Benny Green
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Benny Green (1927–1998) born in Leeds, Yorkshire in the UK, was a cockney accented British jazz saxophonist, who was most well known by the public for his radio shows and books. His BBC Radio 2 Sunday afternoon record show ran for many years until his death. He had a huge range of knowledge about the kind of music he liked, by classic composers like Kern and Cole Porter and jazz, and would introduce most records with details about the artist(s) and often moaned about the latest issues in music he disagreed with. He had a particular (though, to listeners, not readily explicable) dislike of certain artists, including Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.
He also chaired a radio comedy panel game broadcast regularly on Radio 2 and the BBC World Service for 20 years; Jazz Score. Many jazz artists appeared on this show, stopping the contest to tell their own anectdotes about their career and other jazz musicians. (Although often some of the names would mean little to the general listener).
In 1958, he appeared in the UK pop charts as a member of Lord Rockingham's XI, who were the house band on ITV's rock 'n' roll show 'Oh Boy!' The novelty jazz/rock opus 'Hoots Mon', complete with spoken interjections in a broad mock-Scots accent, made No 1 for three weeks in November and December. Benny would later joke that, because he wore dark glasses whilst playing, to counteract the strong studio lights, he would get fan mail addressed to 'the blind sax-player'.
He first worked for the BBC in 1955 and worked regularly for it from then on. In the 1960s he often appeared (with, among others, Alan Brien, Dee Wells and Robert Pitman) on Three After Six, Associated Rediffusion's early evening television discussion programme on current affairs,. In the 1980s he contributed occasionally to Stop the Week, Robert Robinson's Saturday discussion programme on Radio 4. Green also wrote and/or narrated many radio documentries about stage and film musical stars and Hollywood, his other main interest apart from jazz and sport. He also wrote for magazines, including Punch, and regularly for newspapers. He was a big fan of writer P. G. Wodehouse, about whom he wrote a literary biography (1981). Green's son, Dominic Green, is a guitarist and recently published a book about his father; Benny Green Words and Music (2003).
Away from jazz he is notable for publishing the Wisden Anthologies, a summary of the famous cricketing annual, between 1979 and 1983. The four volumes covered the highlights from Wisden Cricketers' Almanack from its inception in 1864 until 1982 and stand as a major milestone in cricketing literature.
He died at the age of 70 of cancer in the Royal Marsden Hospital in Surrey.
