Elton Dean: Elton Dean's Unlimited Saxophone Company

A vitally important platform for apartheid-era expatriate South African musicians, Ogun Records was founded in London in 1973 by the bassist Harry Miller, then in self-exile from South Africa, and his wife, Hazel Miller. Chris McGregor, Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo-Moholo were among those recording with Ogun in the 1970s under their own names or as members of bands such as Harry Miller's Isipingo and McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath. Alongside the South Africans, and often performing with them, the label recorded future-facing British jazz musicians such as Elton Dean, Trevor Watts, Keith Tippett and Mike Osborne.

Ogun's output slowed in the 1980s after the Millers moved to Holland, where Harry died in an auto accident in 1983. But Hazel kept the label going and it continues in 2024, releasing new recordings and reissues from its catalogue. Among the reissues are the albums Blue Notes For Mongezi and Blue Notes For Johnny, both rereleased in 2022 and heartily recommended. (A review can be read here.)

Elton Dean, who was all over the Ogun catalog, is probably best known for his on-off membership of Soft Machine, with which he first played from 1969 to 1972, and his band Ninesense, which was active in the late 1970s. But Dean, who passed in 2006, had other groups, and one of them was the short-lived Unlimited Saxophone Company (USC), a sextet whose four-piece saxophone section included Trevor Watts, Paul Dunmall and Simon Picard. The eponymous album reviewed here was recorded in live in London in 1989 and released by Ogun in 1990. The new CD comes with a download code for the performance with the same lineup given in Le Mans, France in 1991.

A clue to USC's sound comes with the front cover design and its satin-finish texture. It suggests two words, classic and Ellingtonian, and the centerpiece trio of tracks, "Rising," "Seven For Lee" and "Small Strides" conjure the lush and lyrical sound of Duke Ellington's saxophone section. The solos are more of their own time, with Dunmall's baritone and Dean's saxello getting memorably fierce on "Seven For Lee," at 13:32 the longest track.

A valuable reissue. Audio quality on the download is no more than passable, despite a remaster from Caspar Sutton-Jones, London's answer to the Swiss-based Ezzthetics label's all-conquering sonic Jedi, Michael Brändli. The program is the same as in London and it is caught, after a fashion, on the YouTube below.

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