[2] Wells read Greats at Oxford University, where he put together a quartet with tenor player Pat Crumly and pianist Brian Priestley that played with visitors including saxophonists Bobby Wellins, Tony Coe and Joe Harriott, and blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon.

Mathewson was then playing in the quartet of tenor player Tubby Hayes, and asked Wells if he would be interested in joining the group.

He played in the quintet of pianist Lionel Grigson, who had a regular weekly gig at The Troubadour coffee house in Old Brompton Road,[4] with such musicians as Chris Bateson (trumpet), Pete Burden or Paul Zec on alto, and John Hart or David "Happy" Williams on bass.

[5] The pianist Gordon Beck has stated that, in his opinion: "The union of Ron Mathewson and Spike Wells in Tubby's quartet with Stewart is the single greatest rhythm section in all of British jazz."

He had drifted away from his faith in his teens, but in his early forties he had a "reconversion experience" and then developed a strong sense of vocation that led him to become a deacon in the Church of England when he was 49, and a year later to take early retirement from the bank and become a stipendiary curate at St Peter's Church, Brighton.