Tim Whitehead’s story has one of the great opening lines in British jazz. Born in Liverpool, son of one of the original writers of Dennis the Menace in The Beano, his first public performance was as clarinet soloist in a school orchestra concert conducted by a fellow pupil — one Simon Rattle. He then read law at Manchester University before jazz pulled him away from the bar for good. That was 1976. What followed was fifty years of serious, independent-minded music-making: touring with Ian Carr’s Nucleus and Graham Collier, a pivotal role in the groundbreaking big band Loose Tubes in the 1980s, residencies at Ronnie Scott’s, an Artist in Residence at Tate Britain, a London Jazz Festival commission, and a shortlisting for British Composer of the Year. His 1999 album Personal Standards won BBC Music Magazine’s Jazz Album of the Year. The Times called his music “marked by a sense of grace and economy.” That still holds. Googlies is delighted to welcome him back.