Bobby rocks on: Rediscovering Bobby Wellins

The words “great” and “legend” are bandied about freely these days but they certainly apply to Scots-born jazz saxophonist Bobby Wellins, whose status in the British jazz history was assured as far back as 50 years ago, when he played on what has long been regarded as the best British jazz album of all time, the Stan Tracey Quartet’s Under Milk Wood. Indeed, he is the only living musician included in the Scottish Jazz Hall of Fame.

Wellins, an intensely modest and self-effacing character, is still playing beautifully at the age of 75, and next week audiences across Scotland will have a rare opportunity to hear him playing his own compositions, the Culloden Moor Suite and the Caledonian Suite, with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, which is directed by fellow saxophonist Tommy Smith.

As a Scot who became a professional musician back in the 1950s, when London was the mecca for British jazz, Wellins must marvel at the opportunities and encouragement available to young players here in Scotland these days – and the rude health of the Scottish jazz scene. Were he a young player now, there wouldn’t be the imperative to move away, and it seems fitting that this hugely influential jazz “exile” is being fêted and embraced by Tommy Smith’s organisation, which represents the cream of today’s Scottish jazz talent.

Robert Coull Wellins was born into a showbiz family living in Glasgow’s Gorbals area. His mother, a singer whose stage name was Sally Lee, and alto saxophonist father – who was from a Russian-Jewish family – worked in a show band which played in the Argyle Cinema before establishing their own double act, which they took on the road around Scotland.

After he returned from serving in the Second World War, Wellins’s father began to teach him to play alto sax. Every Sunday, his parents would have “showbiz friends” to visit, and Wellins had to play a party piece. He later recalled: “My sister and I had to be what they called consummate musicians before my mum and dad would let us play for their friends.” Round about the same time, Wellins’s dad bought the family a second-hand radiogramme which came with a record collection that was almost a complete jazz education in itself.

That education continued with a couple of years at the RAF School of Music – where he switched to tenor sax – followed by stints with numerous big bands, during the big band era’s last hurrah. Being young and unattached, Wellins spent three years deputising for the married musicians who needed time off for holidays and family commitments. “It was,” he later said, “the best foundation you could ever have.”

A transatlantic trip in 1950, with Vic Lewis’s band, led to some defining experiences for the young Wellins: in New York, he went to an all-night party where he met saxophonists Gerry Mulligan and Zoot Sims – “both idols of mine” – and chanced upon the great tenor man Lester Young in the street.

“Most of the people I idolised,” Wellins later said, “were offspring of Lester’s influence.

“I spotted the famous pork-pie hat across the street and realised who it was. And I couldn’t help myself. Being young and foolish, I just shot out across the road and introduced myself to him.”

Wellins spent the afternoon buying drinks for Young and discussing everything from current affairs to his first experiences of New York.

Young’s melancholy sound can be detected in Wellins’s own playing, along with a yearning that critics often describe as a Scottish quality. This Scottish flavour is to the fore on the two compositions which Wellins will be performing with the SNJO next week.

His Culloden Moor Suite was actually written way back in 1964 – before Tracey wrote his iconic Under Milk Wood jazz suite for Wellins to play – but it has never been recorded, and has only been performed once, back in the 1960s.

Inspired by John Prebble’s book about the Battle of Culloden, it has been rearranged by Florian Ross for these concerts – along with the Caldeonian Suite, a collection of pieces written in the 1990s and inspired by James Barke’s series of biographical novels about Robert Burns.

Even when he’s not composing a piece inspired by Scottish history or literature, Wellins is aware that there’s something inherently Scottish about his music – and so was surprised when Dizzy Gillespie told him that his composition Dreams Are Free was “very African”.

They had a wee debate about it, and then, six months later, Wellins was woken by a phone call at three in the morning. It was Dizzy Gillespie. He told the bemused Wellins: “I’ve just been to a Scottish pipe band parade on 42nd Street. You’re right. That composition of yours is Scottish.” And he hung up.

• Bobby Wellins & the SNJO play the Music Hall, Aberdeen on 27 October; the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh on 28 October; the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow on 29 October and Eden Court, Inverness on 30 October. For more information, visit www.snjo.co.uk