Peter King 11/08/40-23/08/20 – An Obituary by Simon Spillett

Coming so hot on the heels of the death of his erstwhile colleague and fellow British jazz saxophone giant Don Weller, the passing of Peter King on 23 August, aged 80 and following a lengthy struggle with various debilitating health conditions, is yet another reminder of how distant the glory days of British ‘modern’ jazz are now becoming.

Born in Kingston in the summer of 1940, at the time King began his playing career during the tail end of the 1950s, the notion of English jazzmen being pallid echoes of their American heroes was widespread. Having taught himself the alto saxophone largely by copying recordings by Charlie Parker, King was among the first to truly reverse this opinion. Indeed, such was his combination of idiomatic certainty and natural fluency that even as a nervous teenager he was capable of turning all the right heads. Tubby Hayes thought him a genuine contender, while Ronnie Scott was so impressed that he asked the young prodigy to play at the opening of his new club in October 1959.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Hailed as Melody Maker's ‘new star’ for 1960, within a short while King was playing in the newly revamped Johnny Dankworth band, before turning his attention to the tenor saxophone as a member of drummer Tony Kinsey’s Quintet.

The 1960s were to be King’s first golden period. Recording with US jazz legends including Quincy Jones (‘The Italian Job’), Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Hampton Hawes and Philly Joe Jones, he had clearly won his international stripes. Even Bud Powell asked him to sit in on one memorable evening in Paris. Back home in London, he was holding down a residency at singer Annie Ross’s Covent Garden club, garnering a reputation for rare sensitivity as a vocal accompanist to stars such as Jon Hendricks and Ernestine Anderson.

Behind the success, though, lay serious battles with hard drug addiction, which King successfully fought and won. This personal minefield cost him a few career breaks (he was asked to join Ray Charles band as a regular member after depping on one tour) but it never dulled his uncannily focused improvisational gift.

The 1970s begun with associations with pianist Stan Tracey (the album Free and One, is sorely in need of reissue) and Canadian trumpet god Maynard Ferguson (hear ‘The Summer Knows’ for a truly spine-tingling King solo) before a crisis of confidence shook him.

Uncomfortable with life playing sessions or depping in pit bands for West End shows, he began a radical rethink of his music. Out went the classic bebop he spoke as a natural (not for nothing was he a founder member of the fondly remembered Bebop Preservation Society) and in came a new fascination with post-bop harmony. As the 1980s dawned a new band came too, a quartet/quintet which set down an impressive string of albums for the Spotlite label. Yet King wasn’t the type to sit on his laurels. The late 1980s and early 1990s found him balancing a high profile role within Rolling Stone drummer Charlie Watts’ various projects and yet another new quartet, centred around pianist Steve Melling, in which a growing Coltrane fixation was evident. Supporting this, composition and arrangement were now obsessing him, this work drawing on the inspiration of Bela Bartók, eventually surfacing in a full-scale opera, Zyklon.

The Peter King many still preferred was the daredevil straight-ahead improviser, able to take even the most uninspiring of grass roots gigs and turn them into a delivery of pure jazz gold. Indeed, as King aged what was always a world class talent blossomed into one of the truly great saxophone voices in jazz, irrespective of country of birth. His incisive yet subtle tone, that astonishing ability to construct spontaneous solos which really did sound like pre-planned compositions, the overall gravitas of his stage presence, these were all things once encountered never forgotten. To some, the apotheosis of this came in his bravura solo rendition of Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Lush Life’, a performance he’d repeat often, a far reaching improvisational soliloquy that could leave the unwary stunned.

Off-stage, King’s life was rarely easy, although the ardent love and support of his wife Linda (who predeceased him) made much of what he achieved musically possible. In 2011, a long-awaited autobiography. Flying High: A Jazz Life and Beyond lifted the lid on this always private, hugely complex personality, gifting the world an account of the highs and lows of creative genius as gripping as that of Art Pepper.

King’s final years were far from comfortable. International jazz name though he was, gigs were sometimes few and far between, and with an ever lengthening catalogue of health worries, the magic he generated on every public performance came with genuine concern that his was a body close to breaking point.

When the end came it was therefore tragic but not unexpected. What Peter King left, however, is and shall forever remain timeless. His recorded legacy may not be as considerable as his talent warranted yet it contains some of the finest jazz ever made by a UK-born musician. Nothing though can quite equal the heady thrill of hearing him live, of the pull and punch of that tone, the spiralling energy of those complex lines, and the sheer life-affirming impact of time spent in the presence of a true jazz master. These are things that seemed to have been present on the UK jazz scene for an age, often accessible for little more than the price of a pint and a raffle ticket. Now they are here no longer and we will all be that much the poorer.

Peter John King – 11 August 1940 - 23 August 2020