Obituary: Willie Garnett 25/08/1938 – 15/10/2021

Everybody on the London jazz scene seemed to know saxophonist Willie Garnett, who has died aged 83, whether as a bandstand companion, long-term big band leader, emergency instrument repairer or quite simply, as an all-round good guy.  The outpouring of affectionate tributes, anecdotes, and condolences that has flooded social media says it all.  Here’s how baritone saxophonist Pete Lukas put it, “One of the kindest, warmest, funniest, and most generous people I ever had the good fortune to meet.”  

While words like hilarious, gregarious, companionable, famously bibulous even, easily come to mind when remembering Willie, a bulky, avuncular figure, it’s important to remember his prowess as an exciting bluesy, Texas-style tenor player or an assertive, Dolphy-like altoist, wholly in the moment when he played. 

Often, he would pair up with his equally outstanding tenor playing son Alex to front a quintet, or he would be directing the big band that he had led since the 1950s and which made its sole album in 1999 for Music Choice, occasionally nipping in to play a couple of numbers towards the set’s end.  Hearing the band at Imber Court in Surrey, where it appeared regularly or at London’s Café PROSK where it held down a Friday night residency for fifteen years was always an eye-opener: who would be in the band this week and whose arrangements were on offer?   Top players, often including Alex, for certain, and great charts invariably, some contributed by visiting American stars as ‘payment’ for a saxophone repair.

William ‘Willie’ Garnett was born in Haifa, British Palestine, where his father, an Army regular, was based; the family eventually returned to the UK in 1944.  He received saxophone lessons as a teenager from the celebrated altoist Harry Hayes and worked  alongside Hayes in his instrument shop in Piccadilly in 1955, learning the arts of woodwind repair, a skill which sustained him for the rest of his career in parallel with his wide-ranging playing commitments. 

These took in summer seasons, ship’s bands and well-paid gigs with Alexis Korner and even UK tours with the extrovert rocker Little Richard, as well as a variety of overseas excursions.  He was a regular with Alan Stuart’s Octet, Brian Leake’s Sweet and Sour [with whom he recorded] and was a founder-member of the marvellous, all-star London Jazz Big Band in the late 1970s, his searing, near avant-garde alto solos a standout.   Willie was also part of the eleven-piece sax section in the elephantine Charlie Watts Orchestra which recorded in 1986, and appeared at Ronnie Scott’s before touring in the US, band bassist Dave Green recalling the non-stop hilarity in the band bus involving Garnett and his fellow-saxist Olaf Vass, an old friend from the City Lit Big Band.  Green also remembered that Willie and Don Weller, his frequent carousing companion, would sometimes be added to the Charlie Watts ABCD boogie band to memorable effect.

Thereafter Willie free-lanced as and when, ran the big band, while keeping his repair side going, first with a colleague from the Hayes shop, and later with son Alex, also a skilled repairer, at various sites around London, including his home for a lengthy period where Alex, then an aspiring teenage saxophonist, remembered seeing ‘guys like George Coleman, Pepper Adams, even David Sanborn, Michael Brecker and Jerry Bergonzi, half the Count Basie orchestra, you name ’em.  A lot of musicians would turn up  and they’d be jamming.”  Payment seemed arbitrary, a bottle of Scotch or a band arrangement might do.  Later, the premises moved to Canada House in Kentish Town and then to the Ritz Studios in Putney for ten years, each location ‘a meeting place for sax players’, according to Stan Sulzmann. 

In recent years, Willie, having retired from the repair business, played less, beset by a multiplicity of health issues.  Nevertheless, he never seemed to lose his ‘unflappable good nature’ and will be much missed by all those who benefited from his encouragement and personal generosity. “He loved the music,“ said Alex. 

 Our condolences go out to Sue, his wife, to Alex, and his two siblings.  RIP Willie Garnett.