The British trumpet player Humphrey Lyttelton died on 25th April aged 86. The veteran jazzman and radio personality had been in North London’s Barnet Hospital since 16th April; he was touring and working on radio up to immediately before his hospital admission.

Humphrey Lyttelton, widely known as “Humph”, was born on 23rd May, 1921, the son of a housemaster at the elite “public” school Eton College. He attended Sunningdale preparatory school and then Eton itself and started playing the trumpet in 1936, aged 15. He became a Grenadier Guards officer in 1941 and is reputed to have taken part in the Salerno landings with his pistol in one hand and his trumpet in the other.

After the war he started to work as a cartoonist and jazz musician, playing initially with the George Webb Dixielanders, a 20s-style “revivalist” band recreating the music of New Orleans. In 1948 he met Louis Armstrong at the Nice Jazz Festival, and was later referred to approvingly by Armstrong as “that cat in England who swings his ass off.” He started his own band the same year and stayed in this revivalist genre for some years but gradually moved more towards mainstream jazz and away from trad, not without some bad feeling among fans: Lyttelton was quoted as saying “I got fed up with continually being accused of being a traitor, so I just left the whole trad thing behind.” In 1956 his tune Bad Penny Blues reached the UK Top 20, the first jazz recording to do so. He worked with a wide range of British and US stars, and continued touring and recording with his band till his last illness. Lyttelton was without doubt one of the UK’s best-known and best-loved trumpet players. He was heard by another generation of listeners when he was featured on Radiohead’s 2001 album Amnesiac.

He was perhaps even better-known for his work on radio: his long-running BBC Radio 2 show “The Best Of Jazz” started in 1967, running for over forty years. Most people, though, knew him for his chairmanship, since 1972, of the humorous Radio 4 programme “I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue” which only stopped when he was hospitalized. The show was described as “the antidote to panel games” and Lyttelton was wildly popular with radio audiences for his witty chairing of the anarchic proceedings.

Humphrey Lyttelton’s other accomplishments include eight books and a wide variety of work as a freelance journalist; among his many awards were a Sony Radio Gold Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award at the BBC Jazz Awards. He is widely believed to have refused a knighthood though traditionally this would receive no official comment from either side. He is survived by two daughters and two sons.

Source: Neville Young, various online UK obituaries

Links:

http://www.humphreylyttelton.com/ Humphrey Lyttelton
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3477089.stm BBC News
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3827144.ece The Times

http://www.flickr.com/photos/debbiekoritsas/sets/72157605620689972/ Photos by Debbie Koritsas