Elton Dean

Dean was born in Nottingham and grew up in London. He did not take up the saxophone until he was 18, having previously studied the piano and violin, but once he had begun jamming on tenor sax with various traditional jazz bands, he decided to become a professional. His earliest gigs took him to Germany with a soul group and later an Irish showband, until his first saxophone was stolen. After an enforced break while he found a replacement instrument, he began playing again, and within three years he was on the road as the tenor saxophonist in Bluesology. The group’s pianist, Reg Dwight, showed much promise, and he immortalised his former colleagues by adopting a fusion of Baldry and Dean’s forenames when he left to go solo as Elton John.

Playing the cornet with Baldry’s band was Marc Charig, who was to become a long-term collaborator of Dean’s in the jazz world, starting in 1967 when, together with the trombonist Nick Evans, they joined Keith Tippett’s sextet.

Tippett’s soundscapes involved passages of free playing alternated with composed sections, and soon Dean’s forceful playing, now concentrated on the alto saxophone, became an immediately recognisable ingredient in the sextet’s music. The association with Tippett was to be a long one, lasting until the 1980s, and it carried over into numerous of the pianist’s projects, from his giant big band Centipede to his somewhat smaller ensembles, including Ark.

In the meantime, Dean was to join Soft Machine, recording the famous albums Third and Fourth with what is generally regarded as the group’s most distinctive line-up, with Hugh Hopper, bass, Mike Ratledge, keyboards, and Robert Wyatt, drums.

In their long improvised pieces Dean’s alto and saxello (a variety of straightened saxophone) contributed to the group’s distinctive timbre, ranging from a hushed, almost oboe-ish lyrical beauty, to a harsh, angry corncrake of wails and howls, with growls and squeaks built in. Dean left the band after recording Fifth in 1972, but recently some of his finest broadcast performances with the band have been commercially released for the first time by the Hux company.

The 1970s saw Dean involved in a bewildering variety of projects, but central to his work were his own small band, Just Us, his quartet EDQ, and his larger band, Ninesense. This last group produced Dean’s best work of the 1970s, and its recently released broadcasts show an energy and fire that came from combining some of the brightest talents among the South African exiles who had settled in Britain during the apartheid era with London’s cutting-edge improvisers. It also showed Dean’s fondness for wordplay, as titles mutated through a succession of punning variations, Soothing became Forsoothe, Nicra became Nicrotto and the albums themselves were given titles such as Oh for the Edge and Happy Daze.

The following decade saw Dean continue in many different bands, as well as dividing his time between Paris and London, owing to the fact that his wife was French. He played with Phil Miller’s In Cahoots and with Pip Pyle’s L’Equip’Out, as well as in the Dedication Orchestra, which continued the South African connection.

His own groups, including Newsense, drew some new faces such as the pianist Alex Maguire and the Brazilian bassist Marcio Mattos into the company of long-term colleagues such as Charig and the trumpeter Harry Beckett. Meanwhile, various spin-offs from Soft Machine also continued, culminating in 1999 with SoftWare.

Dean’s recent work included tours and records with yet more derivatives: Soft Works, Polysoft and Soft Bounds, all involving various permutations of former Soft Machine colleagues. He had recorded an album last September and a DVD in France during December with the Soft Machine Legacy, which the band’s recent London appearances were intended to promote.

Elton Dean, jazz saxophonist, was born on October 28, 1945. He died on February 7, 2006, aged 60.