Obituary - Joe Temperley, Scottish saxophonist who became giant of New York jazz scene

Died: May 11, 2016

JOE Temperley, who has died aged 88, was a giant of the baritone saxophone and the first Scottish jazz musician to make it on the New York scene. In a career which spanned seven decades, this swinging, soulful, super-lyrical musician worked his way through the best British dance and jazz bands before moving to New York and doing the same there, serving in no less prestigious an organisation as the Duke Ellington Orchestra and, later, its closest modern-day equivalent – Wynton Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

That Temperley was regarded as an integral part of that ensemble’s sound and success was obvious even before he was honoured with a concert in his name last year. Wynton Marsalis told one magazine: “It's difficult to express in words the depth of respect and admiration we have for Joe. And it's not just about music. It's also a personal, a spiritual thing. His approach is timeless. And he's the centre of our band.”

In addition to his long association with that band, Temperley was also an educator who taught at Juillard and the Manhattan School of Music, and was a guest mentor for the Fife Youth Jazz Orchestra during his regular visits back to Scotland where he kept up with his extended family and the jazz community here.

Until old age and ill health took its toll, he was a big, physically imposing figure whose often gruff manner and stern appearance could make grown men – such as his favourite UK pianist, Brian Kellock – quiver in their boots. In the jazz room at Hospitalfield House in Abroath, a large photo of Temperley hangs on the wall behind the bandstand. Its subject appears to glower over in the direction of the piano. “It’s pretty disconcerting,” says Kellock, “even though, once I got to know him, I discovered that he was really a big softie.”

The cumbersome baritone saxophone was an appropriate instrument for a towering figure such as Temperley – but it was not cumbersome in his hands. Famously, he could coax the most tender sounds out of it – as exemplified in recent years on his chosen Scottish encore, an unaccompanied performance of My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose in which the melody was caressed in such a gentle and exquisite way that you knew he was singing the words in his head. It stopped the show every time.

The son of a bus driver, Joseph Temperley was born in the mining town of Lochgelly, in Fife, in 1927. The second youngest of the children, he left school at 14 when his mother secured him a job in a butcher’s shop. By this time, he was already playing cornet alongside his elder brother, Bob, in the Cowdenbeath Brass Band – and it was Bob who bought the youngster his first saxophone, an alto, so he could join his dance band. As Temperley liked to tell it later, he had a total of six months’ of lessons. “All the stuff that I learned, I learned by doing.”

The teenage Temperley formed a band called the Debonairs, in which he played tenor sax and when the Debonairs took part in a dance band competition organised by Melody Maker, his talent was spotted and he was invited to play with the winning band. At the age of 17, he left Lochgelly for Glasgow where he played at the Piccadilly Club on Sauchiehall Street for 18 months.

During the days, he would augment his earnings by playing snooker. “The guys in Glasgow thought that I was just some country boy from Fife and they would be able to take a few bob off me - but they didn't know that I had been playing snooker at the Miners' Welfare for years. The days were quite profitable for me!”

When Tommy Sampson’s band, one of the most popular of the period, came to play at Green’s Playhouse, Temperley went along for an audition and was signed up on the spot. Not yet 20 years old, he moved to London to take the tenor chair in the Sampson band for two years before doing stints with Harry Parry, Joe Loss, Jack Parnell and Tony Crombie before settling into what turned out to be eight year tenure with Humphrey Lyttelton’s band, during which he switched to the baritone sax. “That was the start of my professional career,” he later said. “The rest was incidental.”

With “Humph,” Temperley met many top American musicians – Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Cannonball Adderley and Anita O’Day – and enjoyed his first taste of New York, the epicentre of jazz, in August 1959. It left him wanting more – and in December 1965 he moved there with his wife and son, and took a Christmas job selling radios. “Then I got promoted to stereos…”

After six months without a gig, Temperley was approached by Woody Herman to join his band, but after two years on the road, he had had enough and returned to New York where he freelanced quite contentedly for several years, with a regular gig with the Thad Jones and Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra every Monday at the famous Village Vanguard club.

A change of direction came in October 1974 when the pastor of the Lutheran Church on 54th Street, the church which serves New York’s jazz community, asked Temperley to play at the funeral of Harry Carney, the great baritone saxophonist who had played in Duke Ellington’s band for 45 years.

“I played Sophisticated Lady at Harry’s funeral – and that’s how I got the job replacing him in the Ellington band,” recalled Temperley as he introduced that number at An Evening With Joe Temperley, a special duo concert-cum-trip-down-memory-lane he gave with Brian Kellock at the 2010 Edinburgh Jazz Festival.

Temperley spent ten years in the Ellington band – by now run by Mercer Ellington – before becoming one of the original members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 1990; a gig which he described as being “like a real job with health benefits, dental benefits, a pension”.

Until relatively recently, he was still touring the world with the orchestra – always with his devoted wife Laurie at his side. Despite his obvious frailty, he turned in a series of terrific, moving and surprisingly robust performances, switching between the baritone and the bass clarinet during a mini tour with Brian Kellock which turned out to be his final visit to Scotland in March 2015.

He is survived by his second wife, Laurie, and by his sister Helen.

ALISON KERR