Pat Crumly: Saxophonist, bandleader and friend of Ronnie Scott

'He wasn't a professional musician then, and perhaps at first jazz wasn't his priority," said the pianist Michael Garrick of Pat Crumly. "He had a day job. But when he found jazz he became obsessive about it. He put his head down and became very focussed, determined to catch up ... He played baritone sax in my first big band in 1985, which came together because the BBC producer Keith Stewart gave me a broadcast for it before it had played a note."

Crumly was to become close to Ronnie Scott. He absorbed Scott's tenor style but added to it to the point that, whenever Crumly played at the Ronnie Scott Club, Scott would join the audience to listen, absorbed. Scott gave himself an even better chance to hear the younger man when he added Crumly to his own quartet. After Scott's death in December 1996, Crumly was a key member of the Ronnie Scott Legacy Band, which was really Scott's quartet with Crumly replacing the leader.

Crumly began on clarinet when he was 14 and took on the alto sax at 16. By the time he led his own quartet in Oxford, during the Sixties, he had added soprano and tenor saxes to his armoury. The quartet backed many of the top British soloists who visited the university.

From 1971 to 1975 Crumly presented a jazz programme for BBC Radio Oxford, interviewing on air many of the musicians that he'd accompanied. He formed and led for three years a band called Edge, which included Michael Garrick. A turning point for him came in 1973 when, due to the absence of the regular tenor player Don Rendell, he was asked to tour with the John Dankworth band and also to teach at Dankworth's summer school at Wavendon, Buckinghamshire.

When he turned professional in 1978 the music world opened up for him and he moved to London the following year. He toured with the singers Jack Jones and Cleo Laine and Dankworth again. In 1979 he played in the West End show Tommy and in 1981 played for three months at South Africa's Sun City resort.

By now he spanned the jazz and rock fields and played for Helen Reddy, Zoot Money and Alan Price. He toured the world with The Animals in 1983 and with Eric Burdon in 1984. He was given a grant that year by the Arts Council to enable him to write and record a suite for a sextet, Third World Sketches, which was released on a record of the same name. He formed a fusion band, Strata, and toyed with his own big band, but eventually settled for the quartet. In 1987 he toured Cuba, and in 1991 he became a Buddhist.

During the Nineties he continued to work in both idioms, travelling with the rock musicians Chris Farlowe and Roger Chapman and, in 1995, recording an album on flute with the singer Salena Jones.

In the early 2000s Crumly's quartet played residencies at Ronnie Scott's and later worked regularly at the 606 Club in London. In 2006 they played a season in Athens and also appeared in Beirut and Kurdistan, with more seasons at Scott's to follow. Crumly later freelanced and taught music in London. He died while on holiday in Italy.

Steve Voce

Patrick John Crumly, saxophonist and bandleader: born Oxford 9 February 1942; twice married (two sons); died Tropea, Italy 29 September 2008.

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