OBITUARY : Chuck Andrus

Because he was able to play pizzicato bass with such dexterity, Chuck Andrus was known to fellow members of the Woody Herman band as "The Arm". His speed meant that the band could play outrageously up-tempo numbers like "Caldonia" and "North West Passage" at a faster speed than ever before.

It was a folding wooden arm that Andrus had constructed in his army tent during the war in Korea that had impressed his fellow soldiers. A handyman who bemoaned the absence of any tools, Andrus was resigned to living in a tent with the 40th Division Army Band. He made his small living space as elegant as possible, and the arm, hinged from an orange box, held a candle over his bed so that he could read at night.

One day, while he was travelling with the jazz pianist John Williams and trumpeter Jerry Marshall, his truck was stopped at a bridge where bomb damage was being repaired. The three took advantage of the delay to wash in the nearby river. Andrus found a tool on the riverbed. He took it to be a pestle used by Korean women for pounding rice. "Hey," he called to Williams, "I got me a hammer."

He banged the object on some nearby rocks to demonstrate; Williams examined it, and he too, banged the rocks. When the driver called them back to the truck, a horrified infantryman, his face pale, seized the implement and hurled it as far away as he could. "That," he informed an angry Andrus, "is a Chinese hand grenade."

The three men managed, unusually, to stay together all through their army service. They conspired to ensure that they went to Japan, where off-duty work for bandsmen who could play at dances was plentiful and rewarding enough to allow them to establish themselves with their own geisha girls. But, in a series of disasters, they found themselves deposited instead in Korea by a ramshackle Second World War Liberty boat. Williams discovered that the Koreans grew marijuana plants to provide fibre for cloth, and he knew exactly what to do when he found a field of it "growing neck-high".

Until then they had relieved their tedium with another of Andrus's ingenuities. Back in the States he had emptied tubes of shaving cream and toothpaste, cleaned them out, and refilled them with high-class pot. The supply lasted until they reached Korea.

Discharged within days of each other, the three joined Charlie Barnet's band. Williams soon left to become famous with the Stan Getz Quintet (in 1955 Andrus played on one of Williams's trio albums) while Andrus pursued his career through the bands of Terry Gibbs, Claude Thornhill, Herbie Mann and others, until in 1961 he joined Woody Herman.

Nat Pierce, pianist with the Woody Herman band, wrote an arrangement of Duke Ellington's "Satin Doll" as a showcase for the bass playing of Chuck Andrus. The piece was scheduled to be recorded for Philips in a New York studio on 22 November 1963. But first they set to work on their version of "A Taste of Honey". As soon as the number finished and the microphones were closed the distraught producer of the album rushed into the studio. "President Kennedy's just been assassinated," he shouted. The band took a break and, when the sensational news had been absorbed, recorded Andrus's "Satin Doll" feature.

As a long-time showman and Republican Herman's inclination would have been to persevere with the session, but the musicians were so agitated that, after "Satin Doll", work had to be abandoned for the day. So, whenever one hears Andrus's fine performance, one's attention is always deflected by the knowledge of the emotional turmoil in which it was created.

There weren't any good times for big bands after the Swing Era, but one of the really bad times was in the early Sixties. Flying, as he so often did, in the face of economic sense, Woody Herman chose 1962 to re-form his Herd. The bassist Chuck Andrus was right by his side.

Herman had had big bands before. The one known as the First Herd came into being in 1944, the Second Herd in 1947 and the Third in 1952. The band with Andrus was called the Swinging Herd - a platitude in Herman terms because since 1936 his bands had never done anything else but swing.

In 1961 Herman, battered and bruised by years of struggle with his big bands, had cut down to a small group which included Nat Pierce on piano and Chuck Andrus on bass. But Pierce, a big-band enthusiast, worked hard to persuade Herman to reform the big band. A native Bostonian, Pierce kept very much in touch with the music scene in his home-town, including the goings on at Berklee College of Music.

Berklee was and remains the world's finest centre for a jazz musician to receive his training. One of the most distinguished teachers at Berklee was the trumpeter Herb Pomeroy, who for decades has led a first-class big band drawn from the ranks of his students. Pierce convinced Herman to go back to a 16-piece band by producing a ready-made one with 12 musicians taken from Pomeroy's group. The fait accompli was to prove pivotal in Herman's long career and the dynamic and inspired band that resulted was unique for its time.

A long residency at the noisy Metropole Cafe in New York ensured the band's American fame. The stage was only a couple of feet wide, and the band had to stand along it in a file 40 feet long. Andrus stood next to his colleague and friend the drummer Jake Hanna, one of the best half- dozen players ever. After nine weeks the management wanted to extend the band's stay, but by now the band was fully booked for years ahead. Its tours caused uproar throughout the world and it was enormously successful in Britain, where Andrus had a notable role in a BBC 2 broadcast which the band recorded.

Its momentum continued for many years, but Andrus left in 1965 to freelance successfully in New York. His trio played at the White House for President Johnson, and returned there in the spring of 1968 for the Ambassadors' Ball.

Although he continued to play professionally, Andrus returned to his home-town of Holyoke, where he worked in a law office until his retirement. He moved to Florida in 1993 and married his childhood sweetheart Elaine the following year.

He played regularly each week at the Governor's Club in Palm Beach until a month ago. Two weeks before his death, when John Williams visited him with a tenor sax playing friend, Andrus got out of bed and played a few numbers with them.

Charles Edmund ("Chuck") Andrus, bass player: born Holyoke, Massachusetts 17 November 1928; twice married (two daughters); died Boca Raton, Florida 12 June 1997.