Musician seen by many as the founding father of jazz education in Britain
A helper of countless musicians, established and emerging, the gifted teacher and jazz musician Eddie Harvey, who has died aged 86 of cancer, was the most companionable of men. His jazz career embraced the earthy traditionalism of the George Webb Dixielanders, the crisp early-1950s bebop of the Johnny Dankworth Seven and the heady mainstream of the Humphrey Lyttelton band, as well as the more advanced concepts that increasingly absorbed him.
A trombonist at first, and a fine one, at ease in small groups and as a section player in big bands, Harvey preferred to play the piano in his later career and concentrate on education and composition, issuing a number of authoritative publications and teaching at high academic level. He was seen by many as the founding father of jazz education in Britain.
Harvey was born in Blackpool but grew up in Sidcup, Kent, and studied classical piano as a child, later taking up the trombone in his teens. While working as an apprentice engineer at the nearby Vickers Armstrong factory in 1943, he encountered the pianist Webb and other like-minded enthusiasts, joining them as they sought to play authentic traditional jazz. Once they got going, Harvey persuaded his clarinettist friend Wally Fawkes to join and the band began to gain some notoriety, attracting large crowds and recording for Decca as George Webb's Dixielanders in 1945. It was Fawkes who had first opened Harvey's eyes to jazz. "He played me some jazz, the Spanier Ragtimers and classic Armstrongs. After that I never slept for a week. It was like falling in love," he told me in an interview in 2005.
Following national service in the RAF, Harvey joined the ebullient trumpeter Freddy Randall's band, also moonlighting with semi-professional big bands, "watching the notes fly by" and visiting Club Eleven in London, then the haven for the UK's leading jazz modernists. He even adopted the boppers' "button-down collars, Ivy League dark suits and shades". When the Club Eleven star Dankworth formed his celebrated Seven in 1950, Harvey was a founder member, making the transition from traditionalism to modernity in one leap, and revelling in the band's lively approach to bebop. "I've never had such a wonderful time," he said, and stayed on when Dankworth formed his touring big band.
Harvey's emerging interest in study was enhanced in 1950 with a two-year course at the Guildhall School of Music and he began to arrange and compose, often for Dankworth, in earnest. After leaving the alto saxophonist in 1955, he played in several well-regarded modern jazz groups, adding piano to his more usual trombone, often playing with the tenor saxophonist Don Rendell, a colleague from Dankworth's Seven. A career highlight came when he was selected in 1959 to tour with Woody Herman's Anglo-American Herd, sitting next to his trombonist hero Bill Harris whose "huge sound made my hair stand on end".
Harvey qualified as a teacher in 1960 and took a post at Haileybury college in Hertford for some 15 years while running a jazz club, performing and composing for Lyttelton and arranging for Jack Parnell's ATV Orchestra and the Sunday Night at the London Palladium TV show. His period with Lyttelton coincided with the trumpeter's concentration on a more mainstream style and included tours with the ex-Count Basie trumpeter Buck Clayton and another opposite the popular Gerry Mulligan Quartet, whose trombonist Bob Brookmeyer became a lifelong friend.
Harvey left Haileybury in 1985 and served on the Arts Council music panel, often visiting schools to train teachers, and from 1985 to 2003 was head of jazz studies at the London College of Music, later teaching at the Royal College for a year. In what may be seen as his crowning achievement, he played a major part in designing the Royal Schools of Music jazz piano course and composing its curriculum, having already published Teach Yourself Jazz Piano (1974) and Jazz in the Classroom (1983).
Harvey never seemed to run short of inspiration, composing new material for the quintet he ran with the ex-Dankworth drummer Tony Kinsey and a suite for the Ealing Jazz Festival. A keen member of Way Out West, a jazz collective rooted in the Richmond area of south-west London, he was a welcome and invariably cordial presence on the capital's jazz scene until just before his final illness.
Harvey's first marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Peggy, and his daughters, Abigail and Chloe.
• Edward Thomas Harvey, jazz musician, composer and teacher, born 15 November 1925; died 9 October 2012