RON RUBIN remembered by Matthew Wright

Here is Matthew Wright’s obituary which he has kindly made available to me for publication on this “musings” page. I hope you read (still available) Matthew’s previous contributions - wonderful pieces about the twin joys of jazz and cricket in England……

Matthew now writes:

Sadly the bass player and pianist, Ron Rubin, died suddenly on 14th April. He was born on 8th July 1933 in Liverpool, to David and Louise Rubin.

As a boy, Ron tried to teach himself guitar and clarinet but it was the piano that really took his interest. When he left school, Ron was articled to his uncle's law firm, but the work didn’t inspire him – he went to Liverpool College and to Law School, but in his own words was “exceedingly slothful and far too interested in playing jazz music and generally larking about.”

At eighteen his two years National Service in the Army took him away to Germany with the Royal Army Service Corps, where he started to play jazz with the Rhine River Jazz band.

On leaving the forces, Ron started to play the double bass and joined Ralph ‘Bags’ Watmough’s Band playing in the Liverpool area where the band was in the line-up for the opening of the Cavern Club in 1957. Ron's father ran an Estate Agents business and when he died in 1959, responsibility for the business fell to Ron. It was then that he met his future wife, Marie, at the Jacaranda Club but increasingly Ron realised that music meant far more to him than property management. In 1961, Ron and Marie decided to move to London, settling in Hampstead; Ron deciding to become a professional musician.

Arriving in London, Ron played piano with the bands of Glyn Morgan, Dick Williams and Brian Leake. Ron was asked to deputise for Brian Lemon in the Fairweather-Brown band in 1962 and six weeks later he was asked to join the band on a regular basis, playing piano and occasionally bass.

In 1964 he went to work for several months at the Indigo Jazz Club, a club in a cave tunnelled out of the hillside, in Porto Pi in Mallorca (before it was heavily commercialised). Ron was bassist in a trio with John Mealing on piano and led by drummer Ramon Farran, who was engaged to writer Robert Graves’ daughter, Lucia. Ron hung out with Graves, Alan Sillitoe and the young Robert Wyatt (who I believe was taught drums by Farran), as well as visitors such as Ava Gardner. During that time, Ronnie Scott, Dick Morrissey and Tubby Hayes all came and spent time there, playing at the club. Apparently Ronnie hired a motor scooter and would take Ron on hair-raising rides along the pot-holed roads as pillion passenger.

Graves occasionally sat in on drums, and as Ron once said, there can’t be many jazzmen who can boast of having played in a rhythm section that included Robert Graves.
On the way back to the UK later that year, he stopped off in Paris and played at the Chat Qui Peche with Woody Shaw and Nathan Davis, and hung around with Albert Nicholas.

RON playing bass with American pianist RALPH SUTTON

During these years Ron found himself playing with a long list of bands and musicians of various persuasions including Bruce Turner, Alan Littlejohn, and visiting American musicians Bill Coleman, Henry ‘Red’ Allen and Ray Nance. Ron was also involved in Live New Departures, the Jazz and Poetry sessions with Mike Horovitz and Pete Brown at venues like the Albert Hall, and briefly groups like Long John Baldry and the Hoochie-Coochie Men and Manfred Mann.

The late 1960’s also saw Ron playing with several of the younger, more modern style players, including Harry Miller, Henry Lowther, Jon Hiseman, Howard Riley, Michael Garrick, Barbara Thompson, Art Themen and the gifted but erratic pianist Mike Taylor, appearing on his LP Trio (1967). Ron played with Taylor at various times throughout the 60s, notably the Little Theatre Club and Ronnie Scott’s Old Place. His diary entries were the source of information for Luca Ferrari’s biography of the pianist, Out of Nowhere.

Ron, Marie and their four children moved to Majorca in 1969, this time Ron playing solo piano in Palma. When they came back to Britain in 1972, Ron joined Colin Purbrook for a year, and then played with the John Picard band for three years until 1976. During this time he played a few duo bass gigs with bassist Ron Mathewson and at venues such as New Merlin's Cave in Margery Street, London, and weekly sessions at the Roundhouse Bar in Chalk Farm with his own band.

The 1980s and 90s saw him playing with John Chilton and George Melly, Bruce Turner, Wild Bill Davison, Digby Fairweather and Donald Swann, amongst many others.

In 2012 he played at the Mansfield in Tufnall Park, with Wally Fawkes and John Barnes, a clip can be seen on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNFsscteq7k

A witty and humorous man [you can say that again! Spike)] , he wrote haiku and had three books of limericks published : A Fanfare of Musical Limericks, Eighty-eight Musical Limericks and Out on a Limerick. He was a close friend of Jim Godbolt, who often included Ron’s limericks in Jazz at Ronnie Scotts magazine. Such as

There was an old Sikh of New Delhi,
Who modelled himself on George Melly;
He’d the voice and the smile
And sartorial style,
But he couldn’t quite manage the belly.

A unique, eccentric figure on the British jazz scene, sorely missed. Rest in peace, Ron