sidewinder

CDs 4 and 5. ‘In Memory Of’, ‘Mr Natural’ and ‘Another Story’,

Nat Steele and Steve Brown sounded good when I heard them last year. Never seen Tardo though. Agree with you re: Oxford Tavern. I guess they have rebranded it.

I had one of those back in 1968. Itched like hell. 😂 I could have appeared on a Liberty Blue Note cover (for kids) !

A lot of their stuff is on those Rhythm & Blues label 60s Jazz compilations. On the US material disks within those sets.

CD4 - Mainly Quartet material with his group with Steve Melling on piano.

Sorry to hear this, RIP.

Great find today for a few pounds. As new hardback copy of this fine volume. Time to dig out the Ellington Complete Newport ‘56 CDs !

Amazon UK are now listing it for about £30, if that is any use to you. Listening to CD1 it sounds pretty good. A ‘must buy’ I would say if you are a fan of Mr Skidmore. One of the later disks has a track with Elvin Jones at Ronnie’s from about 1988. The way the booklet is worded implies that this was an early appearance with Elvin but I’m pretty sure I saw the two of them in 1980 at the club, with Pat LaBarbera and Roland Prince. Either that or I am losing my marbles ! Some bizarre stuff on CD1. Alexis Korner’s Blues Band playing George Russell ?!

For that price I would expect 80 Impulse albums, not 8 !

My copy of the Alan Skidmore box is due to arrive today. Plenty of listening time on a coolish, wet and gloomy day (at least it is not touching 50C as in points South!) I’ve also ordered the Harry Becket and Surman LPs from Decca to ‘complete the set’ of these so far. I wonder if there will be any more releases in this series?

Linn Records HDCD from 2001. Had a nice chat with the band members last week where I bought this CD and they kindly signed it. Great guys, most pleasant and enthusiastic music makers. They are playing better than ever at the moment. I assume that is the Ashdown White Horse on the cover art?

Sorry to hear this, RIP. There was a time in the 70s and 80s that he seemed to be everywhere on record for those sessions recorded in LA. I have the feeling that I saw him once but not entirely sure where - possibly with Gerald Wilson? Yes, very distinctive trumpet sound.

UA mono Japanese Riverside

Excellent 2LP set - as is all of that series. Time to dig it out, in fact !

I saw a very good talk a few weeks ago given by the American producer of the Russian version of Sesame Street. An unlikely show if ever there was one - and somehow it lasted until 2010. Cultural translation problems galore with that one.

An absolute masterclass in arranging on these 2LPs. Plus The Doors’ rip-off tune ‘Jambangle’ on the Gil disk.

On the other hand, in 2005 he played to a full house in Jazz Britannia at The Barbican, with his big band and in the small group. The BBC show I witnessed was a full house too. Local Sunday pub lunch gigs on home turf I would suggest, maybe aren’t representative of the full picture. Similarly, I saw Mike Westbrook playing to less than 10 people over the past year at a small venue, yet he had packed houses at Ronnie Scott’s recently. There’s no doubt that his profile dropped big time in the 80s and I recall only that Hep LP with Don Weller coming out at that time. Maybe his bio will shine some light on this but the sale of Argo to Polydor caused quite a bit of grief in the late 70s and maybe this led to a lowering of profile in terms of recording. As the bio makes clear though, he was extremely active, including involvement in youth music education.

‘Blue Spirits’ and ‘Breaking Point’ from this great set.

The best I’ve seen for this one was £15 I think from HMV in their early 2023 sale. Unfortunately, I already had it !

The period from the late 90s to about 2005 and ‘Jazz Britannia’ saw a big raising of profile for that period of British Jazz. I recall a JazzUK mag interview with Peterson, Michael Garrick and Don Rendell. Garrick was gobsmacked at the resurgence of interest in those old recordings, most of which sold around 1000 copies or less. Still got that article filed away somewhere. Those two ‘Impressed’ compilations were great. My vinyl copy of Vol 1 came from Graham Collier as thanks for help given. Wish I’d asked him to sign it ! Vol 3 as I recall was download only supplied by Tony Higgins and was not unlike the recent Decca sampler set. I hope they get things rolling again at Decca with the ‘British Jazz Explosion’.

I wouldn’t say that Garrick is/was not well known in the UK - from the 60s he had a pretty high profile in what was admittedly a fairly low key scene, when compared with e.g. the pop world. It is true though that his profile did drop after the mid 70s and only came more to prominence in the 1990s onwards with the publicity generated from Gilles Peterson and crate diggers ‘resurrecting’ his earlier works as part of the British jazz resurgence.

Yeah, sadly not easy to find. When it came out circa 1975 it went pretty well immediately into the deletions bin and sold very poorly. One of his very best too !

👍

Another CD bought from Alan during the weekend.