Dick Morrissey represents a select breed of horn players in Britain — dedicated to blowing in clubs everywhere in spite of the paltry financial returns. The saxophone is the premier instrument in jazz and can provide a good living, but usually in the US. Morrissey heads a list of jazzers turning to 'crossover' music.

A few years ago there was a band called If on the circuit in Britain. A jazz/rock band they were termed then, though since that time the style has been renamed crossover. If generated the sort of enthusiasm in the press that convinced you that these writers were halfway sane after all. Those were the days when a band was judged on its musical ability, not on the fab leather gear that the vocalist happened to be sporting.

Not that If went in for on-stage perversion: their forté was that they were arguably the first band to successfully blend both jazz and rock styles. They did it far better than any outfit operating on either side of the Atlantic. The two prime movers behind this group were guitarist Terry Smith and tenorist Dick Morrissey, both of whom were well known in the jazz world before they extended their appeal to the wider rock music market. They still blow together, in fact, in the scattered venues around London that continue to cater for jazz freaks.

Dick first began blowing tenor in 1958. He followed the usual route into saxophony — he played clarinet first at school, and then picked up the horn later. He was 18 when he was turned on to jazz. Naturally enough for the times, Dick was into people like Louis and his Hot Five, Johnny Dodds, mainly New Orleans stuff. He then met an alto player, Peter King, who introduced the young Morrissey to the greats of the jazz horn — Charlie Parker and Lester Young.

It was this experience that led Dick to purchase his first tenor on HP — 'on the knockers' as he terms it.

'It was about £160 in those days, which was a hell of a lot of money,' says Dick. 'It was a Selmer Mark VI. They must be worth around six hundred quid now. It eventually fell to bits in 1972, so I bought another. I've only had two tenors all this time. I play soprano as well, that's a Bugani, a cheapo version of a Selmer, I guess it must be Italian or Czech or something like that. But it blows all right. I picked it up in New York.'

For a mouthpiece Dick chooses an Otto Link 9-star, a big lay, which is fitted with either Rico or Rico Royale reeds, strength 3½ to 4. 'I tried plastic reeds a few years ago,' explains Dick, 'but I didn't get on with them at all. Because I feel that a player puts his own thing into a saxophone — especially the sax — it's got to be your own personality inside. I mean, look how many sounds you can get out of it. There's Stan Getz at one end of the spectrum, Paul Desmond, Coleman Hawkins, right down to Boots Randolph at the other, all those guys have got completely different sounds. The plastic reed sounds like it should sound, but it won't bend, it stays cold. It'll work efficiently from top to bottom, but that isn't really the point, is it?'

Dick started life on the tenor with a much closer lay than he uses now. But after years and years of playing sax, the bottom lip builds up to the texture of shoe leather, in much the same way as a trumpeter's lip. But Dick is sure that a wide lay with a hard reed isn't strictly necessary to get a good sound. As for embouchure, Dick says: 'I just stick the mouthpiece in my mouth and blow. I'm a self-taught player, so I don't know the names for embouchure and things like that.'

'When I was in the States working a couple of years back I met one of my idols,' recounts Dick, 'a guy called David Newman who used to play all the solos with Ray Charles. Well, I worked with him in Herbie Mann's band and I was surprised to discover that he still uses the original Selmer mouthpiece that they throw in with the horn when you buy it. It has a very close, thin lay, and most people would say that you have to get rid of that and get something decent. But Newman plays that and gets one of the most gorgeous sounds I've heard. It's such a personal thing, you know.

'As long as you have a horn that works, as long as it's efficient, and as long as it's fitted with a reed and mouthpiece set-up that isn't ridiculous, then usually a good player is going to sound good. It's as simple as that really.'

Early on in his career Dick was playing small halls, such as the defunct Flamingo Club in Wardour Street and the Marquee.

At this time all the venues had one thing in common — they could all be filled with sound without any amplification, or very little. It was when Morrissey began playing with bands that played bigger halls that the problems started.

'If used to play big places,' explains Dick, 'I did have a bug and an octave divider and other stuff for a while. But I found that it changed my sound too much. You know, I went to see Sonny Rollins in New York a while back. He's gained a lot of popularity lately because he's playing crossover music, and he was playing a big hall. Now, before he became that big I once saw him in a small club with a few other people. The difference between the two gigs was incredible. In the big hall he was using a bug through an amp, and to me it was terrible. He's got one of the best horn sounds in the world, and it didn't sound the same through a bug, not nearly so good. For me it's better to play through a mike.

'You can do both, of course. Wilton Felder did with the Crusaders recently, when he played straight most of the night and then did a little feature with all sorts of electronics. I'm not against effects. It's just difficult to get your own sound through an amplifier.'

In 1977 Dick played a couple of gigs with the Average White Band in America. They play in front of the capacity audiences one expects out there, 25 000 people in the stalls, that sort of thing. The halls are huge, and yet Dick was perfectly satisfied with the sound he was making through a mike and the PA. 'It just depends on the sound company. They've got to know their equipment as well as you know your horn.'

In addition to the concerts with AWB, Dick Morrissey and his compatriot Jim Mullen cut an album with the AWB backing in Atlantic studios. The disc was never released in Britain.

But recently Dick and Jim Mullen have been working with Harvest on a new album to be released here. It should just about be in the shops as you read this. It's crossover music, not the purist's cup of poison, but Dick hopes that it'll break in England the way that jazz is breaking in the States right now: he's very aware of the fact that a hell of lot of British jazzers should be working right now, but aren't.