By Julian May
In my bundle of precious papers I have a letter signed Danny and Victoria. Danny was a big, tall man, straightforward — a geezer. Victoria is tall, too, beautifully curvaceous, with a sonorous and instantly recognisable voice.
Danny was Danny Thompson, double bass maestro, who died on September 23rd, aged 86. Victoria is his double bass. Danny signed letters from them both, with a deft sketch of Victoria. They were lifelong partners.
I’m writing this on the 60th anniversary of Thunderbirds being ‘Go!’ on television; 60 years since the famous theme tune blasted out for the first time into living rooms all over the UK. And the bass line? That’s Danny Thompson playing Victoria. Just one of hundreds of recordings they appear on. I started counting the albums Danny played on and, having reached 109, and being about one third of the way through said, as Danny might well have, “Sod this for a game of soldiers.”
The range of Thompson’s work is astonishing. He toured with Roy Orbison when The Beatles were meant to be the support act. Some of the way through the tour there was a reversal. Danny and Victoria are on Cliff Richard’s Congratulations, (pipped in the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest — just un point in it — by Spanish entry, the lyrically ambitious La, la, la). Some way further into the musical woods they’re on the cult classic (if you see it in a second-hand shop it’s worth making an investment) Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart by C.O.B. (Clive’s Original Band), an offshoot from The Incredible String Band, whose recordings Danny and Victoria also grace. Danny Thompson played jazz with Tubby Hayes, pop with T. Rex and European art song with Dagmar Krause. But he is best known for his work with innovative folk musicians — Pentangle, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake and, wonderfully and wildly, John Martyn.
I have that letter because in 1987, a quarter of a century after his first recording Danny Thompson made his first solo album, Whatever. I’d long been an admirer and was now a radio producer. I was able to invite him to talk about his music — and play — on BBC Radio 4’s arts programme, Kaleidoscope. Afterwards, he wrote to thank me.
When we met, I asked about the title Whatever, which became the name of his band, Danny Thompson’s Whatever.
“People always ask,” he said, “if what we play is jazz or folk, and I always say, ‘whatever’. And the next album…well, that will be Whatever Next. Then there might be Whatever Fo(u)r. We could go on and on.”
Close up I’m always struck by the beauty of acoustic instruments, their shape, colour, the grain of the wood, the nicks and dints that are their life stories. Victoria impressed me with all this and sheer size, not noticeable at first because of Danny himself, always towering over his band mates. He told me that he made his first bass himself during the craze for skiffle out of a tea chest. Then, when he was fifteen, he bought Victoria.
“Off an old bloke for £5,“ he said. “I was going to pay him a shilling a week. She was covered in matt black paint. Some of it came off and I took her to a shop. They looked her over and it turns out she’s quite old and a significant instrument.”
Victoria is a swell-back double bass made by the Gand family, luthiers of Mirecourt, France in 1865. Gand basses are sought after for their warm tone, punch and long sustain — all features of Victoria in the hands of Danny Thompson on, for instance, John Martyn’s Solid Air.
“So, I went back to the old man I bought her from,” Danny said, “and told him that she was worth much more than a fiver. He asked me if I was playing her. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘every day.’ ‘Well, you keep her, son,’ he said. And we’ve been together, and I’ve made my living from her, ever since.”
Danny Thompson came on to Kaleidoscope a few times more, once on his 50th birthday when he improvised a piece live and said — looking through studio window to me and laughing — that it was a work called ‘Jules’ Blues’.
Later, when I was producing 1492, a long radio poem for Radio 3 about Christopher Columbus reaching the New World, by the British-Guyanese writer Fred D’Aguiar, with music by jazz flautist Keith Waithe, also Guyanese, I asked Danny to be in the band. The text was dense, knotty. At the end of the first day Danny asked if he could have a copy of the poem to take home. He came back next morning having read it, with questions, and compliments to Fred for his work. This could have been just another session among hundreds. But Danny was curious, diligent, engaged. And he was brilliant.
In 2019 The flautist and composer Rowland Sutherland had reimagined Pentangle’s famous album Basket of Light for jazz ensemble. Danny and singer Jacqui McShee were there, at the concert in the Royal Festival Hall. Me too, and I was going to say hello, but Danny was surrounded. He still stood tall but looked gaunt, tired and frail. I’ll leave it till afterwards, I thought. But, when the concert was over, he was off and the last I saw of Danny Thompson was him making his way backstage to, I’ve no doubt, crack a joke with the band — and congratulate them.
