R.I.P. Roy Cansdale

Swing City Trio

Readers may have already heard this sad news, but my good friend, bass player Roy Cansdale, who played for so many years with Roly Veitch and myself as one-third of the Swing City Trio (pictured top left), died on November 5 in hospital in Whitehaven. He was 80 years old, and still playing until  he had a bad fall at the end of September.

Roy came from Lewes and played banjo, guitar, and then string-bass around the Brighton area from the early 1960s until he and his family moved up to Cumbria around 1982. I first met him at the end of the '80s, playing with Bruce Carnaffin's Mainline Jazz, and after that he was my bassist of choice - we played all over in different bands, but particularly in trios and quartets in the Lake District, for the next 35 years or so. Roy loved to play, and recently had taken up the guitar again in order to get more gigs. In fact, he even went back to his first instrument, the ukulele, but being a bassist at heart, he bought a bass uke!

Hornby Jazz Club 2023

In addition to his playing, he was very much the jazz enthusiast. He ran Kendal Jazz Club for several years, and would give illustrated talks on jazz at the drop of a hat.

He was a fine, rhythmic bassist, who had a good ear and, unusually nowadays, knew the repertoire, not having to rely on chord books or iPads to play well-known music. His idol was Ray Brown and, like him, Roy always enhanced the band he was playing with. He'll be a huge miss to his many friends and colleagues and the jazz fans who used to brave the Cumbrian weather to go out and see him play. 

A very nice man, I shall miss him very much. Steve Andrews