Daily Dose Of Jazz…

George Horace Webb was born on October 8, 1917 in London, United Kingdom to a former music hall artiste. He grew up with a love of early jazz recordings, principally those made by the New Orleans musicians. A keen jazz enthusiast, he was a self-taught amateur pianist.

Working as a machine gun fitter in the Vickers-Armstrong factory at Crayford, he organized lunchtime entertainment at the factory, assembling scratch bands from among the workers. With his band, George Webb’s Dixielanders, he played regularly and famously at The Red Barn public house at Barnehurst, Kent, beginning in the early 1940s. They made several recordings and BBC radio broadcasts but by 1948 they had disbanded.

Webb was then part of Humphrey Lyttelton’s band from 1948 to 1951. After a short-term reformation of the Dixielanders in 1952, he concentrated on running a jazz club. In the mid-Sixties he was a musician agent and manager. Early in the following decade, he returned to more frequent playing and toured Europe as a soloist. Another version of the Dixielanders operated for a year and then ran a pub for 12 years.

A move back to Kent had him guest performing in various bands into the 2000s with Humphrey Lyttelton, Wally Fawkes and Eddie Harvey. In his playing he tried to re-create the style of such bands as King Oliver’s.

Pianist George Webb, who is considered by many as the father of the traditional jazz movement in Britain, transitioned on March 10, 2010.

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