Dennis Rollins is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 trombonist

Trombone

The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...

, the founder and bandleader

Bandleader

A bandleader is the leader of a band of musicians. The term is most commonly, though not exclusively, used with a group that plays popular music as a small combo or a big band, such as one which plays jazz, blues, rhythm and blues or rock and roll music....

 of BadBone and Co.

Rollins was born in Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, of Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

n parents, and brought up in Bentley, Doncaster and attended Don Valley High School. When he was fourteen years old, he joined The Doncaster Youth Jazz Association, with which he studied and performed for some years before moving to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1987.

Dennis Rollins has recorded, performed, and toured with a host of musicians and bands in jazz and pop, including Courtney Pine

Courtney Pine

Courtney Pine CBE is an English jazz musician. At school he studied the clarinet, although he is known primarily for his saxophone playing. Pine is a multi-instrumentalist, also playing the flute, clarinet, bass Clarinet and keyboards...

, US3

US3

Us3 is a jazz-rap group founded in London in 1991. Their name was inspired by a Horace Parlan recording produced by Alfred Lion, the founder of Blue Note Records. On their debut album, Hand on the Torch, Us3 used samples from the Blue Note Records catalogue, all originally produced by...

, Jamiroquai

Jamiroquai

Jamiroquai is a British jazz funk and acid jazz band formed in 1992. Jamiroquai were initially the most prominent component in the early-1990s London-based acid jazz movement, alongside groups such as Incognito, the James Taylor Quartet, and the Brand New Heavies. Other Acid Jazz artists such as...

, Roy Ayers

Roy Ayers

Roy Ayers is an American funk, soul, and jazz composer and vibraphone player. Ayers began his career as a post-bop jazz artist, releasing several albums with Atlantic Records, before his tenure at Polydor Records beginning in the 1970s, during which he helped pioneer jazz-funk .- Biography :Ayers...

, Dionne Warwick

Dionne Warwick

Dionne Warwick is an American singer, actress and TV show host, who became a United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, and a United States Ambassador of Health....

, Cypress Hill

Cypress Hill

Cypress Hill is an American hip hop group from South Gate, California. Cypress Hill was the first Latino hip-hop group to have platinum and multi-platinum albums, selling over 18 million albums worldwide...

, Hermeto Pascoal

Hermeto Pascoal

Hermeto Pascoal is a Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist. He was born in Lagoa da Canoa, Alagoas, Brazil. Pascoal is a greatly beloved musical figure in the history of Brazilian music, known for his abilities at orchestration and improvisation, as well as being a record producer and...

, George Clinton

George Clinton (funk musician)

George Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer and the principal architect of P-Funk. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost...

, Lonnie Liston Smith

Lonnie Liston Smith

Lonnie Liston Smith, Jr. is an American jazz, soul, and funk musician who played with important free jazz artists such as Pharoah Sanders and Miles Davis before forming Lonnie Liston Smith And The Cosmic Echoes, recording a number of albums widely regarded as classics in the fusion / Quiet Storm /...

, Blur

Blur (band)

Blur is an English alternative rock band. Formed in London in 1989 as Seymour, the group consists of singer Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree. Blur's debut album Leisure incorporated the sounds of Madchester and shoegazing...

, Tom Jones

Tom Jones (singer)

Sir Thomas John Woodward, OBE , known by his stage name Tom Jones, is a Welsh singer.Since the mid 1960s, Jones has sung many styles of popular music – pop, rock, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, techno, soul and gospel – and sold over 100 million records...

, Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu

Erica Abi Wright , better known by her stage name Erykah Badu , is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress. Her work includes elements from R&B, hip hop and jazz. She is best known for her role in the rise of the neo soul sub-genre, and for her eccentric, cerebral musical...

, Marcus Miller

Marcus Miller

Marcus Miller is an American jazz composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Miller is best known as a bassist, working with trumpeter Miles Davis, singer Luther Vandross, and saxophonist David Sanborn, as well as maintaining a prolific solo career...

, Sting, Percy Sledge

Percy Sledge

Percy Sledge is an American R&B and soul performer who recorded the hit "When a Man Loves a Woman" in 1966.-Early career:...

, Gorillaz

Gorillaz

Gorillaz is an English musical project created in 1998 by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. This project consists of Gorillaz music itself and an extensive fictional universe depicting a "virtual band" of cartoon characters...

, Space Monkeyz, the National Youth Jazz Orchestra

National Youth Jazz Orchestra

The National Youth Jazz Orchestra is a British jazz orchestra founded in 1963 by Bill Ashton.Based in Westminster, London, NYJO started life as the London Schools' Jazz Orchestra and evolved into becoming the national orchestra...

