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Lol Coxhill was born George Lowen Coxhill on September 19, 1932 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK. Growing up in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire he bought his first saxophone in 1947 at 15. After national service he became a busy semi-professional musician, touring US airbases with Denzil Bailey’s Afro-Cubists and the Graham Fleming Combo.

The 1960s saw Lol playing with Rufus Thomas, Mose Allison, Otis Spann, and Champion Jack Dupree. He also developed his practice of playing unaccompanied solo saxophone, often busking in informal performance situations. He performed mostly as a sideman or as an equal collaborator, rather than a conventional leader with a trio or quartet. Instead he had many intermittent but long-lasting collaborations with like-minded musicians.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was a member of the Canterbury scene bands Carol Grimes and Delivery and then Kevin Ayers and the Whole World. He became known for his solo playing and for duets with pianist Steve Miller and guitarist G. F. Fitzgerald. Coxhill collaborated with Mike Oldfield, Morgan Fisher, Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath and its musical descendant The Dedication Orchestra, Django Bates, the Damned, Hugh Metcalfe, Derek Bailey and performance art group Welfare State among numerous others.

He often worked in small collaborative groups with semi-humorous names Typically these bands performed a mix of free improvisation interspersed with ballroom dance tunes and popular songs. There was a humor in his music though the free playing was not intended as a joke. He performed at the Bracknell Jazz Festival, and following a performance at Bracknell he recorded the melodramatic monologue Murder in the Air.

Soprano saxophonist Lol Coxhill, who also played the sopranino saxophone and was a free improviser and raconteur, passed away on July 10, 2012.

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