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The Jazz Doctors: Intensive Care / Prescriptions Filled
by Chris May
Beyond its initiates, the so-called New Thing which emerged in mainly, but not exclusively, Black US jazz in the 1960s/70s, was perceived so amorphously that prairie-wide distinctions between its practitioners went unregarded. Among the general jazz audience, the musicians were lumped together as a horde of crazed zombies who lacked all technique, and who had replaced creativity with noise and anger, and beauty with ugliness. Tenor saxophonists were particularly prone to such dismissal and, given the number ...
read moreJoe Harriott: Swings High
by Chris May
Like many players who are primarily thought of as “experimental" and/or “free form"—and virtually all of the best of them--the Jamaican-born, later London-based alto saxophonist Joe Harriott was also a master of straight four/four jazz and Great American Songbook balladry. Yet in 2022, Harriott (1928-1973) is almost exclusively remembered either for his adventures in Indo-jazz fusion with the violinist John Mayer and, separately, guitarist Amancio D'Silva, or his own harmolodic-esque, but not Ornette Coleman-beholden, albums such as Free Form (Jazzland, ...
read moreTori Handsley: As We Stand
by Chris May
Harpist Tori Handsley is a prominent sideperson on London's alternative jazz scene.She has worked with reed player Shabaka Hutchings, tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia and keyboard player Nikki Yeoh among other luminaries. She is perhaps best known for her contributions to two albums by Binker and Moses, the ferocious semi-free duo led by tenor saxophonist Binker Golding and drummer Moses Boyd. Handsley is a featured guest on the group's landmark albums Journey To The Mountain Of Forever (Gearbox, 2017) and Alive ...
read moreFela Ransome Kuti & His Highlife Rakers: Fela's First
by Chris May
Lost recordings released for the first time! First, the back story.... In 1958, aged 19, Fela Kuti left the highlife scene in Lagos, Nigeria, where he was on the first steps of a career as a trumpeter, and travelled to London. His mother hoped he would enrol in medical school, as his late father had wished. But Kuti was set on furthering his music studies. Arriving in London, he applied to Trinity College of Music but failed the ...
read moreHarry Beckett: Joy Unlimited
by Chris May
The Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett moved to Britain when he was 19. His first known recording session came in 1961 alongside Charles Mingus. This happened during the London sessions for the Tubby Hayes album All Night Long (Fontana, 1962), which was chronicled in the 2020 All About Jazz article Jazz & Film: An Alternative Top 20 Soundtrack Albums. To debut with Mingus was an auspicious beginning and Beckett never looked back. Seemingly loved by everyone who met ...
read moreThe Last Night At The Old Place
by Duncan Heining
By any standards the release of The Last Night At The Old Place will prove to be one of archive releases of the year, second only, perhaps, to the 'Lost' Coltrane album. All power, therefore, to Mike Gavin who has inherited the Cadillac catalogue from the late John Jack with his first release of archive material. The Last Night at the Old Place gives those of us far too young to have been present--or in my case just too young ...
read moreMike Westbrook Concert Band: The Last Night At The Old Place
by Roger Farbey
This live recording which took place on 25th May 1968, celebrated the last night at Ronnie Scott's Club in London's Gerrard Street. Scott and his business partner Pete King moved the club in 1965 to its current location in Frith Street, but as the lease had a couple of years left to run they generously handed it over to younger musicians to run it as a temporary venue. The “Old Place," as it became known, finally closed in 1968. So ...
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