S_A - Listening to that version of the Holdsworth tune (which I love) now. Thanks for the head's up. 
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Indeed! and Ray Russell's atmospheric backing music for the otherwise cringeworthy Guernsey police chief Bergerac was the only thing making it watchable. ("Did you just say Bergerac? Oh, I thought you were swearing at me". Admittedly everything was watchable in the thrill of when I got my first colour telly!Originally posted by BLUESNIK'S REVOX View Post
) Ray's rare appearances over the past couple of decades have shown him in more standardised fusion contexts than was the case in the early 1970s - sessions with Harry Beckett and others including Daryl Runswick, who said that performancewise it was the most creative experience of his lifetime in music making. Larry Coryell was probably an early influence, but by the time of "Rites" he was closer to Hendrix. I have a composite CD covering from 1968 to 1978 which includes 4 numbers from a 1974 BBC radio broadcast, one of which is pretty much a free freak-out alongside Sanders-influenced Gary Windo, Daryl and Russell's Preston-born drummer Alan Rushton. This would have been far more extreme than Ayler's destroyed session at the Beeb 8 years earlier: I am truly shocked, actually, that the BBC allowed it to go out. Gary had replaced Tony Roberts, who then quit playing jazz in favour of the folk scene for 20 years, allegedly for reasons not unconnected with where "the music" seemed to be going, but to say more would be conjectural, if not potentially libellous, and Harry Beckett, always pretty laid back, told me he had always found Russell fine to work with. Gil Evans apparently spoke with much admiration for him, and from his general presence at the Vortex a few years ago I left with an impression of a really nice guy. 
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Thanks for the links SA. I remember that May 1981 broadcast - not from Radio 3, but from listening to a reel tape of the broadcast at a sound archive near the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington (could it be the British Sound Archive before it moved to the British Library near Euston?). In some ways YouTube is a godsend!Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostI hadn't realised that.
In 1973 or 4, Allan was briefly with Ian Carr's Nucleus, and Jon Hiseman's Tempest. He also co-led a quintet with the altoist Ray Warleigh. They did a number of gigs and half of a broadcast which I am lucky enough to have on an increasingly worn out cassette - the first half of which was Gilgamesh. Unfortunately I can't find that one on youtube, but the band was re-formed for another broadcast in May 1981, with John Marshall replacing drummer Bryan Spring, and Chris Laurence replacing Ron Matthewson on bass, but he's nearly as good as Ron had been, one number from which is linked to below. This is bloody good stuff - and it's not in my category of jazz-rock fusion, but samba jazz with clear chord changes:
I now see it carries on automatically in sequence to further clips if left to its own devices on my computer - terrific!
For me Allan Holdsworth was the next major guitar stylist after McLaughlin, and I don't feel he's been superseded, though if you take Mike Walker, with him adding a bit more guts to something of the Holdsworth approach, he's as near as dammit, I think. Mike did a knockout broadcast in the early 2000s, again with John Marshall, and with Arild Anderson on bass - I think it was broadcast from Ronnie Scott's.
I could go on listening to this all day!
Pat Smythe was Joe Harriott's genius of a pianist in Joe's free form period; after he died an award was instituted in his name for young up and coming pianists which if I'm not mistaken is still going?
Holdsworth remained in awe of Pat Smythe, I think on the back of his Road Games LP the album dedication reads simply: "To Pat Smythe, a truly great musician"Comment
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Pat was very good - but there were several very good pianist/keyboardspeople around at that time who have gone unremembered, such as Bob Cornford, Alan Gowan, Brian Miller, and the black pianist Frank Roberts, of whom Herbie Hancock spoke highly, but who emigrated to Sweden in the 1980s and iirc took up photography as a profession. Pete Saberton, who died a decade ago, was thought a genius by Henry Lowther; Geoff Castle and the blind pianist Peter Jacobsen had the fortune to come to prominence in well-known fusion bands in the '70s - Nucleus and Morrissey-Mullen respectively. Pete died a few years ago - a brilliant albeit often cantankerous spirit who was influenced by Chick Corea; Geoff mostly seems to back female singers at a suburban pub weekends in S london, though I saw him in the dying days of 2018 backing Art Themen brilliantly at The Bulls Head. The last I saw of Brian Miller, a Mike Garrick acolyte and one of the many fine players here influenced by Herbie Hancock, was a regular weekly slot, unaccompanied, playing standards on a rather battered upright in a corner of a trendy bar underneath the arches behind the Festival Hall. When he played the Barry Norman "Film whatever the year" tune that sounds like Horace Silver, the hoorays dining nearby woke up and clapped vociferously along. A thoroughly nice bloke, quiet, ordinary cockney working class, he said he was giving up on live jazz and going to concentrate on writing "tunes" and "arrangements" and record producing, and I ain't seen him or heard of him now for a good, what, seven years? Going back to Pat Smythe again, however good he was I wonder, would we remember his name, had it not been for those path-breaking Joe Harriott recordings in the 1960s?Originally posted by Boilk View PostComment
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Begerrac or "Bergercoat" was in Jersey. A crime sereis set in Guernsey would be very challenging. Wasn't it bloody corny? - not enough intentional humour in it -Russell ? Didn't know it was the same person, bit different from Secret AslyumComment
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I worked in Jersey for the summer of 1969, picking tomatoes. We went there to "work" and surf. It rained almost non stop and the work picking, dawn to dusk, was back breaking. The biggest criminals were the bastards who owned the place (the entire island). I think a lot of the Nazis stayed on!Originally posted by burning dog View PostComment
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Tribal Tech - Actual Proof
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‘Contours’
Sam Rivers with Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter & Joe Chambers
Blue Note (1965)Comment
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Joe Henderson Trio - Stella By Starlight
… with Dave Holland and Al FosterComment
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Coltrane, Stuttgart 63, 'Impressions', I have the double CD set but both are available on youtube. This is on the first disk. Incredible!
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Roland Kirk, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Jack Bruce, Jon Hiseman et al in London, 1969:
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Miles Davis - Filles de Kilimanjaro
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This features Herbie Hancock's greatest solo that I know of:
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Buddy Guy - "One room country shack"
The economy and taste of this, Otis Spann's gorgeous piano and the perfect bass. Compare/contrast with the overblown crap that passes as "the blues".
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