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Here’s a blog that could be worth following during the year: the Grauniad‘s jazz writer John Fordham has started writing a weekly ‘episode’ that will eventually span “50 Great Moments of Jazz”. Fuel for education, debate and controversy no doubt.

It’s likely that Fordham’s perspective will encompass a ‘British’ view of the music, and I guess he’ll include at least a couple of moments that will relate to the local UK  scene (will we hear from Nat Gonella, Humphrey Lyttleton, Mike Westbrook or Courtney Pine?).  And it’s very possible that Fordham will avoid some of the classicist/progressive debates (Stanley Crouch vs Dave Douglas for example) that have so concerned US jazz cognoscenti since the 1980s.

Anyway, this week he starts with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, (illustrated above) which is probably the only place to start if you want to post a recording each week.  By the end of February I’m guessing we’ll have cruised past King Oliver and Louis Armstrong‘s Chicago recordings, and hopefully have paid tribute to Paul Whiteman and Bix on the way through…

PS. Observant listeners/readers may notice that the version of Livery Stable Blues included in this post is NOT the 1917 ODJB version, but a much more swinging 1945 version by Muggsy Spanier‘s band.

“At the junction of the state line of Colorado, its arid western one, and the state line of poor Utah I saw in the clouds huge and massed above the fiery golden desert of eveningfall the great image of God with forefinger pointed straight at me through halos and rolls and gold folds that were like the existence of the gleaming spear in His right hand, and sayeth, Go thou across the ground; go moan for man; go moan, go groan, go groan alone go roll your bones, alone; go thou and be little beneath my sight; go thou, and be minute and as seed in the pod, but the pod the pit, world a Pod, universe a Pit; go thou, go though, die hence; and of Cody report you well and truly.”

-Jack Kerouac

YouTube is a trove of little gems, many of which would not be otherwise available to most of us. Here are a few videos related to Jack Kerouac.

Kerouac’s books were the first I read as a teenager that demonstrated an entirely new way of writing and describing the world. In quick sucession I read On the Road of course, Dharma Bums, and the weighty Visions of Cody, which I started on a long bus trip across the Arizona desert in 1996. (I recall that Miles’ Bitches Brew was on near-permanent loop on my walkman – heady times for a 17 year old).

The first video is one of the few extant films of Kerouac reading his own work, on the Steve Allen Show in 1959:

And although Kerouac was one of the writers who most deeply revolutionised the use of written English in the mid-20th Century, he was in fact francophone by birth. Born to immigrant Québecois parents in Massachusetts, he didn’t learn English until he went to school.  Here he is interviewed on Canadian TV in the mid-1960s, speaking the thick joual dialect of his childhood:

A documentary that seems worth seeing is the 1999 film The Source, recounting the origins and development of the Beat movement in the 1940s and 1950s, and the lives of Kerouac and his contemporaries such as Allan Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. This extract is set to music by British composer Mike Westbrook.

The Mike Westbrook Concert Band – Original Peter
From Mike Westbrook’s Love Songs: Vocalion CDSML 8407 [Buy]

A few months ago I got all sweaty and excited about Mike Westbrook’s big band recordings, and even ranked Citadel/Room 315 among my personal faves of last year. So I’m slowly making my way through some of Westbrook’s large ensemble dates from the 1970s (ie. those that are available on reissue).

Love Songs was recorded in March and April 1970, and features a smaller group (11 players including Westbrook himself and Norma Winstone on vocals) than he used on many of his other recordings of the period. It’s an entirely approachable disc that leans far more towards soul-jazz and groove than one might expect for a British band from this time.

Original Peter was written by Westbrook as a musical accompaniment to an acrobat who went by the same name, “the greatest hand balancer in the world”. At live gigs by the Westbrook band, Original Peter would appear on stage and do acrobatic tricks during the performance. Groovy, baby. The extempore tenor saxophone solo on this version is by George Khan.

A hand-balancer (not Original Peter, though!)

One of the things that’s notable about this recording is that it’s an early example of Norma Winstone’s wordless vocal style, where she joins the frontline horns in the melody lines. This is a role she used on many later recordings, including Kenny Wheeler’s large ensemble work like Song for Someone (1973) and Music for Large and Small Ensembles (1990)

Non-Publishing Note

A week’s holiday beckons until the 28th of January. There will be no laptop where I’m going, so there won’t be any posts here for a little while. I’m sure the world will carry on perfectly well while I’m hiding, so take care and have fun!

Born in Tavistock in Devon in 1944, Surman has made a career of reflecting his English heritage through the prism of jazz and improvised music – a theme that started with his work in the Mike Westbrook Concert Band in the 1960s, and continued on albums such as Westering Home (Future Music Records FMRCD 16) and The Amazing Adventures of Simon Simon (ECM 1193).

Two contrasting selections today: Alignment is a solo improvisation recorded in Oslo in September 1991. No Twilight features Surman with John Taylor on organ and the Salisbury Festival Chorus, and was recorded live at Salisbury Cathedral in June 1996. The text is a reference to the Old Testament book of Job.

John Surman – Alignment
From In the Evenings Out There: ECM 1488 [Buy]

John Surman – No Twilight
From Proverbs and Songs: ECM 1639 [Buy]

Let the stars of the twilight be dark
Let it look for light but find none
Neither let it see the eyelids of the morning
(The Book of Job, Chapter 3)