The traditional jazz revival of the 1950s and 1960s was mainly about re-creating earlier styles of music with a degree of authenticity. Some bands slavishly copied the 1920s records of Louis Armstrong, King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. Others took a more relaxed approach, attempting to create something new and distinctive within the overall style. In his work as a clarinettist, first with Ken Colyer and then with Chris Barber, Ian Wheeler managed to develop an immediately recognisable personal style, yet without compromising the New Orleans flavour of his sound. When he toured alongside the veteran clarinettist Edmond Hall, a former member of Louis Armstrong’s band, Hall pronounced that Wheeler played the traditional set-piece solo on the tune High Society “better than anyone I ever heard anywhere”.
Wheeler’s warm tone, fluid ornamentation, and melodic inventiveness stood him in good stead on his preferred instrument. He became a much imitated figure on the British jazz scene, not just for his playing, but also for his appearance, sporting a Viking beard, using a white mouthpiece and an unusual embouchure that led him to play the clarinet slightly offset to the right. He was a competitive jam session player, notably jousting with the modern jazz alto saxophonist Joe Harriott at a Barber concert from the London Palladium in 1961, where their ideas flowed seamlessly from one to the other on a hard-swinging version of Gershwin’s S’Wonderful.
With Barber’s encouragement, Wheeler branched out from specialising solely on the clarinet. He added the alto and soprano saxophones as well as the harmonica to his range of instruments. His soprano playing was somewhat derivative of Sidney Bechet, and after a modest success in 1960 with his record of Yvette, Wheeler forsook it in favour of the alto. He played this in the manner of a New York “jump band” small-group musician of the 1930s, bringing a fiery urgency to Barber’s recordings of pieces such as Harlem Bound. His harmonica playing helped to stretch the Barber group’s repertoire, and along with the guitarist John Slaughter (obituary, August 21, 2010) he took the band into Chicago blues territory with his feature number Ride On.
Ian Gordon Wheeler was born in Greenwich and grew up in southeast London. He joined the RAF at 17, but left owing to ill health, and instead signed up with the merchant marine for a year in 1949. Again he was invalided out, and while recuperating in hospital took up first the ukulele and then the guitar. Before long he was the guitarist in Charlie Connor’s band. Connor was a clarinettist, and Wheeler found himself fascinated by the instrument, eventually buying an old Albert-system clarinet for 25 shillings. In three years he progressed from a novice to becoming a member of the Mike Daniels Delta Jazz Band, a well-known London group. When Acker Bilk left Ken Colyer’s band in 1954, Wheeler took his place, joining the top rank of British jazz ensembles.
The mid-1950s Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen were the focal point of the New Orleans revival in Britain. Playing at Studio 51 in Great Newport Street (immortalised in Michael Winner’s film West 11), the band’s gruff, uncompromising brand of traditional jazz grew a huge following. Colyer, Wheeler and the trombonist Mac Duncan formed a particularly effective partnership, and their records sold extremely well. However, in 1960 Monty Sunshine (obituary, December 11, 2010) left Barber’s band, and Wheeler was offered the chance to take his place. He was to spend a total of 26 years with Barber, in 1961-68 and 1979-98. Even after leaving the band, Wheeler frequently returned for reunion concerts, most recently at the Edinburgh Festival last August.
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Wheeler’s playing was also a vital ingredient of several of the records that Ottilie Patterson made with the Barber band, and his clarinet would weave intricate melody lines behind her vocals.
In his years away from Barber, Wheeler settled in the West Country at the end of the 1960s, leading his own band there for three years before joining forces first with the cornettist Rod Mason, and subsequently the trumpeter Keith Smith. After leaving Barber for the second time, Wheeler played as a freelance, and recorded under his own name.
Ian Wheeler, jazz clarinettist and saxophonist, was born on January 13, 1931. He died on June 26, 2011, aged 80