Writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Smith continues his series on the changing perceptions of jazz in Britain, by taking a closer look at the celebrated British pianist and composer Stan Tracey.

Stan was an abiding presence in Geoffrey's jazz media life, as reviewer and interviewer, and Geoffrey thinks of him not just as a paragon of British jazz, but of jazz in Britain. He was the real thing, a jazz muso to the bone, totally committed to the music. And to him that's what it was. He once told Geoffrey that when he went out to a gig, he didn't say to himself "I'm going to play some jazz", but "I'm going to play some music." Jazz was his music virtually from the time he heard it, trailing down the stairs from the flat above his family home. His route to jazz keyboard went through an accordion - with which he happily played pass-the-hat gigs in pub - to achieving his own style on piano, following trips to New York as a member of shipboard bands in ‘Geraldo's Navy’. He later became house pianist at Ronnie's Scott's and a musician's favourite - the great Sonny Rollins once asked, "does anyone here realise how good he is?" Geoffrey pays tribute to a British player with an unmistakably quirky, determined personal style.