SIMON spillett Big Band Plays Tubby Hayes Live Music & Concerts

Top UK saxophonist Simon Spillett and his all star big band perform music from the 'Dear Tubby H' album

In all its vibrant and diverse history, British jazz has produced a number of musicians who can truly be considered iconic, none more so than the virtuoso saxophonist, composer, and arranger Tubby Hayes. Hayes was arguably the first and one of very few British jazz stars to crack America. He was invited to perform and record there as a star soloist in his own right, an honour accorded to very few British jazz instrumentalists..
Now, fifty years after Hayes’s untimely death aged just 38, a new recording has arrived which presents twelve of his big band compositions and arrangements recorded for commercial release for the very first time.
The Tubby Hayes Big Band first appeared in the early 1960s and performed sporadically right up until Hayes’s passing in 1973. During that time the band produced just two albums, ‘Tubbs Tours’ and ‘100% Proof’. A consequence of this very small output is that the vast majority of Tubby’s big band repertoire was never commercially recorded.
Until now.
Simon Spillett, himself a virtuoso tenor saxophonist in the Hayes tradition, has performed the seemingly impossible task of tracking down the lost big band music of Tubby Hayes. Fellow musicians and relatives of Hayes’s long passed contemporaries were instrumental in facilitating this search. The music has been recovered, restored and recorded by a team of A-list British jazz stars and the album ‘Dear Tubby H’ is released in September on Mister PC Records.
Only Simon Spillett has the instrumental ability and specialist knowledge to make such an ambitious project as this a reality, and it is a fitting follow up to Spillett’s definitive, critically acclaimed biography of Hayes, ‘The Long Shadow of the Little Giant’.
Simon’s friend, colleague, and drummer Pete Cater has assumed the role of producer. Cater was so impressed with the audience response to one of the Spillett big band’s early gigs at London’s 100 Club that he decided at that moment to put his money where his mouth is, so that this music could be recorded to the highest possible standard, in terms of both musicianship and production, with no compromises on standards of performance, audio quality, and all-round musical integrity.
Pete Cater is no stranger to big band music, having first fronted his own band in 1983 and produced several albums as a leader. Setting up his own label is a new venture however. Several further releases are in the can or scheduled for recording in the coming months.
Mister PC Records has arrived in a big way with a hugely impressive debut release with a broad appeal way beyond the specialist jazz niche.
The official album launch gig takes place at 229 Great Portland Street, London W1, on Monday December 11th at 7:30pm.

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