Eddie Blair 25/06/1927 – 26/12/2020

Trumpeter Eddie Blair, who died on Boxing Day aged 93, was one of many Scottish musicians, including Jimmy Deuchar and Duncan Lamont, who moved to London in the late 1940s and 1950s and became absorbed into the jazz scene.

Although not as well-known beyond the musicians’ inner circles as Deuchar, or Kenny Wheeler, whose style he influenced, Blair had the chops and imagination that would have served a more illustrious ‘solo’ career.

He was born into a musical family in Johnstone, Renfrewshire on 25 June 1927. His father played cornet and violin and Eddie took up the cornet aged 10. Playing with the Johnstone Silver Band gave him the musical grounding that facilitated dance band work before he joined the Royal Signals in 1945.

After demobilisation in 1948 Blair attended Glasgow College of Technology, playing with jazz and dance bands in the evenings, and got his first taste of London – briefly – with the Ken Mackintosh Band before returning to college.

By 1951 his work with Mackintosh and Glasgow pianist George Scott Henderson, whose quintet won the runner-up 1949 Melody Maker ‘All Britain’ contest (Blair also won an individual Melody Maker Jazz Award in 1949), had come to the notice of Johnny Dankworth, who invited Blair to replace the Germany-bound Deuchar. After four years with Dankworth’s Seven and Orchestra, Blair joined Ted Heath for 11 years, recording regularly and touring the US in 1956 but also recording with Johnny Keating (including the Swinging Scots big band), Vic Lewis, Tubby Hayes and Stan Tracey and working with Ronnie Scott.

He, Deuchar and Aberdonian Bobby Pratt formed the all-Scottish trumpet section on Hayes’ Jazz for Moderns and his absolute dependability made him a natural for session work. TV programmes including The Avengers, Jimmy Rushing, Sacha Distel, blues band Savoy Brown and Mike Oldfield’s sister, Sally all figured in his diary before, aged sixty-five in 1992, Blair retired to concentrate on skiing and golf.