Dickie Devere...
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Dickie Devere -2...
This page has been created following a conversation with Dickie Devere's son Richard Rainbird. He has provided a page from the "London Evening Standard" newspaper...
From the "London Evening Standard" October, 1970:

'Drugs and jazz killed my son'
PAUL RAINBIRD was a musician at the top in the jazz world. But he started taking heroin - and this led him on the path to death, an inquest heard today.
And after the inquest, Rainbird's father said: I know it was modern jazz and heroin that killed my son. With modern jazz the brain can only go so far and then it has to be boosted up . . . with drugs. This is just another case of a brilliant young man ruined by drugs. when will people sit up and take notice what's going on among our young people?"
Proud
The story of Rainbird's death in a hospital toilet with a syringe by his side was told at a Westminster coroners court today.
Mr Henry Rainbird, his father, told the court: He had a band of his own once and he was on top of the world. his mother and I were very proud of him. Then we were shattered when our doctor told us 'Your son has been taking heroin'". Mr Rainbird, of Clydesdale, Enfield, Middlesex added: "Ten years ago he had a brain operation to try and calm him down. But over the last year his condition had deteriorated quite a lot".
When Rainbird died at the age of 42 he was drifting from one casual job to another.
Stomach pains
Dr. Richard Pearson of St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington said that Rainbird visited the casualty department several times in the weeks before his death. On October 7 he was found slumped in a toilet at the hospital. there wa a syringe by his side.
Professor Donald Teare, pathologist, gave the cause of death as briertal poisining. Briertal is an anaesthetic used in hospitals. The coroner, Dr. Gavin Thurston, said: "This is quite clearly a deliberate action. I shall record a verdict that he killed himself."
Brilliant
After the inquest Rainbird's father said: "Paul was a brilliant musician. He had his own band when he was 16. He did his National Service and then came out in his early 20's and made a name for himself playing at all the West End cabaret and jazz clubs. Then he started with heroin. He carried on for a few years but after 10 years on the drug his mind seemed to disintegrate."
Photo from Richard Rainbird Paul Rainbird used the name Dickie Devere, (sometimes De Vere).

He was regarded in the 1950s as probably the best of the British jazz drummers, even Phil Seamen admired his playing and took lessons from him.

There is no doubt that unreliability, probably caused by his drug problem, curtailed his opportunities at the top level. Dickie Devere
Narcotic drugs have always been the curse of jazz, in the UK as well as the US. The first high profile victim in British jazz, some ten years before Devere, was the bebop pioneering pianist Tommy Pollard. A founder member of Club XI he played and recorded with the Ronnie Scott Boptet and Quartet in the early 1950s and in 1952 took a residency with a quartet at the newly opened Flamingo Club. Unfortunately he repeatedly failed to appear for work. He did not appear in the recording studio again until 1954 and his handful of dates were all with Victor Feldman, Pollard's most devout admirer. He did not appear much in person or record again after this.
For the final years of his life, from the last records in 1955 through to his death he was a very sick man spending months in bed and wasting away to a shadow of his former size. Tragically, Pollard had fallen victim to the hard drug addiction that was the by-product of the Charlie Parker legend. He died in October 1960 at the age of 37 after a long period of illness. He was the first drug related casualty of the British modern jazz scene and had spent a great deal of his later years in musical obscurity, his pioneering efforts all but forgotten.
Another high profile casualty was drummer Phil Seamen who died in 1972, two years after Devere. His chaotic life and drug problems have been well documented elsewhere and he was followed by Tubby Hayes in 1973 at the age of 38. Throughout his career Tubby had been addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. He was often partnered by trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar who shared most of the addictions and he suffered a long period of ill health from the 1970s until his death in 1993 at the age of just 62. Before his death he lost both legs as a result of his circulation packing up.
(Bobby Wellins, Stan Tracey and Peter King, all happily still playing, have written and spoken of drug problems earlier in their careers).


Another drug casualty was Alan Branscombe who died in 1986 at the age of 50 after spending the last year of his life in hospital. Vic Ash in his biography wrote of Alan: "...sadly Alan had succumbed to the hard drug scene to such an extent that he had run out of available veins in his arms and was forced to inject between his toes. He...died young and is greatly missed.... in the late nineteen fifties many jazz musicians got hooked because they saw drugs as an entree into the upper echelons of the modern jazz world..."
Besides drugs, alcohol addiction shortened the careers and lives of many including the very talented trumpet player Bert Courtley and guitarist Dave Goldberg.


This page was last updated during March, 2012.
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