In my student days Bobby Wellins was my idol. I remember announcing to the hipsters of Cambridge, foregathered for lunch at the Corner Cafe, our version of the Algonquin Hotel, that Bobby and Art Themen were the two truly original players in British jazz. In Art’s case I had ample opportunities to confirm the opinion, but Bobby dropped out of the scene because of ill-health and I was left with only fleeting encounters to sustain me. Whereas Art always conveyed an impression of tumbling good-humour, a sort of musical Victorian folly, Bobby’s playing was infinitely wise and melancholy. The recording of Stan Tracey’s Starless And Bible-Black caught the essence of the man perfectly.
Learning that he was booked to play at the Seven Dials, I waited impatiently for the day and was rewarded with one of the most perfect evenings of jazz I’d heard in years. It was all there: the wonderfully measured reflectiveness, the mastery of time and, above all, that inimitable keening sound with a vibrato so slow it hurt.
There is never anything obvious or banal about Bobby. Even his most casual ideas are placed with sly cunning in relation to the changes, so that even I Can’t Give You Anything But Love takes on a new and altogether surprising aspect. When he played My Funny Valentine the whole room fell silent as the edgy, brooding phrases hung like smoke in the air.
The evening was also a perfect demonstration of the strength of traditional forms, proving that the thirty-two bar song and the twelve-bar blues are still perfectly serviceable in the hands of a master.
After so many false starts, let us hope that Bobby Wellins has finally returned to stay.
