Jazzjet

Thanks everyone. Same birthday as George Coleman and Gabor Szabo apparently.

I got this one a little while back and, you're right, its a good one. Some good musicians in that band.

I used to buy it in the late 70s/early 80s - there was a hole-in-the-wall newsagent on Parliament Street in Nottingham that had an extraordinary range of magazines, including Downbeat! I can't recall why I stopped buying it - perhaps it was too mainstream/pre-Miles in its affections for me to get that interested at the time. I think I'd be more open now. I started buying it in the 60s at school ( felt very superior amongst the NMEs and Melody Makers ) and carried on buying in a little newsagent in Charing Cross Road where you could also get Village Voice! It started to seem a bit old fashioned and I preferred Jazz Monthly. Still, it did its job and helped me in those early years of jazz appreciation.

I'm with you on the ownership thing. Difficult to break that desire to own ( and catalogue ). However, Spotify is surprisingly good and comprehensive. My main worry is what will happen to performance etc when the rest of the world ( mainly the US ) gets it?

A great shame. A true pioneer in British jazz and I shall remember him most for the Rendell/Carr group which really cemented my love of jazz.

Personally I would recommend buying an ION USB turntable for the job. As for the software, I use CD Spin Doctor which comes as part of the Roxio Toast package as this works well for me. If it has to be free, Audacity is very good.

Apart from his songwriting skills he was an innovative guitarist with his use of the Echoplex, creating tremendous evolving soundscapes. The DVD of his BBC appearances has some great examples.

Showing your youth there, sidewinder! Barely out of nappies ! That's one of the earliest TV memories I have (apart from Andy Pandy, Looby Loo (Lou?), The Woodentops etc ). The other one is seeing the Churchill funeral barge procession along the Thames with all those cranes. In retrospect, that was an entire era coming to an end and a new one beginning. I actually went to Churchill's funeral ( 1965 ), or rather was in the crowd outside St Paul's. We went from school. I remember it as being one of the coldest days I had experienced.

Another long-form funk based track you should try and hear is 'Pain' by Houston Person ( the Ohio Players song ). Great band featuring Grant Green, Marcus Belgrave, Sony Phillips, James Jamerson, Idris Muhammad. It was originally on The Real Thing ( Eastbound ) ( 1973 ). It also appears on a UK compilation called Personality on the BGP label. It's a real killer.

Of course there is an unstated but nevertheless tangible aura of 'where on earth did we go wrong'.

I'd also recommend Nat's 'You, Baby' which has a similar feel to 'Calling Out Loud'.

I'd add : Calling Out Loud by Nat Adderley

If its the same place its recently undergone a £380,000 refurbishment ( Cornish for a fortune ).

Days of Future Passed was indeed on Deram. It was recorded to promote parent company Decca's Deramic Sound System ( DSS ). Good move for the Moodys!

I remember selling quite a few copies of Days of Future Passed when I worked in a South Ken record shop back in the day, a lot of them to audiophiles. Not sure about Sgt Peppers being the real precursor of prog, although it blazed a trail in its use of the recording studio. What about Freak Out by the Mothers of Invention, released in 1966? Also, as a precursor of the emphasis on technique and musicianship in prog, bands like Cream and The Nice were important.

Ian McDonald ( the altoist ) made an excellent album with Mike Giles ( another founder member of KC ) titled 'McDonald and Giles' ( 1971 ). It also featured Steve Winwood and Peter Giles. Contains an obligatory 20 minute suite titled 'Birdman'. Some of the lyrics should be preserved in aspic, as should the sleeve. McDonald & Giles I haven't had a chance to watch the Prog Rock Britannia programmes as yet but does it touch on the question of the earliest prog albums? I've always thought it to be either The Who Sell Out or The Moody Blues' 'Nights in White Satin'. Any thoughts?

I remember in the late 60s my Dad and I did a deal. He would come with me to a Charles Lloyd concert at London's Royal Festival Hall if I went with him to a classical concert of his choosing. It was Carmina Burana and it blew me away.

Count yourself lucky. Here in Truro, Fopp opened and closed after about 9 months. God knows why they opened in the first place. On the positive side we haven't got a Zavvi here so not effected by their closure! Just one shop here now - HMV - and the way things are going they'll gradually shift the jazz section into the broom cupboard to make way for more useless DVDs. What I don't understand is if its cheaper and easier to buy CDs online why doesn't the same apply to DVDs when shop space allocated is increasing.

That's really sad. I never followed his work closely but 'Folk Blues and Beyond' showed his interest in jazz and Mingus in particular. I've got another one of his recorded informally at a University gig - 'After Hours at Hull University' - which is good.

Interesting. Never heard of an Ayler Jazz 625 session before. I assume no recordings were made?

Thanks a lot John ( and Marcello ). This is EXACTLY what I was looking for - the most complete source I've seen. It didn't come up in any Google searches I carried out.

Probably was Mark Murphy. He was recorded with the Tubby Hayes Quintet, possibly at the Marquee which was one of the places Jazz 625 used for recording. According to the BFI it was 18th August 1964. The Mose Allison show was a week earlier but apparently recorded at the National Jazz Festival in Richmond.

Couldn't agree more. I read somewhere that the shows were originally telerecorded to 35mm film from a feed of the studio output so were not wiped liked a lot of shows from that era. The shows keep turning up even now, from Japanese sources for example, but it would still be nice to have a complete list so that we could see what was still missing. Even the 'Andorran' labels are issuing some Jazz 625 shows now, such as the Thelonious Monk programmes. BBC4 is actually pretty good on broadcasting jazz - compared to what we used to have - but they have a wonderful resource already sitting in their archives.

Sorry if this has been raised before but I'm looking for a definitive list of recordings and broadcasts made by the BBC in their Jazz 625 series. These TV shows were recorded and broadcast between about 1964 and 1966 and included some of the best performances of the period. There have been a few reruns in the UK over the years, mainly in the 1980s and 1990s, which has added to the stock of show recordings in private hands but there seems to be no reliable list of all the shows made. The BBC don't seem to be interested in researching their archives ( the money being better used to pay Jonathan Ross's salary ). The British Film Institute does have some information but it is clearly incomplete and sketchy : BFI . The Jazz On Film site also carries a list ( which differs from the BFI list ) but is again a bit sketchy. Interestingly, this list includes a session by Joe Harriott and John Mayer's Indo Jazz Fusions, which would be fascinating to see : Jazz On Film . So, can anyone come up with other lists or potential sources of information?

Just got hold of two Sabu releases from Swedish label Mellotronen. Burned Sugar is from some recently discovered Swedish radio tapes from 1973 and Winds & Skins is from another set of radio tapes and features the legendary Sahib Shihab. Both CDs are incredible featuring intense jazz funk that never lets up. Burned Sugar includes Polish keyboardist Wlodek Gulgowski and Bernt Rosengren on sax, plus an excellent but unknown bass player. Sadly, Sabu died in Stockholm from a gastric ulcer in 1978, less than a month after the Wind & Skins sessions. Strongly recommended.