, Brand New Heavies

Brand New Heavies

The Brand New Heavies are an acid jazz and funk group formed in 1985 in Ealing, a suburb of London, England.-Biography:The Brand New Heavies began in the 1980s as an instrumental acid jazz group called Brother International....

, Baaba Maal

Baaba Maal

Baaba Maal is a Senegalese singer and guitarist born in Podor, on the Senegal River. In addition to acoustic guitar, he also plays percussion. He has released several albums, both for independent and major labels. In July 2003, he was made a UNDP Youth Emissary.-Biography:Born 12 November 1953...

, the Jazz Warriors

Jazz Warriors

The Jazz Warriors were an all-black London-based group of jazz musicians that made their debut in 1986. The idea for the band came from the Abibi Jazz Arts - a London organization that promoted black music and black culture - in 1985...

, Maceo Parker

Maceo Parker

Maceo Parker is an American funk and soul jazz saxophonist, best known for his work with James Brown in the 1960s, as well as Parliament-Funkadelic in the 1970s. Parker was a prominent soloist on many of Brown's hit recordings, and a key part of his band, playing alto, tenor and baritone saxophones...

, Prince Buster

Prince Buster

Cecil Bustamente Campbell, O.D. , better known as Prince Buster, and also known by his Muslim name Muhammed Yusef Ali, is a musician from Kingston, Jamaica. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of ska and rocksteady music...

, and Beverley Knight

Beverley Knight

Beverley Knight MBE is a British soul and R&B singer, songwriter, and record producer who released her debut album in 1995. Heavily influenced by soul greats such as Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin, Knight has released six studio albums to date...

.

In 1995 he formed his own jazz-funk

Jazz-funk

Jazz-funk is a sub-genre of jazz music characterized by a strong back beat , electrified sounds, and often, the presence of the first electronic analog synthesizers...

 band, Dee Roe, with which he performed at such venues as the Jazz Café

Jazz Café

The Jazz Café is a music venue in Parkway in Camden Town, London, England. It opened in 1990, in the former premises of Barclays Bank, and has been run by Mean Fiddler Music Group since 1992, now a subsidiary of the MAMA Group.-History:...

, Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club

Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club

Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club is a jazz club which has operated in London since 1959.The club opened on 30 October 1959 in a basement at 39 Gerrard Street in London's Soho district. It was managed by musicians Ronnie Scott and Pete King. In 1965 it moved to a larger venue nearby at 47 Frith Street...

, the London Forum

London Forum

The London Forum, or sometimes Kentish Town Forum is a well-known venue for concerts in Kentish Town, London, United Kingdom owned by the MAMA Group. The venue was built in 1934 and was originally used as an art deco cinema. After the closure of the cinema, The Town & Country Club was established...

, and Brixton Academy.

In 2000 he again formed a band, the quintet Dennis Rollins' BadBone and Co., launched at the Barbican in March of that year, again specialising in funk

Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

-inflected jazz.

In 2005 he formed Boneyard, an ensemble featuring ten trombones, sousaphone

Sousaphone

The sousaphone is a type of tuba that is widely employed in marching bands. Designed so that it fits around the body of the musician and is supported by the left shoulder, the sousaphone may be readily played while being carried...

 (or "sousabone"), and drums; this band performed a series of live gigs throughout the U.K. that summer as well as a performance on BBC Radio 3. Boneyard featured the British jazz trombonists Barnaby Dickinson, Matt Colman, Julian Hepple, Andy Derrick, Kevin Holborough, Harry Brown

Harry Brown

Harry Brown may refer to:*Harry Brown , Canadian radio and television host*Harry W. Brown , Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross*Harry W...

, and Lee Hallam, with Andy Grappy on sousabone.

Current Band members of Badbone&co are; Jay Phelps on trumpet, Johnny Heyes on guitars, Courtney Thomas on bass, Ross Stanley on keys and Jack Pollit on drums.

For the past several years, Ben has been a user of bespoke trombones designed and built by Michael Rath Trombones of Huddersfield.

Recordings (as leader)

• 2000: Wild & Free (E.P.)
• 2001: BadBone
• 2003: Make Your Move
• 2006: Big Night Out

Sources and external links

• Ben Rollins Official Website
• Myspace page
• "Funk Is the Preacher, Jazz Is the Teacher" Kevin LeGendre (Jazzwise
  Jazzwise
  Jazzwise Publications Limited is a UK-based specialist jazz music publisher and education company. It was founded in 1984 as a mail-order company promoting jazz and improvisation through catalogues and short courses and workshops for musicians...
  
  97, May 2006. pp 24–28)