Little Giant steps
The recorded prime of a once and future hero of British jazz.
TIMING AND circumstance conspired to bury the legacy of Edward Brian ‘Tubby’ Hayes, who for at least 18 years of his short life, was the kingpin – the Little Giant – of British modern jazz (nobody say “Brit-bop”). Fleet of tenor saxophone, vibraphone and flute, he progressed from 15-year-old child prodigy obsessed with Bird, Getz and Gillespie – “barely bigger than his saxophone”, he scared British tenor ace Ronnie Scott with his buttery flurries of 16th notes – to an esteemed player who impacted across the Atlantic, recorded in New York, featured in movies, fronted his own TV show and regularly topped music magazine polls. Tubby was Britain’s best-loved jazz ambassador in the early ’60s, a skilful selfpromoter who maintained a genial modesty.
But by the time he died, only 38, in 1972, during a heart operation, British jazz had been driven underground by rock. Even Ronnie Scott had stopped booking home blown acts in his club. Record sales tanked. Tubby wound up scratching a living in suburban jazz clubs and developing a drug habit. By the time my generation came looking for jazz, a few years later, his records were invisible and his story more about his demise than his achievements.
Now that British jazz has become fertile digging ground for collectors, demand for affordable reissues of Tubby’s music has steadily grown. Here’s the most ambitious answer yet to that demand, The Complete Fontana Albums 1961–1969 ★★★★★ (Decca), a stunning presentation across 13 CDs (adding two discs of outtakes) or 11 vinyl LPs (the original albums), beautifully remastered by the fastidious folk at Gearbox, with Hayes’s biographer, sax-player Simon Spillett, supplying exhaustive notes (545 words eulogising the Fontana label design!) in a 148-page booklet (32pp in vinyl edition), all in a tactile, cloth-bound box. “The Fontana recordings amount to one of the greatest documents of a UK-born jazz improviser ever assembled, [standing] shoulder-to-shoulder with the finest material in the international jazz canon,” asserts Spillett. However, elsewhere he admits that Hayes, “wasn’t a life-changing innovator, or a musician who left recordings that seemed to suggest something otherworldly and indecipherable.” Some contemporary critics carped that Hayes was an impressive technician, thrillingly at ease on the stand, but whose work didn’t linger emotionally. Yeah, but no. Immerse yourself in his music and it’s hard not to be won over by Tubby’s tone, limpidity and palpable pleasure at his work. There is far more here than the outpourings of a journeyman. He may not have possessed Coltrane’s mystique or Bird’s backstory, but his music can undoubtedly transport you somewhere equally enriching.
Tubbs (1961) offset breathless bop with the sweetly romantic The Folks Who Live On The Hill on vibes, and impressed jazz lovers everywhere, hence Tubbs In N.Y. (1962), featuring American musicians and the confident, memorable A Pint Of Bitter (by Clark Terry) and lubricious Doxy, which Tubby saunters through flirtatiously, his tenor on full-beam. On three fine 1962 recordings, he’s playing bop that swings in a wide arc, miraculous on two live quintet shows, Late Spot At Scott’s and, especially, Down In The Village, the title tune allowing Tubbs to astonish on both sax and vibes. Tubbs’ Tours (1964) unpacks exotic influences from India, Israel, Russia and beyond, for jazz orchestra. After a recording lull, the assured big band sessions for 100% Proof (1967) provide most of the bonus material. 1968’s poor-selling quartet outing, Mexican Green, a bold admission that musical times had changed, is now widely regarded as Tubby’s overlooked masterpiece, certainly his hippest work, and a good way in. Potential 1969 album Grits, Beans And Greens might even have outstripped Mexican Green had it been completed. The Fontana years closed with The Orchestra, Tubby’s attempt at commercial, easy-listening pop without compromising his artistry.
To see and hear these largely unknown records receiving so much loving attention after all these years is quite moving.
A truly exemplary and enlightening release.
“One of the greatest documents of a UK-born jazz improviser.” SIMON SPILLETT