EDDIE TAYLOR: 12/02/1929 – 20/12/2022

Once described as ‘Humph’s best-ever drummer,’ Edmund ‘Eddie’ Taylor, who has died aged 93, after a period of illness, brought a modernist edge to the Lyttelton band’s performances. Despite the howls of protest from the traditionalists, Taylor stayed for seven triumphant years and was key to the band’s re-imagining as a swinging, mainstream unit.

A Lancastrian, from Oldham, Taylor caught the jazz bug early on although his first noteworthy experience was with the exotically titled Royal Kiltie Juniors as an 18-year-old alongside another aspiring jazzman, the trumpeter Bert Courtley. Following National Service, and by now an established player, he moved seamlessly into a series of dance band residencies up and down the UK. Fate intervened when he was back in Manchester subbing with a local orchestra and the Johnny Dankworth Seven heard him play. Then at the forefront of British modern jazz, the Seven needed a new drummer as Tony Kinsey was leaving and they liked Taylor’s crisp bebop style. The die thus cast, Taylor took to the road and recorded regularly with the group, this now including the future vocal star, Cleo Laine. When Dankworth expanded the personnel to form his big band in 1953, Taylor opted out and signed up for Geraldo’s Navy to work on the transatlantic run to New York. He relished observing the great names of American jazz close-to: Art Blakey, Kenton. Clifford Brown, Lester Young, Basie, and ‘the real genius, Buddy Rich’… he saw them all.

Back in London, he was with Tommy Whittle’s starry sextet for two years and recorded regularly with other ‘name’ modernists. Invited to join Humph in October 1956, Taylor was in on the band’s transformation from the start. The albums, all superb, just kept coming as did tours with Jimmy Rushing and Buck Clayton and most notably perhaps, the US tour with the Newport Festival All-Stars, alongside Shearing, Monk and Konitz. Chafing at the shortage of work, Taylor left Humph in 1964 to join blues singer Long John Baldry briefly, keeping busy with sessions, recordings, supper club residencies, jazz gigs, and theatre work from then on. He played for the entire London run of Kenneth Tynan’s risqué revue Oh! Calcutta, from 1970 to 1980, doubling after hours at Tiberio’s club.

Invited by trumpeter John Chilton to join the Feetwarmers in 1990 to support the rumbustious vocalist George Melly, Taylor stayed on board until 2002. Thereafter, he again resumed the freelance life, gigging and recording with old friends. Everyone liked his clear-cut style, as well as his dry sense of humour, even so, he got tired of ‘schlepping the drums down into basement clubs’, and retired finally in 2012, later moving to Newark to be near his family. Immensely likeable, he was described by Benny Green as ‘the perfect small group drummer’ and so he was. Our condolences to his wife Helen and daughter Charlotte and her family.