The son of a
toolmaker, Moss was born in
Redhill, Surrey in 1927. His childhood was spent on the south coast, in the Brighton-Worthing area, and he attended
Steyning Grammar School. At the age of 13, he saw a jazz band appear briefly in a
Bowery Boys film on a family cinema visit, and was so inspired by the clarinet playing that he swapped his most valued possession, his ice skates, for a second-hand instrument of his own. He was self-taught on both this and the tenor saxophone, which he took up at school. A spell of
National Service at the age of 18 saw Moss performing for three years in a
Royal Air Force regional band. After leaving the forces he joined the
Vic Lewis Orchestra, and in the next few years moved around various bands, especially ones with the potential for a
soloist. In 1952, he joined
Ted Heath's band, a well-paid role which he described as "the prestige job of all time". Soon, however, Moss found the group's focus on
novelty numbers and faithful musical reproductions, including that of solos, to be limiting to his skills as an
improviser, and he left after three years. In 1957, Moss joined
John Dankworth's orchestra. Here, with the band's encouragement, he began to develop his characteristic saxophone sound, eschewing the contemporary focus on light tone and fast phrasing in favour of a thicker and more spacious sound. informed by American tenor saxophonists such as
Coleman Hawkins and
Ben Webster. When the Dankworth band visited America, Moss' style was singled out for compliment by
Count Basie, who declared his playing "real
Texas tenor... the way it should sound!" He left Dankworth's band in 1962, as the band itself was winding down. From here, he joined
Humphrey Lyttelton's group, where he continued to hone his style for another two years. He then married jazz singer
Jeanie Lambe on 6 January 1964, and the couple moved from London to
Sussex at her suggestion. Here, he formed his own quartet, playing a mix of club gigs, festival appearances and radio broadcasts for the
BBC. He continued to tour with this quartet throughout the 1970s and 1980s, also playing and recording with American singers like
Tony Bennett,
Ella Fitzgerald,
Bing Crosby,
Sarah Vaughan and
Rosemary Clooney, and appeared as a guest soloist with
Buck Clayton on a Humphrey Lyttelton album,
Me And Buck in 1963. He worked with
Louis Armstrong on his last British tour. Moss later co-founded British jazz "
supergroup" Pizza Express All-Stars in 1980, playing with them until the end of the 1980s. Moss and Lambe moved to Perth, Western Australia in 1989, although Moss continued to play regularly in Europe.According to his obituary in
The Daily Telegraph, his distance from Europe only seemed to increase the level of demand for his performances there. ==Illness and death==