DICK HECKSTALL-SMITH
Genres: Classic Fusion, Blues, Avant-Garde Jazz, Jazz Related Rock, World Fusion • United Kingdom

Dick Heckstall-Smith (16 September 1934 – 17 December 2004) was an English jazz and blues saxophonist. He played with some of the most influential English blues rock and jazz fusion bands of the 1960s and 1970s. Heckstall-Smith was born Richard Malden Heckstall-Smith in the Royal Free Hospital, in Ludlow, England, and attended a York boarding school. However, he refused a second term there, instead enrolling in Gordonstoun, where his father had accepted a job as headmaster of the local Grammar School. Dick Heckstall-Smith was raised in Knighton, Radnorshire. He learned to play piano, clarinet and alto saxophone in childhood. Heckstall-Smith completed his education at Dartington Hall School before reading agriculture – and co-leading the university jazz band – at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, from 1953. Aged 15, he had taken up the soprano sax while at Dartington, captivated by the sound of Sidney Bechet. Then Lester Young and tenor saxophonist bebop jazzman read more...