Digby Fairweather marks the 20th anniversary of his band the Half Dozen

Anyone who encounters him, even for a short space of time, picks up on his appetite for living and people. There have been a lot of both in Digby’s life, and they feed into the music he makes, which brims with life force.

The year 2015 is something of a landmark for the Essex jazzman. It marks the 20th anniversary of his band, the Half Dozen. The motley band of individualists has won the British Jazz Awards top small group prize nine times in the past ten years.

The year also sees an updated version of Digby’s autobiography, Notes from a Jazz Life, first published in 2002. Needless to say, a lot has happened in those 13 years, during which Digby’s career hit a peak. The best bits from that period are now all in the book. Digby is a natural memoirist. His early years as a librarian have left their legacy, and he instinctively writes up, and archives his experiences.

He is currently on the cusp of a deal which, once clinched, will put Essex at dead centre of the British jazz world. “I’m sworn to secrecy right now, but all should be revealed, hopefully, before Christmas,” he says.

At the age of 69, there is still a lot to come.

Digby enjoys reminiscing, but he also says: “It’s too easy to get consumed with nostalgia. I like to enjoy the past. I don’t like living in it.”

For now, though, he is looking back. A large chunk of the previous 13 years was taken up by Digby’s association with a giant of the music industry, the late George Melly.

Melly had worked with another band, John Chilton’s Feetwarmers, for 30 years, but John, unlike the indefatigable George, finally got sick of travelling. Digby took over. In terms of fame and exposure, he had hit the height of his career. Digby himself calls it “the chance to hit the big time”.

So he did, in a series of “tumultuous” touring adventures that only ended with George Melly’s death.

Digby lists some of the highlights. “We topped the bills at jazz festivals, toured theatres as part of Kings of Jazz shows, co-starred with Kenny Ball, Humphrey Lyttelton, Acker Bilk and Jacqui Dankworth, and played every Christmas at Ronnie Scott’s – which produced near terminal hangovers.”

George Melly, despite his carefully fostered and cherished reputation for the wildest debauchery (he awarded himself the title “the Dean of Decadence”), is remembered by Digby as gentle and accommodating, with nothing of the prima donna about him. “Just tell me what you want to play, old boy, and I’ll do it,” he would tell Digby.

Digby was there to witness and logMelly’s decline into dementia. Alzheimer’s did not destroy him, but actually produced a last great flourish as a performer.

He claimed to welcome the condition. “It puts me in touch with the genuinely surreal, dear,” he claimed.

It also produced a whole new repertoire of dementia gags.

“The first stage of dementia,”

he would tell audiences, “is forgetting to do your flies up.

The second stage, is forgetting to open them in the first place.

The last is not giving a damn either way.”

Along with dementia, Melly also grew increasingly deaf, in the process adding greatly to Digby’s store of anecdotes. The funniest of these happened when George and Digby were performing in Uxbridge. They were approached by a local resident.

“Your concert is one of the best things that has happened here, and I’ve lived in Uxbridge for several years,” the lady said.

“Oh, my God,” said Melly.

“How appalling for you. I am so sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’ve really liked Uxbridge,” she said.

Melly looked at her in some surprise, but continued to express his pity. “Well you are obviously a very brave woman,” he said. The conversation continued in this vein for some time, with both parties more and more baffled, until the woman cottoned on. “George thought she had said Auschwitz.”

Digby tends to talk more about other people than himself, but he does enjoy recalling his early days, as he discovered his musicianship.

Raised in Paglesham, he went to school at Southend High, then went to work at Southend Library while he nursed and developed his vocation as a jazz musician. The sound of his tenor horn could carry 14 miles on a clear night, so he took to practising out on the remotest sections of the Essexmarshes.

He is more open now about his early period as a professional, when this famously sunny personality – he wasn’t named Fairweather for nothing – hit a dark patch.

“It all came together – my father died, the old family home at Paglesham was sold, and I was struggling – no job security or regular income any more. I did get pretty low.”

One move that helped to set him straight was his return to Southend. “I came back here for a day, looked around, and thought, why would anyone want to live in London when they could live in this fabulous place? Next day I bought a house, and I’ve never left, and never will.”

There have been dark moments since then, but the past two years have been lit up by his marriage to his second wife, Gwen. Gwen is the widow of another jazzman, Dave Claridge, who played new Orleans-style music. Digby had worked extensively with Dave, and played at his funeral.

Digby and Gwen came together after Dave’s death.

“Gwen doesn’t play or sing, but she knows more about music than I think I do,” says Digby.

Gwen in her turn pays a measured tribute to Digby’s repute. “Digby has the very highest reputation among his peers,” she says.

These days it is not just with his fellow professionals. He has a distinct following among the young, and is regularly asked to run masterclasses around the UK.

He likes what he sees. “There are a great number of very talented young people out there who want to play jazz,”

he says. It was not always so.

“For much of my time, jazz has been a dirty word.”

He illustrates the last point with the sad story of one friend, Bob Wallis, a trad jazzman. Bob was a household name in the late Fifties, thanks to his appearances on TV and in film. In 1963, he hit the height of his career, with a sixmonth stint at the London Palladium.

“When he finished at the Palladium,” says Digby, “he asked his agent: ‘What have you got for me next?’ The answer? Nothing. During the time he had been at the Palladium, the Beatles had happened, and suddenly he belonged to yesterday.”

Not long after, the young Digby Fairweather gave up his job running the mobile library in Southend, and turned professional jazz player.

Historically speaking, the timing was not great.

Digby has devoted his life to jazz at a time when the form was in popular, if not artistic decline, a niche type of music judged uncool by the generation that followed the era of the great jazzmakers.

Digby consoles himself with the thought that what goes around, comes around. “It’s all cyclical, isn’t it?” he says. And, as usual, he has a good story to illustrate the point.

“Remember Johnny Hates Jazz,” says Digby. “Their name said it all.” The band flourished in the late Eighties, and found a big audience who shared the feelings expressed in the band’s name.

“I’d been invited up to Liverpool, and I was giving a talk. I mentioned JohnnyHates Jazz.

The audience sort of parted, and there was this chap at the back, with a broom. ‘I was in that group,’ he said ‘I’m terribly sorry.’ “There you have it really. He had a job sweeping the floor.

And I still play jazz and am still in business.”

• Notes from a Jazz Life, Digby Fairweather’s autobiography is published by Northway @ £14.
• ISBN 978 0 9928222 4 8