I first heard Wheeler on recordings with the John Dankworth band, then live and on record with the Mike Westbrook Concert Band where, in each context, he made valuable contributions to the proceedings. I didn’t see him in person in a small-group context until some while later when he was added to the outstanding Mike Osborne-John Surman Quartet at a gig where I was somewhat surprised that someone who played so incisively and adventurously was so self-effacing: after each of his warmly applauded solos he would nod shyly and retreat behind the speakers. There seems to have been no hiding place from the diligent research by Shaw and Smart, who have chronicled numerous concerts, recording sessions and scenes from Wheeler’s professional and private life.
It’s an impressively almost intimidatingly comprehensive book. After an affectionate foreword by Wheeler’s friend and frequent colleague, bassist Dave Holland, you get 420 pages of main text, 2039 notes over 68 pages, eight pages acknowledging sources (both archival and direct contact with the authors in interviews and correspondence) with 53 photos and an index. Recordings and even individual performances at gigs are examined closely. Shaw (an accomplished trumpeter himself, working in jazz and early music) and Smart (also a trumpeter, and head of jazz at the Royal College of Music) certainly did their homework over the decade since Wheeler’s death.
I recall Buddy Rich declaring something along the lines that a modest musician is one who has every reason to be modest. Wheeler was an exemplary illustration of the falseness of that view. Never one to blow his own trumpet (well, you know what I mean) he earned the deep and lasting respect and affection of a wide range of colleagues and audiences because of the originality and highly personal quality of his playing. His discovery of Booker Little’s music had transformed his style after a somewhat uncomfortable relationship with bop but he was no mere copyist of Little, or anyone else. Later he would be an important participant in the British free improvisation movement. I recall hearing him with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and wondering if this could really be the same player I had heard with Dankworth’s band.
As this book records, shyness and lack of self-confidence bedevilled Wheeler throughout his life and the widespread respect and admiration he commanded amongst critics, audiences and fellow musicians seems never to have really reassured him. Yet he was also an exemplar of the maxim “feel the fear and do it anyway”. He had a somewhat troubled childhood in Toronto (his mother was an alcoholic) and one might debate whether environment or temperament was the main factor in his personal diffidence and self-effacement. As for so many others, his art was his refuge and strength.
Song For Someone: The Musical Life Of Kenny Wheeler, by Brian Shaw And Nick Smart. Equinox Publishing, 509 pages including notes and index, hb, £37.50. ISBN 13 978 1 78179 219 3 (h/b); 978 1 80050 607 7 (Epdf; ) 978 1 80050 650 3 (EpUB)
