Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

DEAN, Elton

(b 28 October 1945, Nottingham, England; d 7 February 2006 of cirrhosis) He began on violin and piano as a child, turned pro playing alto saxophone and the soprano-like saxello, and was also a composer. He had equal facility in blues (Georgie Fame's Blue Flames, Long John Baldry's Bluesology), jazz-rock (Soft Machine, '69-72), big bands (Carla Bley '77; Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath mid-'70s) and freer music (Keith Tippett Sextet '68-71; later a quartet co-led with Howard Riley). Baldry's pianist Reg Dwight took Dean's and Baldry's names when he became Elton John. Dean's own groups included Just Us '72-4, Ninesense '75-8 (e.g. Oh! For the Edge '76 on Ogun) and El Skid '76. Critics Steve Lake and John Fordham agrees that Ninisence, with South African rhythms, Tippett's piano and the influence of John Coltrane, could have blown away audiences in any club in the world. Dean ran his own tape-only label, ED, mainly documenting his free playing, but his standards side can be heard on All The Tradition '90 on Slam. Over the years Dean also played in Tippett's 50-piece Centipede, bassist Barry Guy's London Jazz Composer's Orchestra, the Dutch jazz-rock band Supersister, Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper's Monster Band, El Skid (with Alan Skidmore), Cahoots, L'Equip'Out (with French pianist Sophia Domancich), Kenny Wheeler, Roswell Rudd, and various successors of Soft Machine, which changed names with each change of personnel: Soft Heap, Soft Head, SoftWhere, SoftWorks, Softbounds; he was scheduled to tour with Soft Machine Legacy in 2006. Consistently inventive, he was a mainstay of the UK free-jazz scene, and spent much of the 1980s and '90s as a spark plug, organizing jazz events in North London as Jazz Rumours. Around 2000 he took up keyboards again, playing electric piano and Hammond organ.