Obituary: Andy Brown

Andy Brown

* Andy Brown, musician. Died aged 66.

When leading jazz bass player Andy Brown was diagnosed with cancer early this year, he asked for a dramatic last gig. And so it was. A spotlight picked out the lone double bass on its stand on the Aotea Centre stage.

You expected to see Brown winding his body in a jazz solo around the instrument, pulsing out a beat as smooth as his much-loved brandy chasers. But another spotlight lit up a lily-draped coffin where his body lay. The music was over for a Kiwi jazz original.

Born in Auckland in 1938, Andy Brown discovered the joys of jazz at Mt Albert Grammar. Young clarinettist Andy and the school group brought the Auckland Town Hall to its feet, recalled then fellow student Reg Newcombe, once owner of Auckland's London Bar, where Brown was sometime music director and ran secondary school jazz contests.

Escaping his Auckland Teacher's College training, Brown discovered double bass in Sydney, found tutor Dr Lyn Christie, many Aussie muso mates and a yen for travel. Brown's stints in Australia, Britain and across Europe, Ronnie Scott's included, were interwoven with his playing in a classy, long-lived Kiwi rhythm section with his partner in time Frank Gibson.

Brown was known for sharp repartee - he said of one musician "there's no start to his talents" and after having a leg amputated, "that's one foot in the grave". He once told singer Helen Medlyn she was "not a musician but a chick singer" but "chick singers" he supported included Judy Garland in Sydney, Shirley Bassey, Cleo Laine, Dionne Warwick and Anita O'Day.

He worked with Joe Henderson, Milt Jackson, Herb Ellis, Alan Broadbent, Bobby Shew, Don Burrows, Julian Lee, Ronnie Scott, Frank Gibson, Mike Nock, Lee Konitz, Bernie McGann, Phil Broadhurst ... and the list goes on. He recorded several albums, played for film and TV, taught, toured, composed, ran concerts, played for musicals and in hotels (in an upmarket lobby, "we are ignored by a better class of people").

He is survived by wife Penny Dodd, their children Angus and Hannah, and daughter Kelly from a previous marriage.