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.
Obituaries
Session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan 1941-2012
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 4 October 2012
British session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan died on Tuesday, it was announced yesterday. His wife Norma told the BBC that he had died peacefully at their West Sussex home. He was 71.
Born James George Tomkins in Uxbridge, Middlesex on Valentine’s Day 1941, Sullivan began playing guitar when he was fourteen and went on to become one of the most in-demand session musicians of the 60s and 70s, due to his versatility, playing many different styles of music. As a result he played on over a thousand top 20 singles, including 55 number ones.
His first success came when, at the age of seventeen, he joined The Wildcats, fronted by Marty Wild. It was from there he began working as a session guitarist, playing on up to three recordings every day.
Amongst the musicians he worked with in the studio were David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Ella Fitzgerlad, The Walker Brothers, Shirley Bassey, Donovan, Dusty Springfield and Engelbert Humperdinck, as well as recording and touring with Tom Jones for a number of years in the early 70s.
He also spent time as resident guitarist on both ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ and ‘Top Of The Pops’, and in the late 80s began composing and recording music for film and TV.
More recently, in 2003, he formed the BJS Duo with Doug Pruden, but by 2005 had ceased performing live due to ill health.
