Remembering Tubby Hayes

Tubby Hayes is the best jazzman I have known from England. His fiery style is a unique combination of John Coltrane (tenor), Yusef Lateef and James Moody (flute), Milt Jackson (vibraphone), and many other American musicians he always admired. But he was able to mix all these different roots and influences into one huge sound, full of complex harmonies and a distinctive melodic approach. Like most of his American idols, he had a troubled life, ruined by alcohol and drugs. Finally, just before he reached the fame he truly deserved, a weak heart stopped him from blowing. Let’s go back and see where all these things got started:

Edward Brian “Tubby” Hayes was born on 30 January 1935 in St Pancras, London. His father was a BBC studio violinist who gave his son violin lessons from an early age.

“As a little boy of five or six I can remember wanting to own a saxophone. I tried to talk my father into buying me one, but he told me: ‘You’ll never be able to blow that—it’s much too big for you.’ So I had a few years on violin and piano—which I don’t regret, because it was a good grounding.”

By the age of ten, Hayes was playing the piano, and he started on the tenor saxophone at eleven. That was when “a little boy came up, not much bigger than his tenor saxophone”, as Ronnie Scott later recalled.

After a period spent playing with various semi-professional bands around London, Hayes left school and began playing professionally at the age of fifteen, with the bands of Kenny Baker’s Sextet, Vic Lewis and Jack Parnell. In 1951, at sixteen, he joined big-band leaders including Ambrose, Terry Brown, Tito Burns, Roy Fox and Jack Parnell. His first major appearance on record was a live concert recording, released by the Hep label, made with the Vic Lewis Orchestra in 1954, a day before his nineteenth birthday. The record contains a remarkable six-minute quartet performance featuring Hayes throughout.

In 1954, he formed his own eight-piece group, comprising three saxophones, two trumpets and a rhythm section. He toured with the group in 1955 and 1956 and, although it was a musical success, it could not pay its way. The band’s recordings for the independent Tempo label during this period reveal a confident, lively ensemble playing many of the jazz themes of the day, including “Peace Pipe”, “Opus De Funk”, “Jordu”, “Straight Life”, “Room 608” and “Man Ray”.

Jazz Couriers with Ronnie Scott

He toured the UK for eighteen months and took up the flute during this time. In 1956, following the demise of the eight-piece, Tubby began an association with the Downbeat Big Band, a dynamic twelve-piece ensemble to which many of Britain’s finest musicians and writers contributed. From 1957 to 1959, he co-led the successful Jazz Couriers with Ronnie Scott.

“I’ve always admired Ronnie’s playing a lot, and Ronnie I like very much as a person. We had a very good time. I did practically all the arrangements for that group. But two tenors is a limited sound.”

In 1957, Tubby took up the vibraphone after Vic Feldman bequeathed his instrument to him before returning to the United States. Less than six months later, Tubby was recording on it and sounding for all the world like Milt Jackson, notably on Reunion, from the Jazz Couriers’ first LP. He subsequently reformed his quartet and toured Germany with Kurt Edelhagen.

In 1961, he was invited to play at the Half Note Club in New York. A new transatlantic Musicians’ Union agreement meant that, in exchange, Zoot Sims played at Ronnie Scott’s. While in America, Hayes recorded Tubbs in N.Y. with Clark Terry, Eddie Costa and Horace Parlan. In 1962, he returned for another visit, this time recording Return Visit with James Moody, Roland Kirk, Walter Bishop Jr, Sam Jones and Louis Hayes. He played at the Half Note again in 1964, and at the Boston Jazz Workshop that same year. In February 1964, he stood in for Paul Gonsalves when the Ellington Orchestra played at the Royal Festival Hall. He also recorded twice with Gonsalves in 1965, on Just Friends and Change of Setting.

playing Vibe

In 1965, Hayes worked with pianist and vibraphonist Victor Feldman and his trio, featuring Monty Budwig on bass and Colin Bailey on drums, at Manne’s Hole, Shelly Manne’s private jazz club in Los Angeles.

  

"While I was there I did a couple of television spots, one of which was George Shearing’s own show. Mel Torme and myself were the two guests on the programme. George has got quite a good quintet these days, with Joe Pass on guitar, and people like that. The other thing I did was an hour–long panel discussion on jazz. Leonard Feather was the chairman, and Don Ellis, the avant–garde trumpet player and composer, and a pianist called Jack Wilson also took part."

In June 1968, Hayes travelled abroad with Ronnie Scott’s Big Band to play at the Música ’68 festival in Majorca, held from 22 to 27 June. It was another star-studded line-up, with Tubby joining Ronnie Scott, Derek Humble, Roy Willox and Ray Warleigh in the saxophone section. The trumpet section comprised Jimmy Deuchar, Derek Watkins, Benny Bailey and Kenny Wheeler, while Keith Christie, Åke Persson and Nat Peck made up the trombone section. The all-star rhythm section featured John McLaughlin, Gordon Beck, Lennie Bush and Kenny Clare.

He played with the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band in Venice in 1969. The late 1960s also produced a number of excellent albums, beginning with Mexican Green and preceded by several other recordings, all made for the Fontana label.

In 1969, he formed a new quartet with guitarist Louis Stewart and drummer Spike Wells. He developed a new interest in free jazz and rock, experimenting with these forms while also working from time to time with Georgie Fame. Alongside this, he continued with his more established quartet format, featuring the rhythm team of Mike Pyne and Ron Matthewson. The excellent Live 1969 CD captures one of Tubby’s final performances with this quartet.

By early 1970, however, his health problems resurfaced when doctors discovered that he had a faulty heart valve. He underwent an operation a year later and was out of action for the whole of 1971.

When Tubby made his comeback in early 1972, the jazz scene had changed. The avant-garde was in full force, while jazz rock had transformed the music. Tubby rejected these changes, choosing instead to return to straight-ahead gigs with his reformed quartet, playing much the same repertoire he had performed a decade earlier.

He began his comeback with an overseas tour, making a successful trip to Scandinavia in February 1972. The tour is commemorated on the Storyville CD Quartet in Scandinavia. Although now in poor health, he continued to work until another collapse before what turned out to be his final public appearance, in Brighton in May 1973. Doctors confirmed that his replacement heart valve was failing and that a second operation was necessary. He died from complications during surgery on 8 June 1973, aged just thirty-eight. He was cremated and his ashes interred at Golders Green Crematorium.

Hayes appeared in a number of films, including All Night Long (1961), alongside Charles Mingus and Dave Brubeck, and, with his quintet, The Beauty Jungle (1964) and the excellent Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1965). He also performed at a wide range of jazz festivals, including Reading, Windsor, Antibes, Lugano, Vienna and Berlin.

See Also:

• Tubby Hayes pictorial discography
• Notes on my first encounter with Tubby Hayes and Mexican Green