Ronnie Scott

1927 - 1996

Born Ronald Schatt in London, Scott began playing in small jazz clubs at the age of sixteen. he toured with Johnny Claes, the trumpeter, from 1944 to 1945, and with Ted Heath in 1946, as well as working with Ambrose, Cab Kaye, and Tito Burns. He was involved in the short-lived musicians' co-operative Club Eleven band and club (1948–1950), with Johnny Dankworth and others, and was a member of the generation of British musicians who worked on the Cunard liner Queen Mary(intermittently 1946–c. 1950) in order to visit New York and hear the new music directly.

In 1952 Scott joined Jack Parnell's orchestra, then led his own nine-piece group from 1953 to 1956. He co-led the Jazz Couriers with Tubby Hayes from 1957 to 1959, and was leader of a quartet including Stan Tracey (1960–1967), an octet including John Surman and Kenny Wheeler (1968–1969), and a trio including Mike Carr (1971–1975). He then went on to lead various groups, most of which included John Critchinson and Martin Drew.

Scott was among the earliest British musicians to be influenced in his playing style by Charlie Parker and other bebop musicians. His playing was much admired on both sides of the Atlantic, Charles Mingus saying of him in 1961: "Of the white boys, Ronnie Scott gets closer to the negro blues feeling, the way Zoot Sims does.

Despite his central position in the British jazz scene, Scott recorded infrequently during the last few decades of his career. He suffered periods of depression and, while recovering slowly from surgery for tooth implants, died accidentally from a mixture of brandy and prescription sleeping tablets - at the age of sixty-nine. At the subsequent inquest in to his death, the coroner's verdict was "death by misadventure".

Scott is perhaps best remembered for co-founding the Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, which opened on October 30, 1959 in a basement at 39 Gerrard Street in London's Soho district, later moving to a larger venue nearby at 47 Frith Street in 1965. The original venue continued in operation as the "Old Place" until the lease ran out in 1967, and was used for performances by the up and coming generation of domestic musicians. During this period he also did occasional session work; his best-known work here is the solo on The Beatles' "Lady Madonna".

The club, mainly run by Pete King, Scott's business partner, by now had become the premier British venue for live jazz. It achieved this position mainly by negotiating with the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) and the British Musicians' Union to remove the complete ban on American jazz musicians working in the U.K., and replaced it with an exchange system. Zoot Sims was the club's first transatlantic visitor in 1962, and was succeeded by many others (often saxophonists) in the years that followed.

The club's house pianist until 1967 was Stan Tracey. Scott regularly acted as the club's Master of Ceremonies, and was (in)famous for his repertoire of jokes. After Scott's death, King continued to run the club for a further nine years, before selling the club to theatre impresario Sally Greene in June 2005.

Live Music Magazine 2006

JAZZ

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