This Is Your Life: John Dankworth

John DANKWORTH CBE (1927-2010)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - John Dankworth, musician and composer, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews, having been led to believe he was attending a reception to celebrate the investiture of his CBE at Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London's Soho, from where the programme was then recorded.

John, who was born into a family of musicians in Walthamstow, London, played piano, violin, and clarinet as a child before settling on the alto saxophone. He performed in local jazz clubs while still at school, but after studying at the Royal Academy of Music, he played in various bands in the mid-1940s, before forming his own group, the Dankworth Seven, in 1950.

The group became a big band in 1953, and, with Cleo Laine as their regular singer, they became the first British group to play the Newport Jazz Festival in 1959. As a composer, John had chart success with recordings and wrote themes for TV shows, films, radio and the stage. John married Cleo in 1958, and together they established a jazz summer school in a theatre built in their back garden in Wavendon near Milton Keynes.

programme details...

Edition No: 375
Subject No: 376
Broadcast date: Wed 27 Feb 1974
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Tue 12 Feb 1974
Venue: Ronnie Scott's jazz club
Series: 14
Edition: 15

on the guest list...

Cleo Laine - wife
Stuart - stepson
Alec - son
Jacqueline - daughter
Ronnie Scott
Alice - mother
Avril - sister
Florence Tarbath
Ken Moule
Cliff Dunn
The Beverley Sisters
Bill Le Sage
Yehudi Menuhin
Nicol Williamson
Tony Kinsey
Joe Mudele
Ed Harvey
Jimmy Deuchar
Don Rendell
Duke Ellington
Clark Terry

production team...

Researcher: Dee Maclure
Writer: Jack Crawshaw
Directors: Peter Webb, Royston Mayoh
Producer: Malcolm Morris

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

All that Jazz

covering all the notes

Family Life

keeping it in the family

The Beverley Sisters

Cleo Laine

Photographs of John Dankworth This Is Your Life

Graham Collier recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in his book, Cleo and John: Biography of Cleo Laine and John Dankworth...

After the investiture by the Queen at Buckingham Palace, John had been invited to Ronnie Scott's - ostensibly to attend a reception given by Phonogram to celebrate the award, but actually to receive the accolade of a This Is Your Life, ten years after Cleo had received hers. The programme on prime time television, was still hosted by Eamonn Andrews but had moved from BBC to Independent Television.

John: I just didn't imagine it was going to happen. Even when I got to the place where they had inveigled me and I saw the television vans outside it didn't enter my mind - I'm that naive. My assistant had put my sax in the car knowing I would be asked to play but I wanted to know why it was there - to which he obviously couldn't answer. He obviously thought I was beginning to suspect something but I wasn't.

WHEN CLEO SETTLED AN OLD SCORE

Singer Cleo Laine had to tread warily after he husband jazz band leader John Dankworth bluntly demanded, 'Are you having an affair?'

It was a high price to pay for helping the television team catch out John on the day he received a CBE at Buckingham Palace.

'I was continually on the verge of letting it out,' said Cleo. 'One day he overheard me talking to one of the Thames people on the phone.'

'I had to ring off and pretend it was my son, Stuart. But he wasn't convinced and asked me if there was another man.'

'I just laughed to myself. I was getting my own back for when John set me up for This Is Your Life ten years ago.'

...To Cleo's immense relief, her husband recognised all the old friends from the past who appeared for the show.

'When they did my life there were three people whom I'd never clapped eyes on before.'

News of the World 19/5/74

Among the guests were Yehudi Menuhin, who John had met in connection with the Bath Festivals, actor Nicol Williamson, who had become a firm friend after the TS Eliot tribute, and Ronnie Scott, with filmed tributes from Clark Terry and Duke Ellington. The original Seven had been assembled for the programme - all, incidentally, still active in music.

Series 14 subjects