- Pete King (saxophonist)
: "This article is about Pete King, the tenor saxophonist and manager of
Ronnie Scott's . For the alto saxophonist Peter King, see Peter King. For others with the same name, see the disambiguation page forPeter King ."Peter "Pete" King, bornBow, London in August 1929, is a British jazz tenor saxophonist. He was the manager of London's famous jazz club,Ronnie Scott's , for almost 50 years.After serving in the second world war, King returned to London and took tenor sax and clarinet lessons. His first professional work was with
Jiver Hutchinson in 1947, before going on to join the bands ofKenny Graham , Teddy Foster and Leon Roy.In 1948, he was first tenor in George Evans' Saxes ‘n’ Sevens with Tony Arnopp,
Kenny Clare and Les Evans.He played with
Oscar Rabin 1948-1950 andKathy Stobart 1950-1952. In September 1952 he recorded with theRonnie Scott Quintet, which also includedDill Jones ,Lennie Bush , andTony Crombie . While playing with the various bands Scott formed in the latter half of the 50s, King was also a member ofJack Parnell 's band, and shortly afterwards, together with other musicians left to form Scott's nine piece orchestra featuring Scott and King on tenor saxes and other leading jazz musicians includingDerek Humble (as),Jimmy Deuchar (tp),Ken Wray (tb),Benny Green (bs),Lennie Bush (b), and Tony Crombie (d).In 1956, both King and Scott were members of the
Victor Feldman Big Band.After the break-up, in 1957, of Tubby Hayes' and Ronnie Scott's
The Jazz Couriers , of which King had been the manager, he and Scott openedRonnie Scott's jazz club and King effectively gave up playing to run the club, which he continued to do for several years after Scott's death in 1996.As well as the day-to-day running of the club, King was instrumental to the negotiations between the Musicians' Union and the
American Federation of Musicians to lift the former's ban on American musicians. Although there had been occasional exchanges for specific concerts, i.eStan Kenton andLouis Armstrong , the new deal provided for more regular exchanges of British and American players. As a direct result of the deal, theTubby Hayes Quartet went off to play at theHalf Note Club in New York andZoot Sims was booked for a month-long residency at Ronnie's in November 1961. The success of the agreement led to leading saxophonists, includingSonny Stitt ,Stan Getz ,Johnny Griffin ,Roland Kirk ,Al Cohn ,Ben Webster andBenny Golson , following suit.References
http://vzone.virgin.net/davidh.taylor/peking.htm
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