Danny Moss: World-class tenor saxophonist

Britain has produced a number of world-class tenor saxophonists, and Danny Moss was in the top three or four. Not perhaps as original as Tubby Hayes or Don Rendell, he had a warmer and fatter sound and was happy to acknowledge the many American players on whose playing his style was founded. He would have been aware of the sagacity of Steve Race's remark of 70 years ago: "There is no such thing as British jazz. There is only American jazz played by British musicians."

"I'm part of the Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster school," said Moss, "but there are so many others that influenced me, like Don Byas, Lucky Thompson, Zoot Sims, Bud Freeman or Eddie Miller. My conception of jazz improvisation is based on three principles: melodic lines, swing and sound."

In his younger years, Moss was constantly in demand as a sideman and the eclectic selection of bands he worked in included those led by Ted Heath, Humphrey Lyttelton, Johnny Dankworth and Geraldo.

Inspired by seeing the New Orleans clarinettist Jimmy Noone in a B-movie when he was 13, Moss swapped his most prized possession, a pair of skating boots, for a second-hand clarinet. He joined an informal band at his school in Brighton and it must have soon become apparent to him that he had that greatest of musical attributes, perfect pitch. After three years he acquired a tenor saxophone and, leaving school in 1943, got a job at a local ballroom with Wally Rogers's Quintet. There was a shortage of musicians because they'd all been called into the services. Since most towns in Britain had dance halls, there was great demand for youngsters like Moss.

In 1945 he was called into the RAF for three years. "I went into one of the regional bands and spent my time marching up and down parade grounds at seven o'clock in the morning with frostbitten fingers," he told Peter Vacher in Jazz Journal. Two weeks after Moss left the RAF in 1948, the Vic Lewis Orchestra, a committed jazz group, came to Brighton, where Moss lived with his family. Lewis heard Moss and gave him a job immediately. The band toured Britain relentlessly and, in pre-motorway days, Moss learned the exigencies of life on the road, often sleeping in the band coach to save money to pay for a few extra pints of beer.

Leaving the Lewis band he joined Basil Kirchin's quintet and then moved to the legendary big band led by Tommy Sampson (to frustrate competition from Sampson, Ted Heath hired seven of Sampson's musicians, thus taking the heart out of the band). In 1950-51, Moss had a well-paid but musically frustrating year in the dance band of Oscar Rabin and then learned about really hard drinking with eight months in the Squadronaires.

In May 1952 he joined Ted Heath, the most prestigious although not necessarily the most jazz-oriented job a musician could get. Moss earned five times as much as he had done before. "We got paid in old-fashioned fivers, those great big white things," he recalled:

Masses of them used to come in every week. You didn't talk money with Ted, you just knew it was going to be an awful lot of money. But Ted wasn't a jazz musician in any way. I don't think he even liked it.

Moss was dismayed to find that he was expected to play the same solo, note for note, on every number: "Horrific. This was death to an improvising musician. Ted had the singers Dickie Valentine, Lita Roza and Dennis Lotis, and that's what really drew the people. It was a 150 per cent commercial band."

After three years, Moss left and joined Geraldo, whose band he regarded as far superior to Heath's. He stayed for two years until March 1957 when he was asked into the Johnny Dankworth big band where he instantly became one of the most featured soloists. On free nights he often worked in the Alex Welsh Dixieland band. In 1959 he went to play at the Newport Jazz Festival with the Dankworth band. He found a new fan in Count Basie. "I wish the young guys would play that way," Basie said of Moss's playing. "That's a real Texas tenor. That's the way it should sound."

He was with the Dankworth band in the film 6.5 Special in 1958 but in 1962 after five years with Dankworth, Moss had to leave when the band's work fell away as rock music advanced. Humphrey Lyttelton's band still prospered and Moss joined it, staying for two years and enjoying himself hugely, most notably when the band had the American trumpeter Buck Clayton on tour as a guest.

Moss was appointed MBE in 1990. It was correctly rumoured that Lyttelton had turned down at least two offers of honours. "I'm sorry," Moss said to Lyttelton on the next occasion that they met. When he left Lyttelton he met the jazz singer Jeannie Lamb, whom he married in 1964 and they worked together for the rest of Moss's life.

Although he continued to play in bands like those led by Sandy Brown and Alex Welsh, Moss's main occupation became the quartet that he led when he left Lyttelton. He appeared with the Freddy Randall-Dave Shepherd All Stars in the film That's Jazz (1973). During the Seventies he recorded with Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Sarah Vaughan and Rosemary Clooney, and also played in various symphony orchestras. He was a founder member, in 1980, of the Pizza Express All Stars and appeared with a version of the band at the 1981 Nice Jazz Festival. He first toured Australia in 1983 with Jeannie Lamb and was a member of the occasional big band formed by the drummer Charlie Watts in 1985.

He and his wife loved Australia and in 1989 settled in Perth. From there they toured annually in the United States and Britain, eventually giving up the US trips and settling for long visits to Britain every year, the last of which was at the end of last year. In 2005 Moss was diagnosed with cancer, but he continued working and touring with his wife and their bassist son Danny Moss Jnr. To help pay for the expensive treatment he required, benefit concerts led by musicians like John Dankworth and Acker Bilk were held in England and Australia.

Steve Voce

Dennis "Danny" Moss, tenor saxophonist and clarinettist: born Redhill, Surrey 16 August 1927; married 1964 Jeannie Lambe (two sons); died Perth, Western Australia 29 May 2008.