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John Patton Video


Soul Stream

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Glad everyone's digging the video! To answer a couple of questions....yeah, I was disappointed in that it wasn't a whole concert, just this one song. Guess he just did one song on some TV show over there. I don't know who the band is. I'm sure just musicians that were provided to him for the gigs he played there. I'm in contact with the guy from London who sent me this, I'll ask him if he knows anything else. Anyway, what a great find this was/is/will be. To see John finally represented on YouTube alongside Jimmy Smith, McGriff, Lonnie, ect... is wonderful.

P.S.-John never said much about the "Big" title except that anything that helped you get over in the music business was good. I think that's how he looked at it... advertising.

Edited by Soul Stream
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Guess he just did one song on some TV show over there. I don't know who the band is. I'm sure just musicians that were provided to him for the gigs he played there.

It looks like it might be from one of those late night "arts" preview programmes that the Beeb puts out. If its BBC2 then that would be very likely the case. Likely in that case that he only had time for the one tune.

The guitarist looks like a very young Phil Robson - though I may be wrong.

Edited by sidewinder
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Gohdamhm, BJP is up there with 4 no-swingin' mofos who sound like they're taking an exam or something, this guy's outnumbered 4-1 not just in quantity but quality, and the shit still swings like a big dog!

That's mojo, bay-bee, & BJP be haddin' it!

My thoughts exactly Jim. That drummer was diggin' coal the whole time. Horns were fine in a do-no-harm kind of way, but the rhythm section...yeah, John drug them along. John was so dead-on that none of it mattered. That whole cliche'-tired-of-hearing-it "saying a lot with a few notes"...well, Big John just showed you what that REALLY means. You gotta know that was a thrown together band of workman-like players (nothing wrong with that) that John just made sound like a million bucks (that's when you know who the real STAR of the show is : )

Edited by Soul Stream
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Right - Jean Toussaint - thought he looked familiar.

Just IMHO but I think there's a risk of romanticising what he's doing with the band a little bit here...maybe actually the band sounds like a million bucks because they're not actually so bad...I'm not sure how a band where one guy is dragging the others along can sound like a million bucks! Blakey liked Toussaint enough to keep him for 4 years...For my taste, yes the trumpet player is a bit pedestrian, but I don't mind the drummer (who I think is poorly served by the sound job as much as anything).

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Jean Toussaint is indeed a fine player whose work I've long enjoyed, but this is not his bag, his "native tongue" if you will, and he does not speak it fluently. Nor do any of the other players, especially the guitarist, who sounds as if he is reading from a book rather than speaking from the heart. Much the same for the drummer.

Why it all works is because BJP is providing the bottom, and this is a music built entirely from the bottom up.

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My comments about John "dragging them along" was probably a bit of an over exagerration. These all seem like good players who keep good time and try and serve the music. John isn't doing it all by himself, but I think Eddie Gladden would have made a big difference here. Anyway, GREAT to see John playing again!

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Kudos to Phil Robson too. This film must have been made very early in his career and no doubt the band was literally 'thrown together'. He's for sure one of the top UK guitarists today. An extremely versatile player - equally at home backing Gerald Wilson or Graham Collier !

Edited by sidewinder
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Thanks Soul Stream. I saw that band in Brighton on that tour (actually I thought it was a one-gig tour) and my feelings were pretty well what everyone else's have been seeing the video. It was great to see John in person but the band didn't serve him as I'd have liked.

You've got to remember that that band (including John) was hired to please a very basic Acid Jazz dance crowd; average age twenty it seemed to me. They did that. There were about three thousand people there, the dance floor was shoulder to shoulder, and the entry tickets priced high for those days (much higher than Ronnies; it was certainly the most expensive gig I'd ever been to; I wouldn't have been able to afford it had Brighton not been my home town and I could stay at my mother's). As I recollect, they played very little of John's more adventurous material - and possibly Toussaint would have been more at home had they done so.

My recollection is that this was about 1993, but I can't be sure.

MG

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My recollection is that this was about 1993, but I can't be sure.

That sounds about right. Blue Note UK put out that 'The Organization' compilation CD by Big John around that time for the acid jazzers.

Come to think of it, that was in the depths of the last recession over here. Amazing that they got away with such high ticket prices.

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  • 9 months later...

Yippee....More John Patton!!!!

The internet still comes up with goodies...check this out from Peter Fallico's site: John Patton playing with George Braith 1997!

http://www.viddler.com/explore/doodlinlounge/videos/9/

He has got some brilliant Hammond footage

Apologies if seen before but I was so pleased I did a search ( not easy ) on the forums and thought it deserved a heads up

More vids here:

http://www.viddler.com/explore/doodlinlounge/

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