain, especially England, one can sometimes hear a different accent, but not always. If they were born in Ontario, the Maritime provinces or in the United States, it is almost impossible to hear any differences. For example, the spouses of my parents’ respective best friends were American. That said, my only grandchild is also an American citizen.