Jack Fallon was 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...

 bassist born in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

.

Fallon played violin before making double-bass his primary instrument at age 20. During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 he played in a dance band in the Royal Canadian Air Force

Royal Canadian Air Force

The history of the Royal Canadian Air Force begins in 1920, when the air force was created as the Canadian Air Force . In 1924 the CAF was renamed the Royal Canadian Air Force and granted royal sanction by King George V. The RCAF existed as an independent service until 1968...

, and settled in Britain after his discharge. He joined the band of Ted Heath in 1946, and played bebop

Bebop

Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...

 in London clubs in his spare time. In 1947 he played with Ronnie Scott

Ronnie Scott

Ronnie Scott was an English jazz tenor saxophonist and jazz club owner.-Life and career:Ronnie Scott was born in Aldgate, east London, into a family of Russian Jewish descent on his father's side, and Portuguese antecedents on his mother's. Scott began playing in small jazz clubs at the age of...

 and Tommy Whittle

Tommy Whittle

Tommy Whittle is a British jazz saxophonist.Whittle was born in Grangemouth, Scotland and started playing clarinet at age 12 before taking up the tenor saxophone at 13. He moved to Chatham, Kent at 16 and in 1943 started playing in the dance hall band of Claude Giddins in nearby Gillingham...

 at the Melody Maker

Melody Maker

Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...

/Columbia

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

 Jazz Rally, and following this worked with Jack Jackson

Jack Jackson (British radio)

Jack Jackson was a British trumpeter and bandleader who became a highly influential radio disc jockey....

 (1947), George Shearing

George Shearing

Sir George Shearing, OBE was an Anglo-American jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group that recorded for MGM Records and Capitol Records. The composer of over 300 titles, he had multiple albums on the Billboard charts during the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s...

 (1948) and Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...

 (1949). Soon after playing with Reinhardt, he played in a Count Basie

Count Basie

William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...

 ensemble which also included Malcolm Mitchell and Tony Crombie

Tony Crombie

Anthony John "Tony" Crombie was an English jazz drummer, pianist, bandleader and composer. He was regarded as one of the finest jazz drummers and bandleaders, and occasional but very capable pianist and vibraphonist, to emerge in Britain, and as an energising influence on the British jazz scene...

; he played with both of them after leaving Basie, working together with Hoagy Carmichael

Hoagy Carmichael

Howard Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for writing "Stardust", "Georgia On My Mind", "The Nearness of You", and "Heart and Soul", four of the most-recorded American songs of all time.Alec Wilder, in his study of the...

 and Maxine Sullivan

Maxine Sullivan

Maxine Sullivan , born Marietta Williams, was an American blues and jazz singer.She was born in Homestead, Pennsylvania, and married jazz musician John Kirby in 1938 , and stride pianist Cliff Jackson in 1956...

 and touring in Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 together with Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli

Stéphane Grappelli

Stéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands....

.

Fallon worked in the 1950s as an accompanist to Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Williams wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements, and recorded more than one hundred records...

, Sarah Vaughan

Sarah Vaughan

Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."...

, and Lena Horne

Lena Horne

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...

, and also served as a sideman in the ensembles of Humphrey Lyttelton

Humphrey Lyttelton

Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton , also known as Humph, was an English jazz musician and broadcaster, and chairman of the BBC radio comedy programme I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue...

, Kenny Baker

Kenny Baker

Kenneth George "Kenny" Baker is a British actor and musician, best known as the man inside R2-D2 in the popular Star Wars film series.- Career :...

, and Ralph Sharon

Ralph Sharon

-Biography:Born in London, he emigrated to America in 1953, becoming a U.S. citizen five years later.By 1958, Ralph Sharon was recording with Tony Bennett, the start of a more than 40 year working relationship as Bennett's man behind the music on many Grammy winning studio recordings, and touring...

. Additionally, he was house bassist at Lansdowne Studios. He worked outside of jazz with blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 musicians such as Big Bill Broonzy

Big Bill Broonzy

Big Bill Broonzy was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences...

 and Josh White

Josh White

Joshua Daniel White , better known as Josh White, was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor, and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names "Pinewood Tom" and "Tippy Barton" in the 1930s....

, and played with Johnny Duncan

Johnny Duncan

Johnny Duncan was an American skiffle star. He was born in the Windrock coal mining camp overlooking the town of Oliver Springs, Tennessee, and became a British skiffle star in 1957 with the hit record "Last Train to San Fernando",-Brief biography:Johnny Duncan entered the United States Army and...

's Blue Grass Boys. As the bass guitar

Bass guitar

The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

 became more popular, Fallon became a champion of its use, and played both instruments in the latter part of his career.

Fallon was also involved in the industry as a booker/promoter, having established the booking agency Cana Variety in 1952. Cana booked primarily jazz artists in its early stages but expanded to rock acts in the 1960s, including The Beatles

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

 and The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...

. Because of this connection, Fallon was asked by the Beatles to play fiddle on the song "Don't Pass Me By

Don't Pass Me By

"Don't Pass Me By" is a song by The Beatles from the double album The Beatles . Lead vocals were performed by Ringo Starr. It was Starr's first solo composition.-Origin:...

" (from The Beatles

The Beatles (album)

The Beatles is the ninth official album by the English rock group The Beatles, a double album released in 1968. It is also commonly known as "The White Album" as it has no graphics or text other than the band's name embossed on its plain white sleeve.The album was written and recorded during a...

)

Fallon continued to play jazz locally in London and in the studios into the 1990s. He published a memoir entitled From the Top in 2005, and died the following year at age 90.