Spike Robinson

Spike Robinson stood as the final prominent tenor stylist to carry forward the cool-toned approach first shaped by the Four Brothers saxophone section and later refined by Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, and Al Cohn. Remarkably, he appeared on the scene as a fully developed artist in 1981, already beyond his fiftieth birthday. He had begun on alto at twelve, and after military service he joined some of England’s leading bop players in 1950, cutting records alongside them. Upon returning to the United States, however, Robinson completed an engineering degree and spent the next three decades working days in Colorado while performing only occasionally on tenor in neighborhood clubs. When he finally turned to music full-time in 1981, the move generated immediate attention. He kept delivering buoyant, swinging performances that often recalled Stan Getz and produced numerous strong sessions for Discovery, Capri, Concord, and especially Hep. Robinson died at seventy-one in the autumn of 2001 at his residence in Writtle, southern England.