Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Tony Crombie was born Anthony John Kronenberg on August 27, 1925 in London, England’s East End Jewish community. A self-taught musician, he began playing the drums at the age of fourteen. He was one of a group of young men from the East End of London who ultimately formed the co-operative Club Eleven bringing modern jazz to Britain. He went to New York with his friend Ronnie Scott in 1947, witnessing the playing of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, he and like-minded musicians such as Johnny Dankworth, and Scott and Denis Rose, brought be-bop to the UK. This group of musicians were the ones called upon if and when modern jazz gigs were available.

In 1948, Crombie toured Britain and Europe with Duke Ellington, who had been unable to bring his own musicians with him, except for Ray Nance and Kay Davis. Picking up a rhythm section in London, he chose Crombie on the recommendation of Lena Horne, with whom Crombie had worked when she appeared at the Palladium.

By 1956 Tony temporarily left jazz to set up a rock and roll band he called The Rockets, modeling themselves after Bill Haley’s Comets and Freddie Bell & the Bellboys. They released several singles for Decca and Columbia. He is credited with introducing rock and roll music to Iceland, performing there in 1957.

The next year the Rockets had become a jazz group with Scott and Tubby Hayes. During the following year, Crombie started Jazz Inc. with pianist Stan Tracey. During the Sixties he scored for television and film and established a residency at a hotel in Monte Carlo. He toured the UK with Conway Twitty, Freddy Cannon, Johnny Preston, and Wee Willie Harris.

In the early 1960s, Crombie’s friend, Victor Feldman, passed one of his compositions to Miles Davis, who recorded the piece on his album Seven Steps to Heaven. The song, “So Near, So Far”, has been recorded by players including Joe Henderson, who named a tribute album to Miles Davis using the title.

Over the next thirty years, Crombie worked with many American jazz musicians, including Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet, Joe Pass, Mark Murphy and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis.

After breaking his arm in a fall in the mid-1990s he stopped playing the drums, but continued composing until his death. Drummer, pianist, vibraphonist, bandleader and composer  Tony Crombie, was regarded as one of the finest English jazz drummers and bandleaders, transitioned on October 18, 1999, aged 74.

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