Harry Beckett, Barbadian-born British trumpeter and flugelhorn player, died from a stroke he was , 75

Harold Winston "Harry" Beckett was a British trumpeter and flugelhorn player died from a stroke he was , 75.

(30 May 1935 – 22 July 2010)

Biography

Coming into contact with the British modern-jazz scene for the first time in the early 1970s, I quickly realised that Beckett showed up everywhere – and that he was the kind of player you would always feel heartened to discover was on the stage. He brought a lightness and vivacity to everything he played, but a sinewy precision too – whether in the briefest vignette of a solo in the powerful, talent-packed ensembles of Mike Westbrook, Mike Gibbs, Chris McGregor or Graham Collier, or in the merciless free-fire zone of a cutting-edge small group such as that of the late saxophonist Mike Osborne.
Beckett made everybody's music sound better, without showing the slightest desire to draw attention to himself, and he sustained that balance all his life. Later in his career, Beckett became an inspiration and elder statesman to the late-1980s generation of young, black, jazz-playing Britons. When Courtney Pine, Gary Crosby and others conceived the Jazz Warriors big band in 1985, he was an automatic choice as player, composer and arranger.
If he might have seemed to represent the perennially dependable sidekick, Beckett was an independent force in his own right. His Caribbean roots audibly influenced original compositions that he revealed on his own records from 1970 onwards; his 1991 All Four One album featured an unusual four-flugelhorn lineup, and as late as 2008 he was relaxing into the most contemporary of mixed-idiom projects with the reggae and dance producer Adrian Sherwood, making The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett for Sherwood's On-U Sound label.
Beckett was born in St Michael parish, Barbados. He took up the cornet to play in a Salvation Army band, explored several other brass instruments, and moved to Britain aged 19, where he soon found work with the Jamaican bandleader Leslie "Jiver" Hutchinson's popular group. Beckett was also one of the demanding composer Charles Mingus's favourite recruits for the British band Mingus assembled to play his soundtrack for the 1961 jazz-and-reefers movie All Night Long.
Beckett joined Collier's group in 1961 and became his muse for the next 16 years. He was one of the most creative interpreters of the Englishman's softly shaded and gracefully crafted pieces. Beckett also confirmed his flexibility and employability in the mid-60s in the blues and R&B Nightimers group with the singer Herbie Goins.
Collier contributed to the writing for Beckett's debut album, Flare Up, a boppishly punchy yet typically lyrical 1970 session that also testified to Beckett's clout by featuring stars of the calibre of Osborne, John Surman, Alan Skidmore and John Taylor. The same group also made the equally colourful and engaging Warm Smiles and Themes for Fega albums in 1971 and 1972.
Those lyrical qualities that had endeared Beckett to Collier also worked for the raft of younger UK jazz composers who emerged from the all-night workshop-space of Ronnie Scott's original "Old Place" club in the 60s, and to the innovative South African coterie led by McGregor, which had arrived in London in the same period. Beckett began working with McGregor's thrilling townships-influenced Brotherhood of Breath; with the composer Westbrook; with the bands of Gibbs, Neil Ardley and John Warren; and even with the often fiercely abstract London Jazz Composers' Orchestra alongside such uncompromising improvisers as Evan Parker.
In small groups, Beckett partnered powerful soloists, including the saxophonist Surman and the groundbreaking guitarist Ray Russell; and from 1975 he became a regular member of a rejuvenated Stan Tracey's bands, and of groups led by the saxophonists Elton Dean and Kathy Stobart and by the great South African altoist Dudu Pukwana.
In the 1980s, Beckett became involved with the Jazz Warriors, and also with the Danish guitarist Pierre Dørge's Ellington-esque jazz-and-highlife New Jungle Orchestra. He collaborated on McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath reunion venture, Country Cooking, in 1988. In 1991, he made a series of duet recordings with the piano stars Keith Tippett, Joachim Kuhn and Django Bates for the Passion and Possession album, and formed his four-flugelhorn lineup with brassmen Chris Batchelor, Jon Corbett and Claude Deppa.




The next year, Beckett made the spare but evocative trio album Images of Clarity, his resourcefulness as an improviser getting a rare extended outing in the company only of the bassist Didier Levallet and the drummer Tony Marsh. He also participated in the Dedication Orchestra, a spectacular tribute to McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, featuring some of the best musicians on the UK scene, in particular contributing a beautiful solo to Pukwana's Hug Pine on the band's 1992 album Spirits Rejoice. At the end of the 90s, he struck up a productive relationship with the saxophonist and clarinetist Chris Biscoe – an association that continued into the 21st century, not least in a three-year engagement with France's Orchestre National de Jazz.
Its contemporary grooves and dancefloor ambiance might have surprised the trumpeter's jazz-rooted fans, but The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett only reflected the warmth and curiosity that had characterised the Barbadian's open-handedness from the start. Beckett had worked with the dub and world-music star Jah Wobble over the years, and Wobble's connection with Sherwood always made the collaboration likely.
Beckett remained a legendary figure for the Jazz Warriors generation and for today's young jazz students (he taught trumpet and lectured extensively). He was brought onstage at the Barbican in London last month to join (somewhat unsteadily, but to audible admiration) Jason Yarde's Warriors tribute, as part of Guy Barker's Big Band Britannia venture.
The saxophonist and bandleader Trevor Watts was among those who paid tribute to Beckett: "He was a great player who found the key all musicians like us are looking for. The way to get it on every time he picked up the horn."

Discography

• Flare Up (Jazzprint, 1970) with John Surman, Mike Osborne, Alan Skidmore
• Memories of Bacares (Ogun, 1975) with Daryl Runswick
• Pictures of You (Virgin, 1985) with Elton Dean, Pete Sabberton, Mick Hutton, Tony Marsh, Tim Whitehead, Leroy Osborne
• Live, Vol. 2 (West Wind, 1987) with Chris McGregor, Courtney Pine, Clifford Jarvis
• Passion and Possesion (ITM, 1991) Duos with Django Bates, Joachim Kühn, Keith Tippett
• All Four One (Spotlite, 1991) with Jon Corbett, Claude Deppa
• Images of Clarity (Evidence, 1992) with Didier Levallet
• Before and After (Spotlite, 1999) with Chris Biscoe

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