Respected jazz drummer who helped break the mould
The jazz drummer Tony Levin worked through a 50-year era in which the public perception of drummers changed immeasurably ? from the caricature of the flamboyant showman, the metronome in the shadows, or the butt of jokes, to the sophisticated, pivotal, creative ensemble player. Levin, who has died aged 71 following complications from treatment for lymph cancer, was respected across Europe for his ability to power a jazz ensemble to its creative limits, but also for his sensitivity to the tone-colours latent in a drum-kit. If drummers are widely appreciated as complete musicians today, the modest, witty and generous-spirited Levin contributed to that emancipation everywhere he played.
Levin broke on to the UK jazz scene in spectacular fashion in 1965 when he was hired by the saxophonist Tubby Hayes to join his quartet, one of the few internationally admired British modern jazz groups of the period. He went on to work with a procession of American celebrities as a house drummer at Ronnie Scott's club in Soho, London, in the groups of innovative younger Britons such as the pianist John Taylor and the trumpeter Ian Carr, and from the late 1970s on the continental European scene with leaders from Germany and France.
Although he gravitated towards the spontaneous communion of free-improvised jazz over the years, he was open to all music, and adaptable to many styles ? from Humphrey Lyttelton's modernised trad band in the late 60s to the improvisational quartet Mujician, which retained the same lineup for 22 years and toured as a 70th birthday tribute to its still-vibrant drummer in October 2010.
Levin was born in Much Wenlock, Shropshire. His parents had been evacuated from Birmingham during the second world war, but the family later returned to the city to run their successful furniture business. Levin took up drums in his early teens, taught himself, and was quickly active on the Birmingham jazz scene, while also working for the family firm.
Hayes heard Levin on a Birmingham gig and hired him for a three-year stretch, during which the world-class saxophonist's flying bop-based improvisations not only astonished fans and musicians alike, but stretched the technique and stamina of accompanists to the edge. Hayes's 1967 album Mexican Green includes the theme Second City Steamer, composed in acknowledgement of Levin's parallel life. He was by then managing director of the family business and something of a jazz rarity in possessing an Aston Martin, which hastened him back up the M1 after gigs in time to open the shop the next day.
Meeting the Hayes challenge brought Levin regular work at Ronnie Scott's with such American stars as the saxophonists Joe Henderson, Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, and with pioneering UK players including the saxist Joe Harriott. Levin also contributed to many British bands in a period in which the local jazz scene was beginning to grow in confidence and independence from America ? in contemporary groups led by the saxophonist Alan Skidmore (in 1969, the same year that he worked for Lyttelton), the pianists Taylor and Gordon Beck and the jazz-fusion trumpeter Carr (1970s), and briefly with the saxophonist John Surman (1976).
From the later 70s, Levin's reputation also began to spread across Europe. He worked in the group Third Eye with the German bassist Ali Haurand, with the classy and eclectic Belgian guitarist Philip Catherine in the 1990s, and in an intuitively powerful partnership with the bassist Paul Rogers in the Parisian pianist Sophia Domancich's trio. In 2006 Levin recorded at John Zorn's New York establishment, the Stone.
But it was with Rogers, Keith Tippett and Paul Dunmall that Levin found perhaps his most congenial environment, in the brilliant Mujician. Dunmall, a gifted saxophonist combining elements of post-Coltrane jazz and Evan Parker's more abstract approach, became one of the drummer's favourite associates (the two made the album Spiritual Empathy under Levin's name in 1994) and the pianist Tippett is one of Europe's most resourceful improvisers, using all the tone-generating and percussive potential of an acoustic piano. The group required both Levin's jazzy drive and his empathetic attention to the details of dynamics and tone ? and the drummer unfailingly and imaginatively delivered.
Levin regularly ran his own clubs in the Birmingham area, and the gig-list at his monthly TL's Jazz Club featured many UK luminaries, with Levin, his bass-playing wife, Chris, and his drummer son, Miles, often in support. An assiduous archivist of homegrown jazz, he also ran his own record label, Rare Music. A remarkable list of material still in the label's pipeline features Levin in some of his most rewarding partnerships.
Catherine has written that "tempo-wise, Tony had this magic cymbal drive ... bouncing ... volcanic even. The whole band ... was getting magic by contagion ? Tony could play with you. Not only at the same time as you, but with you." Fellow performers, longtime listeners and new admirers alike will know just what he means.
Levin is survived by Chris and their children, Sam and Max; by his children, Juliet, Helen and Miles by his first wife, also Chris; and by a brother and two sisters.
? Tony Levin, drummer, born 30 January 1940; died 3 February 2011
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