Obituary: Jock Bain

Trombone players tend to like each other more than other instrumentalists do. They watch out for each other's interests as though they were blood relatives and even the distinction between jazz and non-jazz players becomes blurred. Jock Bain was unusual at being good at both kinds of playing. It is not going too far to suggest that he was a British Tommy Dorsey. But unlike Dorsey, Bain was a good jazz improviser (Dorsey liked to be able to polish his "improvised" solos in advance).

Bain was equally at home delivering poised and elegant features with Mantovani or mixing it with top jazzmen like Ronnie Scott or Tubby Hayes. Indeed at the 1955 Jazz Jamboree at the Gaumont State in Kilburn, north London, Bain's jazz group shared the billing with the Ted Heath Band, the Ray Ellington Quartet and bands led by Scott and Hayes.

Bain was associated for many years with the bandleader Geraldo, notably in a performance during the Fifties at the Festival Hall of Igor Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto. Some 10 years earlier, the then impecunious Stravinsky had accepted a commission from Woody Herman to compose the suite. The work proved enormously difficult for the Herman band to surmount, since it was written with symphony musicians in mind. But Geraldo's orchestra had to be given credit for tackling the suite, no matter how obscure the artistic target. Everything after that must have seemed easy.

Taking up trombone at school, Bain played in the City of Edinburgh Brass Band before playing in local dance halls. He moved to London in 1935 where he played for Tommy Finnigan's band, but by the end of the year graduated into the Roy Fox Orchestra. Bain stayed with Fox for the next three years, and from then on was always a sideman with the top line bands. He worked with Ambrose in 1942 and with Maurice Winnick in 1943, rejoining both bands in later years, before joining Geraldo at the end of 1944. In 1948 he left Geraldo to open a photographic shop in Edinburgh, but the following year returned to London.

After a further spell with Bert Ambrose and with Carroll Gibbons, both in 1953, Bain concentrated on freelancing and became a highly successful studio musician. For so distinguished a jazz musician he recorded little, although he can be heard playing fine trombone with the Malcolm Lockyer Octet of 1957. Oddly, he is perhaps best known, albeit anonymously, for his smooth, Dorsey-like trombone solo on Mantovani's recording of "Charmaine", the ultimate antithesis of jazz.

John Cockburn Bainsfather (Jock Bain), trombonist: born Edinburgh 8 June 1914; married 1933 Jessie Merrilees (three sons, one daughter), 1957 Valerie Tyler; died Portsmouth 13 March 1997.