This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News
Acker Bilk dies
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 3 November 2014
Jazz clarinettist Acker Bilk died on Sunday, aged 85. The cause of death has not been announced.
Bilk began performing in the early 1950s, and was best known for his 1962 single ‘Strangers On The Shore’, which was the UK’s highest selling single of that year. He last performed live in August last year at the Brecon Jazz Festival.
In a statement, his manager Pamela Sutton said: “He was vastly important to the jazz movement, he could play the clarinet like nobody else, he had a special tone and vibrato – other musicians would tell you that”.
She went on: “His life was music and performing. He only gave it up because his age caught up with him and he couldn’t perform any more. He was a charming person to be with and he was famous worldwide, especially in Australia. He was a brilliant musician. He had a great sense of humour in every way. He just loved life”.
The musician had twice survived cancer and suffered a mini-stroke in recent years.
