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TO generations of top-flight musicians, Dunfermline-based Tommy Sampson – Scotland’s king of swing – was simply the leader of the band. The doyen of British big-band leaders, who had fronted big bands since 1947, died on Monday in Queen Margaret Hospital, aged 90. Last Christmas, the super trouper rose from his sick bed to keep his annual carol-concert date with his Dunfermline audiences and resolutely refused to hang up his baton. Illness did prevent him from attending a special 90th birthday tribute in April in Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall – but he tuned in via telephone from his Dunfermline hospital bed as the star line-up of musicians and well-wishers played and sang birthday wishes. The indomitable Tommy was back on the stand in August at the 2008 Edinburgh Jazz Festival – for what was to prove to be his last performance – and a special tribute went out on Wednesday on Stephen Duffy’s Jazz House programme on BBC Radio Scotland. During his long musical career, Tommy was a man of many musical parts - from instrumentalist and band leader to band and choral arranger, vocalist and arranger for “The Black & White Minstrels.” Tommy’s band, whose eight-piece was in action earlier this month at Dunfermline Athletic’s Hall of Fame dance, has been managed since his return to his Dunfermline by sax player Russ Moore, a friend and associate of 40 years’ standing Russ said, “Tommy was gifted arranger. He arranged music all his life, but never sat down at the piano. He did it straight from his head on to the paper. “The BBC have uncovered some of his recordings in the Fifties. David Jacobs at the time said it was the best vocal group he had heard. What he didn’t know was that all four voices were of Tommy Sampson. You can hear the Scottish accent in the voices. It must have been one of the first instances of multi-tracking!” The Dunfermline maestro, of Mercer Place, numbered many jazz legends among his life-long friends – among them sax virtuoso Joe Temperley, from Lochgelly, who was a member of his original band and who kept in touch from New York throughout Tommy’s last illness. He also rubbed shoulders with many stars of stage and television, including Audrey Hepburn, Lena Horne, Frankie Vaughan, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Joe Loss, Billy Connolly, Michael Aspell and Una Stubbs Newhaven-born Tommy owes the early nurturing of his musical talent to his Salvationist roots for by the age of 14 he was already in demand as a cornet soloist and, by the age of 18, he was a depute bandmaster of the Leith Corps’ 30-strong band But the lure of the dance bands beckoned. Tommy had made his debut broadcast in 1933, playing on Children’s Hour with the George Watson’s College dance band and went on to play trumpet in a five-piece band on weekly gigs on the Edinburgh dance circuit. Two days after the outbreak of hostilities, he enlisted in the Ordnance Corps. He was commissioned into the Royal Artillery at the end of 1940 and was captured at the fall of Tobruk in June,1942. As a POW in Italy and Germany, Tommy quickly mustered big bands and choirs to play for their “captive” audiences. Following his demob in 1946, Tommy formed a 17-piece big band who took Leith’s Eldorado by storm in 1947. Tommy liked to recall, “The band was a sensation. I was playing Stan Kenton...swinging music...and had amassed some of the best young players in the country. It was a power-house band. They still say it was the best band that was ever in Britain.” Band members included Joe Temperley, who went on to play sax with Duke Ellington; star clarinettist Henry McKenzie; lead trumper Stan Reynolds; bass player Johnny Hawksworth; and third trombone Johnny Keating, who became Ted Heath’s arranger. Tommy thereafter joined Chappell’s, the music publishers, as exploitation manager or “song plugger,” while freelancing as a band arranger and making up vocal groups to do broadcasts. Tommy was with George Mitchell for 10 years as arranger, singer and conductor and for two years conducted and arranged for the BBC Welsh Dance Orchestra and Chorus. Over the next 40 years and more, Tommy was to ply his trade on the Scottish band scene. He played all the big Glasgow ballrooms and was musical director for showbands performing in hotel venues throughout Scotland, including Gleneagles and the Edinburgh Sheraton. In 12 years of the Orchid Balls at the Sheraton, he helped the Muscular Dystrophy charity raise half a million pounds – just one of the raft of charities to benefit from his big-hearted band. He never forgot his Salvation Army roots and under their banner presented annual charity carol concerts in Dunfermline’s Carnegie Hall. He still kept his original Salvation Army bugle which he gave a special outing in his 80s to play at North Queensferry’s remembrance observances. “They reckon that I was the oldest bugler playing The Last Post that Sunday in Britain!” he used to say proudly. Tommy, whose funeral service will be held at Dunfermline Crematorium on Thursday, 30th October, at 2.45pm, is survived by his wife, Lise and daughters, Helle and Doris.