Bobby Wellins Quartet: What Was Happening

In 1965 tenor saxophonist Bobby Wellins made an indelible mark on jazz history with his contribution to pianist Stan Tracey's Jazz Suite Inspired By Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood (Columbia). The exquisite "Starless And Bible Black" is the most frequently cited track (check the YouTube below) and is indicative of the album's overall beauty. For a while, things looked good for the Glasgow-born, London-based Wellins, but by the end of the decade "health problems" closed down his career until around 1977, when, now based on Britain's south coast, he returned, clean, to the scene.

Jazz In Britain's What Was Happening takes up the story with reissues of 1978's Jubilation (Vortex), a live album, and 1979's Dreams Are Free (Vortex), a studio album. The 2CD set also includes over an hour's worth of previously unreleased material recorded at or around the same time. The line-up on all tracks is Wellins on tenor, Pete Jacobsen on piano, electric piano and organ, Adrian Kendon on bass and Spike Wells on drums.

Wellins was among the most distinctive of the tenor saxophonists who emerged in Britain in the 1960s. He was also a composer of the first order. The tracks on the reissued albums here are originals, the bonus tracks are covers, and Wells' writing stands up respectably alongside the cover-composers (who include Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington). As a player, Wellins was far removed from his close contemporary Tubby Hayes, eschewing hard edges and virtuosic torrents in favor of an often-plaintive sound and more spacious architecture. He could blow up a storm when he felt like it but excelled on ballads. He passed in 2016.

The bonus material comes from Spike Wells' tape archive. Wells also wrote most of the insightful 16-page liner booklet. .

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