Jazz drummer and ‘transformative’ teacher
Jazz drummer Roger Sellers wanted most of all to be remembered as an ‘‘agreeable chap’’ who could have a laugh and a chat with anyone.
The thousands of musicians he played with, and students he imparted knowledge to, would give him this. But it was his undoubted prowess on a drum kit that will cement his place in New Zealand’s jazz history.
His career as a drummer spanned his entire career and took him all over the world.
His role as a teacher at the then Wellington Polytechnic Conservatorium of Music on the Jazz Performance Programme spawned many a drummer who will remember him as a musician who transformed their style and outlook of the genre.
Roger Sellers was born in Melbourne into a musical family. His mother was a pianist and his father a singer. The amateur performers moved in musical circles. It was not uncommon for them to play music into the night at the family home with their pals. Music, singing and dancing were the backdrop to his upbringing. Sellers was a restless student. ‘‘I knew I was going to be a musician when I was 12 years old, so I wasn’t a good academic student, I’m afraid. I was just waiting for my chance to find some excuse to leave,’’ he once said.
‘‘I remember the first time I’d ever heard a symphony orchestra live at the Melbourne Town Hall and it was Tchaikovsky,’’ he recalled in an interview with Bigfoot Music in 2017.
‘‘If I was teetering on falling in love with music, that was the moment. The power of the music was incredible.’’
Sellers started out on the piano but he quickly discovered a love of percussion and, by 14, he was learning the drums in earnest.
His first drum kit was a set of Ludwigs bought from the dairy owner across the road by his parents, who did so on the condition he work off the outlay by doing odd jobs. After leaving school, he played gigs at night and worked in the television and sound section of a department store, fulfilling his parents’ wish to have a ‘‘back-up career’’.
But soon drumming took over completely and Sellers threw himself in to the Melbourne music scene, playing gigs through the night and setting up on the Port Melbourne pier in the morning to busk till the cops chased the musicians away.
After a stint in Sydney, he moved to New Zealand, where he joined the Mike Walker Trio, playing a five-year residency at an Auckland jazz club.
In the late 1960s he toured in the United States, including gigs with The Seekers, and paused only to study under Johnny Mathis’ drummer, Jim Ganduglia.
Europe came calling in the 1970s and Sellers soon found himself in London.
Arriving skint, he started out as a truck driver. Through a fortuitous turn of events he managed to get his drum kit sent out from the US (he had been unable to fork out the money to bring it with him). Now he was open to getting gigs without the expensive necessity of hiring instruments.
He played in several ensembles, including Nucleus with trumpet player and composer Ian Carr, and performed at festivals all over Europe.
There were no luxury tour buses on the road with Nucleus, he recalled. ‘‘It was all in the Volkswagen, five of us crammed in and very uncomfortable, lousy money, but we all did it because we were young and the band had a lot of fizz.’’
Back in London, he played all the jazz clubs: the 606 Club, the Roundhouse, the 100 Club. He frequented the legendary Ronnie Scott’s club (till his money ran dry), eventually landing a gig in the club’s support band. After proving his worth, he was brought into Scott’s Quartet.
‘‘Every night . . . the finest jazz musicians on the planet would be coming through Ronnie’s . . . I got to know all kinds of people. It was like a masterclass every night,’’ Sellers recalled in later years.
Indeed, he played with the who’s who of jazz: Bill Evans, Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, Mike Nock.
It was Rodger Fox who talked Sellers into returning to New Zealand in the early 1980s. Fox, fresh from a gig at the Montreux festival in Switzerland, dropped into Ronnie Scott’s and found the young Sellers playing drums in the house band.
He sat down with Sellers, by this stage rather jaded with Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, the regular IRA bomb scares and the changing music scene in London, and talked about an opportunity to play a residency at Wellington’s Cricketers Arms Tavern.
Sellers was sold, and within months was back in New Zealand. He was soon followed by his future wife, Eve Halliwell, an artist he had met three months earlier at a party in Brixton, south London.
While their marriage did not last, the pair remained close friends over the years and considered each other family. It had been a second marriage for Sellers, who was married in his early years in Melbourne. He has a son, Evan, from that union.
Sellers and Halliwell continued to share a home for many years before he moved to Naenae. But when he became ill three years ago, she insisted he move into the flat beneath their Karori home, where she looked after him till he moved into Mary Potter Hospice.
It was at the Cricketers Arms that Sellers met lifelong friend and fellow musician Paul Dyne, who played bass.
They hit it off from the first rehearsal. ‘‘We were kind of like the engine room for a whole lot of groups,’’ Sellers once said.
Dyne described his friend as being a ‘‘master of deep swing jazz drumming’’. ‘‘It was the kind of playing that made people want to dance. He could keep time like no other drummer I know.’’
Dyne played with Sellers in Boptet, a trio (and sometimes quartet and quintet). They performed every Sunday night at the Lido cafe in Wellington in a 22-year residence. The clientele was often made up of hard-up waterswilling jazz students faithfully tapping along to the band.
Sellers was the consummate professional – always on time to rehearsals and gigs, always well prepared, always dressed for the part, says Dyne. ‘‘He would record rehearsals and dissect and analyse them at home. He was a perfectionist. But he was also full of fun and good humour.
‘‘Hanging out with Roger before and after the gig was almost as good as performing, particularly those long nights sitting outside the Lido.’’
Sellers played in countless ensembles over his lifetime. He was the ‘‘go-to’’ musician for any international act that came to New Zealand needing a jazz drummer. With Sustenance Quartet he recorded five albums and performed numerous concerts.
He began teaching in 1983 at what would become Massey’s New Zealand School of Music. He taught thousands of students in the art of jazz percussion till Victoria University took over the course in 2014.
He had a natural touch, both as a musician and as a teacher. Former students talked of a muchloved teacher who always put humanity first over music and ego.
He found something positive in everyone he taught, says long-time friend Greg Crayford. ‘‘He was a positive person all round and, unlike many a temperamental musician, he never fell out with anyone.’’
He was regarded as a supportive and sensitive musician, added Crayford. ‘‘Sometimes a drummer has to light a fire under the other musicians but also know when to keep it down. That’s called taste. Roger had taste.’’
Sellers’ death after a long illness came as a blow to Wellington’s jazz community.
When Dyne announced his passing on Facebook, he was inundated with messages from people Sellers had played with and taught over his long career.
They talked about a man who had transformed their drumming, a father figure, a mentor and an allround agreeable chap. – By Bess Manson
‘‘It was the kind of playing that made people want to dance. He could keep time like no other drummer I know.’’ Paul Dyne on Roger Sellers
Sources: Paul Dyne, Greg Crayford, Eve Halliwell, Wellington Jazz Club, Bigfoot Music, Mary Potter Hospice.