Dylan wrote:
Hi Simon
I've been enjoying reading your posts. very informative 😛
I started listening to Tubby Hayes a couple of years ago - the current fave is the "Couriers of Jazz". That leads me on to my question about Ronnie Scott. What a fantastic player 8) I would like to get some more of his work - however, I cant seem to find any albums with him as the sole horn. Do you know if he did any?
Thanks
Ronnie was famously diffident about recording, a general reflection about what he thought were his limitations as a saxophonist. It didn't seem to matter that players such as Sonny Stitt, Sonny Rollins, Roland Kirk, George Coleman, Bob Berg and James Moody all thought highly of his music. Consequently Ronnie recorded very little under his own name after the early 1960s. His early career was extensively documented by Esquire Records, and his collaboration with Tubby Hayes in The Jazz Couriers yeilded four albums on which Ronnie rose triumphantly to the challenge set down by his upstart co-leader. As noted, by far the best is the 1958 session "The Couriers Of Jazz", one of my all time favourite jazz albums.
There are several CDs available which feature Ronnie out on his own, away from Tubby. Here's a brief overview, which may be helpful:
Ronnie Scott - "Great Scott" (Giant Steps/Global Warming GIST 013)
This double CD chronicles Ronnie's rise from teenage sax-whiz with the big band of Ted Heath through his pioneering efforts as one of the UKs first (and finest) beboppers to his own fondly remembered nine piece band from 1953. Over the few years it covers you'll hear Ronnie develop from a big toned Swing stylist to a Stan Getz devotee and eventually strike a mature balance between the two.
Ronnie Scott - "The Night Is Scott and You're So Swingable" (Redial 558 898 2)
A classic Scott album recorded over two sessions in 1964 and 1965 and one of the few to feature Ronnie as the sole front line horn. The first date has him playing some beautiful ballads with a string section arranged by the marvellous Richard Rodney Bennett. a track like "What's New" illustrates perfectly Ronnie's mastery of tone.
The second set is more gritty and features Ronnie's regular quartet of the day including Stan Tracey. Scott's own "Treat It Lightly" (inspired by Sonny Rollins) is a hard hitting and wonderfully direct performance and a good illustration of Ronnie's ability to synthesise the latest trends in jazz saxophone whilst still remaining identifiably himself. Very recommended.
Ronnie Scott - "When I Want Your Opinion, I'll Give It To You" (Jazzhouse JHAS 610)
Recorded live at Ronnie's own club during 1963-5, these tracks, whilst not the best sounding recordings he made, certainly convey the gritty authenticity of Ronnie relaxing on his home turf. Mostly featuring the quartet with Stan Tracey, the highlight is a blunt and swinging reading of "Bye, Bye Blackbird".
Ronnie Scott & The Band "Live At Ronnie Scott's" (Columbia 494439 2)
This was Ronnie's ill-fated supergroup formed in 1968, a powerful nine-piece band featuring TWO drummers, and the sax section of Ray Warleigh, John Surman ans the leader. The album abounds in good tunes (by Joe Henderson, Kenny Wheeler and Gordon Beck) but the bigger front line means Ronnie's moments to shine are fewer than they might be. His opening solo on Henderson's "Recorda-Me" however is one of his best, a winding improvisation full of references to his biggest influence on tenor, Hank Mobley.
Ronnie Scott - "Never Pat A Burning Dog" (Jazzhouse JHCD 012)
Ronnie recorded even less in the 1970s with just two albums (the marvellous "Scott at Ronnie's" and "Serious Gold") to his name, both of which deserve to reappear on CD. This, his final album, was recorded in 1990 and remains a fine epitaph. Everything Ronnie believed in in saxophone playing is here: the intensity of bebop, the plaintive balladry of Getz, the playful lyricism of Latin Jazz and the heat of Brecker-esque funk is here. He shares the frontline with trumpeter Dick Pearce on some tracks, and on one vies with the youthful Mornington Lockett on tenor. By far the best however is the quartet version of the ballad "This Love Of Mine", each note sounding as if Ronnie were somehow "playing" the lyric.
Ronnie's development as a tenorist was, as he'd always admit, deeply affected by exposure to some of jazz music's leading saxophonists. Hearing Getz transformed him in the late 1940s, as did hearing Sonny Stitt a decade later. When he opened his club in 1959, prolonged first hand encounters with the finest tenorists followed and his outlook changed again. Zoot Sims, Hank Mobley and Joe Henderson all caught his ear in the 60s, as did Coltrane and, most importantly Sonny Rollins. Later, players such as George Coleman and Bob Berg broadened his circle of influence wider still.
Like all good jazzmen, Ronnie was able to take elements of all these players very personal and disparate styles and filter them through his own musical personality. Therefore his "mature" style embraced an elegant and cello-rich tone as well as harder Brecker influenced multiphonics.
It was unsurprising then that visiting American players held Ronnie in mutually high regard. Unfortunately, his own reluctance to realise how good he himself was remained with him to his death. This combined with his reputation as "the guy who runs a jazz club" to wrongly eclipse his true stature as a creative jazz voice.
However, the musical situations Ronnie often found himself in were such that they in retrospect create a far truer picture. Not for nothing was Ronnie a regular member of the international Clarke-Boland band, wherein he sat between Johnny Griffin and Tony Coe, two of the most wickedly accomplished tenor virtuosos of their generation.
An album which captures one of Ronnie's friendly musical jousts is:
Ronnie Scott and Sonny Stitt - "The Night Has A Thousand Eyes" (Jazzhouse JHAS 614)
recorded in 1964 whilst Stitt was guesting at Scott's club. Over three long informal tracks Scott "battles" Stitt to a photo finish. Stitt was a notorioulsy belligerent musical character, who could unseat even the most confident jazzmen who dared lock horns with him. Not Scott, who emerges with flying colours.
On the subject of Ronnie's ability to stimulate his musical partners, Tubby Hayes declared that working with Ronnie for 2 and a half years in The Jazz Couriers had been invaluable to him, a sentiment that apparently was reciprocal.
Tubby even went on record as saying that when he began to learn the tenor it was Ronnie Scott, ahead of any American players, who became his first role model.
(To find out more about Tubby's early musical career check out my notes to a major new 4-CD Boxed Set of Tubby Hayes which will be issued soon. It includes several previously unreleased tracks, a 10,000 word booklet essay and many rare photographs. More details will follow)
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