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Tony
Baylis
(Wurzel
1969-1985)
Tony
Baylis, who sings, plays bass guitar and Sousaphone, and has been
a Wurzel nearly as long as Tommy. Enjoys sailing and spends ninety
per cent of his spare time catching fish and the other ten percent
eating them. (Not as good a fisherman as Pete)
[John Miles from the Combine Harvester LP sleeve notes]
 Stewart
Anthony "Tony" John Baylis was born in London
on 25th May 1935. As a young man, he learnt double bass, augmenting
that with electric bass and later the sousaphone; and quickly became
part of the burgeoning London jazz scene. He
played double bass with various semi-professional traditional jazz
bands in the late Fifties before his first big break, joining Ian
Bell's band in 1961. Following that, he formed his own
jazz jazz quintet, The Jazz Confessors, who played
around the London jazz scene between 1962 and 1964.
Tony
played with some of the big names in the jazz scene at the time
including The Lennie Felix Trio, and Pat
Hawes. He was briefly part of the quintet fronted by alto
sax player Bruce Turner and trumpeter Mick
Mulligan Quintet. He was also drafted into the Fairweather-Brown
All Stars - the most successful Scottish trad jazz bands
of the time, fronted by Edinburgh jazzmen Sandy Brown and Al Fairweather
(Al had served in Egypt at the same time as Acker Bilk, and later
teamed up with Acker in the later 1960s). Tony's unlikely Scottish
jazz connections continued when he
covered for Ron Mathewson of Glaswegian traditional jazz outfit,
The Clyde Valley Stompers for three months while
Ron had a hernia operation.
In
1965, he joined Long John Baldry's Hoochie Coochie Men
featuring Rod Stewart on vocals. Later that year he joined Franz
Pinter's Band and did a six month residency at the London
Playboy Club. He followed that by joining up with Rod Stewart's
new post-Hoochie Coochie Men band. In 1967, he joined the outrageous
nine-piece comedy-jazz band The Temperance Seven
as sousaphone player; the first record I have of him playing the
instrument publicly. A year later, and Tony had teamed up with another
great Scottish jazz musician, trumpeter Alex Welsh from the Leith
area of Edinburgh. He joined Alex's acclaimed band - recognised
as one of the best small bands playing jazz at the time - from May
1968 to January 1969 including playing at the 1968 Newport Jazz
Festival.
In
1968, Tony made what is mostly likely to have been his TV debut
as 'Band Member #3' in Majesty, episode 3 of the comedy/drama
The Jazz Age (aired 24 September 1968). Whether this brought
him to the attention of Adge Cutler remains a mystery but in January
1969, the Call of the West came, and Tony joined
Adge Cutler & The Wurzels.
Tony
was a key part of the Cutler-Quantrill-Banner-Bayliss line-up of
The Wurzels which recorded the Carry
On Cutler! album (with Tony's predecessor Henry Davis as
musical arranger) - and was credited with lyric writing on one of
the band's early parody songs Willie The Shake. The next
five years of touring saw Tony cement his position in the band,
and when Reg Quantrill left in 1974, he was by now an established
band member.
After
the death of Adge Cutler, it was the decision of Tommy Banner and
Tony with 'new boy' Pete Budd, to continue performing as The Wurzels,
and so the band entered into their most successful recording period.
Tony was part of the triumphant trio who topped the charts in 1976,
and although he might have appeared to have been the 'quiet one'
behind Pete's lead vocals and Tommy's outrageousness, his input
was equally important.
Tony's
songwriting should never be disregarded. He is the only band member
to have one of his songs on the 1975 The Wurzels Are Scrumptious!
album; writing and singing A Drinking Man's Life (he also
co-wrote Cheddar Cheese with the Pete and Tommy on that
album). His compositional input is no more obvious that on the Golden
Delicious album where he is involved in the writing of four
of the songs. His
singing voice is quite distinctive, no more so than on the quite
exquisite Crabapple Hill on the Combine Harvester
album.
Tony
remained with the band until January 1984, the year after the band
released their Freshly Cut album. I have no idea what prompted
his decision to leave, but I would suspect that he could see that
without a record deal or a management team, the gig, as they say,
was over. It would appear to have been a canny move, as the mid-1980s
to the late-1990s were lean years for the band.
Tony
remained in the Bristol area, and - like many former Wurzels - fell
back into the local jazz scene. He appeared on the Pete
Allen Jazz Band album One For The Road released
in 1987, and one would presume played with the band around this
time. He then joined Bristol-based jazz band, The Dukes
of Swing and played with them through the late 1980s and
early 1990s. He also played with the Avon Cities Jazz Band
- although as this band has a history running from 1949 to the present
day, and involved the good and the great of Bristol jazz in its
line-up - perhaps it would be more surprising if he had not played
with them (fellow Wurzel John
Macey was a member, although not at the same time).
Some
time around the late 1990s, he relocated to Spain and was working
as a physiotherapist; and he later emigrated to New Zealand where
he is part of the local jazz scene there; appearing at the 13th
Annual Nelson Jazz Festival in 2004. He does make occasional visits
back to the UK to visit friends Reg Quantrell and Henry Davis.
Wurzel
Discography
Other
Recordings
- 1987:
Pete Allen Jazz Band album One For The Road
- Tony Baylis (bass)
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