RIP, 'Lazy Ade' Monsbourgh

[EKE BBB]

From The Independent:

'Lazy Ade' Monsbourgh

Jazz multi-instrumentalist

Published: The Independent, London, 24 August 2006

Adrian Herbert Monsbourgh, trumpeter, valve-trombonist, saxophonist,

woodwind player, pianist and bandleader: born Melbourne, Victoria 17

February 1917; AO 1992; twice married (one daughter); died Melbourne 19

July

2006.

When "Lazy Ade" Monsbourgh and Graeme Bell and his Australian Jazz Band

first arrived in Britain in 1947, hidebound enthusiasts of traditional

jazz

wore beards and sandals and judged the local jazz musicians by how

accurately they aped their American betters. Traditions were respected

and

it was thought crass and vulgar to try to play jazz on a saxophone.

The Bell band blew a gale of fresh air through all that. Until then

listeners in the clubs had sat in studious rows before the bands. The

uninhibited Australians cleared away the chairs and brought in dancing

to

the music. And "Lazy Ade" Monsbourgh and "Pixie" Roberts played

saxophones.

Instead of reverentially recreating performances of jazz themes from

the

Twenties, Monsbourgh and Bell wrote their own tunes and even used "pop"

songs.

Monsbourgh was at once the most eccentric and the most creative man in

the

band. His monosyllabic replies and air of detachment earned him his

nickname. He was, then unheard of in British jazz, a

multi-instrumentalist,

who impressed most on the white plastic alto saxophone that he played.

The

trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton, whose life was changed by the Bell

invasion,

caught the essence of a Monsbrough performance:

The way he wrestled with the sax to produce music that was tough and

sentimental in the same breath always suggested to me someone trying to

extract his own tooth . . . His face, with its short, aggressive nose,

fiercely bulging eyes and long upper lip, had in repose an expression

of

benign and disdainful pugnacity, like a Boxer puppy.

When the Australians returned to Britain in 1951, the band, in the

endearing

habit of Australians, settled uninvited in Lyttelton's home. Lyttelton

claimed to have Australians the way other people had mice. Monsbourgh

and

Lyttelton had a particular musical affinity and, since Lyttelton's

trombonist Keith Christie had recently left to find his way into

"modern"

jazz, Lyttelton's front line consisted only of himself and the

clarinettist

Wally Fawkes. This left ample room for Monsbourgh to step in and the

records

they made together 55 years ago have such spirit and energy that they

are

still selling well across the world today.

"Technically, he was not highly accomplished," wrote Lyttelton:

He and his alto sax lived on terms of mutual distrust and

non-cooperation.

Every note he played seemed to be torn grudgingly from the instrument,

with

which he literally grappled, heaving and lurching about . . .

Monsbourgh formed his first band while at Melbourne University. The

association with Graeme Bell began in 1930 and he was on all Bell's

tours of

Europe between 1947 and 1952. He worked and recorded with Bell's

brother,

the trumpeter Roger, from 1943 to 1971.

Steve Voce