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British jazz legend star Johnny Dankworth dead | British jazz legend Sir John Dankworth died from age-related illness at the King Edward VII Hospital here on Saturday. He was 82. Sir John, a saxophonist and prolific composer, worked with world
famous jazz exponents Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald to name a
few, over a career spanning more than half a century. His death was announced by
his jazz singer wife, Dame Cleo Laine, during a star-studded concert marking the
40th anniversary of "The Stables", the entertainment venue they set up together at
their Buckinghamshire home. Better known as Johnny Dankworth before he was
knighted in 2006, Sir John started his own jazz orchestra in the 1950s, The
Telegraph reports. He wrote the theme tune for TV shows The Avengers and
Tomorrow's World, and films including Modesty Blaise, The Servant and Saturday
Night and Sunday Morning. Sir John was born in Woodford, Essex, in 1927 and
showed early proficiency on the clarinet. After falling in love with the music of
legendary US saxophonist Charlie
Parker, he took up the same instrument. He won a place at the Royal Academy of
Music aged 17, and after a short spell in the Army, was voted British Musician
of the Year in 1949. Sir John met his wife in 1950 while auditioning singers for
his band, the Dankworth Seven. They married in 1958. That decade also saw him
tour the United States with his jazz orchestra, sharing the bill with the Duke
Ellington Orchestra. He worked with directors like Karel Reisz, Sir Peter Hall,
John Schlesinger, Joseph Losey and Henry Hathaway. In 1985 Sir John founded the
London Symphony Orchestra's Summer Pops, continuing to work with it as artistic
director until 1990. In October last year he was taken ill at the end of a US
tour with his wife. |
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