A close friend of the late Ronnie Scott and a fellow saxophonist, Pat Crumly was the man whom Scott always asked to deputise for him at his jazz club when he was indisposed. After Scott’s death, from 1997 until 2003, and again earlier this year, Crumly and the pianist John Critchinson co-led the Ronnie Scott Legacy Band, to keep his memory alive.

This was just one facet of Crumly’s musical life. Audiences across Britain and Europe might not have known his name, but they would certainly have heard his playing as the saxophonist with the Animals (during a year-long tour in 1983) and with Eric Burdon. Specialising in playing short, punchy saxophone solos to great effect in rock surroundings, Crumly also worked with Zoot Money, Alan Price, Roger Chapman and Chris Farlowe.

Patrick John Crumly was born in Oxford and grew up there, taking up the clarinet at 14 and the saxophone two years later. In the 1960s the city had an active university jazz club, and towards the end of the decade Crumly provided its resident quartet, backing such eminent visitors as the reed players Tony Coe, Don Rendell and Joe Harriott, the trumpeter Ian Carr, and the blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon. By the start of the 1970s Crumly was well established locally and wrote a jazz column for the Oxford Times and presented a weekly programme on BBC Radio Oxford.

Asked in 1973 to deputise for Don Rendell in the John Dankworth Orchestra, he formed a long association with Dankworth and his wife Cleo Laine, frequently returning to play in the big band or sextet, but also becoming involved in teaching from the mid-1970s at the Dankworths’ regular summer schools at their home in Wavendon, Buckinghamshire.

Crumly was also taking an interest in contemporary jazz and formed a shortlived band called Edge to play it, the group’s work being preserved on their sole album Uneasy Peace. In 1978 he turned professional, moving the next year to London, where he was soon playing with numerous jazz ensembles, but also in demand to work in pit bands for such shows as Tommy, which was running in the West End.

Crumly had a big, warm tone on the tenor sax, and an agility that allowed him to tackle most parts of the modern jazz repertoire with ease. From now on his career was a balancing act between his first love of playing jazz, mainly in his own quartet, nine-piece group and occasional big band, and the more lucrative world of playing rock or rhythm ’n’ blues. He was reunited with Witherspoon, but also found himself backing singers as Jack Jones, Salena Jones and Trini Lopez.

In the mid-1980s he received an Arts Council bursary to write and record Third World Sketches with his sextet, and he went on to make further albums with his own quartet, of which the most recent was called Weaver of Dreams. Crumly was an advocate of Nichiren Buddhism, which he had practised since the early 1990s, becoming a member of the Soka Gakkai International organisation, to promote peace and culture worldwide.

He had recently been playing regularly at the 606 Club in Chelsea, and was preparing to play more engagements with the Ronnie Scott Legacy Band. He died unexpectedly of heart failure while visiting Italy.

He is survived by his third wife, Hannah Jackson, and two sons.

Pat Crumly, saxophonist, was born on February 9, 1942. He died of heart failure on September 28, 2008, aged 66