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Jazz legend Sir John Dankworth dies aged 82 - Times Online
From The Sunday Times
February 7, 2010

Jazz legend Sir John Dankworth dies aged 82

Daniel Bates

SIR John Dankworth, the jazz legend has died aged 82, it was announced early today.

The saxophonist, who wrote the theme tune for The Avengers, Tomorrow’s World and Modesty Blaise, had been unwell for several months.

Dankworth, who was knighted in 2006, died yesterday at the King Edward VII hospital in London, his management said.

Dankworth, who was known as Johnny in his early career,was married to the singer Dame Cleo Laine for 52 years.

He also leaves a son, Alec, a bass player, and a daughter, Jacqui, a singer and actress.

Dankworth was a mainstay of the British jazz scene for more than half a century, making regular TV and stage appearances during his career.

He worked with jazz musicans such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington as well as the singers Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Ray Charles.

In October last year he was taken ill at the end of a US tour with his wife. The couple cancelled a number of UK concert dates for the following month, although Dankworth did return to the concert stage for one solo at the London Jazz Festival at the Royal Festival Hall, London, in December, playing his saxophone from his wheelchair.

Born in Woodford, Essex, Dankworth grew up in Walthamstow, north east London, and attended the local grammar school.

He was brought up in a family of musicians and had violin and and piano lessons before settling eventually on the clarinet at the age of 16, after hearing a record of the Benny Goodman Quartet. Soon after that, inspired by Johnny Hodges, he added the alto saxophone to his armoury.

He won a place at the Royal Academy of Music aged 17 and, after completing his national service, he began a career on the British jazz scene, being voted Musician of the Year in 1949.

During that year he attended the Paris Jazz Festival where he played with Charlie Parker.

Dankworth met his wife in 1950 while he was auditioning for singers with his band, the Dankworth Seven. In the 1960s, he scored such films as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Servant.

He and his wife founded their charity, the Wavendon Allmusic Plan, in 1969, which led to the establishment of the Stables arts centre in the grounds of their Buckinghamshire home.

He was made a CBE in 1974 and founded the London Symphony Orchestra Summer Pops in 1985.

He was also a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and received the Freedom of the City of London in 1994.

Last night Stephen Graham of Jazzwise magazine hailed Dankworth as “one of the totemic figures of British jazz” and the country’s “first major jazz musician”.