And when the gig was over he paid me and that was an honour too because I wasn't playing for

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And when the gig was over he paid me, and that was an honour, too, because I wasn't playing for money. "There was no thought after that about how I wanted to play," he said. Jackie McLean's stepfather owned a record shop and this was where McLean was drawn to the playing of the tenor saxophonists Ben Webster and Lester Young.Then he heard the first of Charlie Parker's records. He also began a life-long friendship and working relationship with Sonny Rollins, who lived in his neighbourhood. His godfather, Norman Cobbs, who played in the band of Adam Clayton Powell's Abyssinian Baptist Church, took him there every Sunday and also to the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, where he heard Charlie Barnet's band and became fascinated with Barnet's various saxophones.When the boy was 15, his mother bought him an alto saxophone and he took lessons from two veteran Harlem saxophonists, Walter "Foots" Thomas and Cecil Scott. Recalling his early days for the film-maker Ken Burns, McLean said, Sonny Rollins and several of the other saxophone players and musicians that lived on Sugar Hill, we all knew that we had to practise and work hard because the music was not easy. You had to have great speed, good energy and dexterity and a good knowledge of chord progressions and theory in order to play this music.McLean's father, a guitarist in the band of Tiny Bradshaw, died when Jackie was seven.

His speed and urgency gripped the attention of his listeners and made him stand out from the other musicians of his day. Coming up in the Fifties in the next generation after Charlie Parker, the alto saxophonist Jackie McLean played with passion and fire. John Lenwood McLean, alto saxophonist, bandleader and teacher: born New York 17 May 1931; married (two sons, one daughter); died New York 31 March 2006. In this production, which combined sequences from a Japanese movie, Daikaiju Baran, with new American scenes, Healey was a naval commander who goes to Japan to conduct scientific experiments in the ocean, awakening a prehistoric monster which sinks a ship and smashes a plane, and is heading for Tokyo when Healey devises a concoction of chemicals that kill the monster when shot into it.Healey retired in 1988, but returned to acting to play a doctor in Little Giants (1994), a family film about a group of misfits who form a football team. Recently he had been appearing at film conventions and festivals to talk to fans, and stated that he enjoyed playing villains:It's just plain interesting, the fact that you're not a nice guy I enjoyed that much more than playing a hero.Tom Vallance. His numerous credits included such westerns as The Gene Autry Show, Cheyenne, Wagon Train, Gunsmoke and Bonanza, plus other shows such as Perry Mason, Sea Hunt and The Incredible Hulk.He is particularly remembered for two roles in western shows - his taking over from Douglas Fowley as "Doc" Holliday in the popular series starring Hugh O'Brian, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1958-59), and his portrayal of a sadistic sergeant who gives Robert Horton 20 lashes with a bullwhip in an episode of Wagon Train titled "The Traitors" (1961).During his big-screen career he appeared with many of Hollywood's principal western stars, including Randolph Scott in Shoot-out at Medicine Bend (1957), Barbara Stanwyck in Cattle Queen of Montana (1954), and John Wayne in both Rio Bravo (1959) and True Grit (1969).He had a rare leading role in the monster movie Varan the Unbelievable (1962).

He had a notable "good guy" role (and co-star billing) in one of Republic Studio's last cliff-hanging serials, Panther Girl of the Kongo (1955), helping the heroine Phyllis Coates combat giant claw monsters (actually crayfish in miniature sets with a giant claw for an occasional close-up).By this time Healey had become established as a regular performer on television, having made his small screen d?t in the series The Lone Ranger (1949-57). He was a post office clerk in Nicholas Ray's masterly thriller In a Lonely Place (1950), and a thug in Allan Dwan's film noir (in colour), Slightly Scarlet (1956). Healey also provided the story for another Brown vehicle, Texas Lawmen (1951).The demise of the "B" western in the Fifties led to more diverse acting roles in crime, war and science-fiction films. As the leader of the gang, Healey was described by one critic as "wonderfully nasty". Healey's cads were notable for being clean-cut and shaven, sleeker and slicker than the average western bad guy.He also worked as a writer and dialogue director, and wrote the script (including a juicy role for himself) for the Johnny Mack Brown film Colorado Ambush (1951), in which the star played a federal agent tracking down a gang who rob payroll stages. (After the war he continued to serve in the Air Force Reserve, retiring in the early 1960s as a captain.) Returning to Hollywood in 1945, he had difficulty finding work until signed by Monogram to appear in the string of westerns they were producing, starring Johnny Mack Brown, Jimmy Wakely and Whip Wilson.His first film for Monogram was also his first as a villain, opposite Brown in Hidden Danger (1948). In this all-star patriotic movie, he was featured in a station sequence near the start kissing his sweetheart goodbye in a way that prompts a solitary soldier (Gene Kelly) to kiss a girl he has never met before (Kathryn Grayson), launching the film's romantic plot.Healey himself served in the Second World War from 1943 as an Air Corps navigator and bombardier.