Tommy Chase documentary on youtube

[Serial_Apologist]

I won't have time to watch this tonight, but it looks interesting, and with corroboration from other sources, could well offer useful background ideological material for anyone here who is also interested in the 1980s "jazz revival":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEmH6QA0Hxg&feature=youtu.be

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

There's some tape breakup at the opening, then it settles back in again for what looks like a TV concert? Lots of a young Alan Barnes, alto and tenor, and "plain speaking" from Tommy C. He comes over a tad Brian Clough! The white socks and loafers of some of the audience are a period giveaway. Absolute Beginners...Never a good look. I know he had his followers but for all the hyper energy etc, it comes over as just empty, at least to me. He's no longer in the business? So, no revival of his "revival" then.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Alan Barnes 2014...

... “Working with Tommy Chase was, at that time, a real learning experience for me. He certainly knew what he did and didn’t want! He’d tell me to play shorter, more sing-able phrases and to learn specific bits of Cannonball Adderley solos. I still use bits of Miles’s Blue Haze solo that he suggested I learn. He had really good ideas on jazz composition–starting from a simple, strong motif and developing it over the harmonies. All the tunes we played were dressed up and presented in specific arrangements, with rhythm section figures and bits of shout choruses. It also appealed to a younger crowd, quite a lot of whom were into jazz dance. Tommy was, and is, a larger than life character so there was always a “what’s happening now?” element both on and off the stand that spiced things up.”

There's a sarcastic line in a review of one of his albums..."he wanted to be Art Blakey, but everyone secretly knew he was more Dr Feelgood". Cranking for the punters.

[Serial_Apologist]

Having now just watched this documentary I'm reminded of what it was about Chase that both disappointed and disturbed me about the "hard bop revival" that took place here in the mid-1980s: the selfconsciously effortful quest to "appeal to the yoof". Everything about that performance amounted to a slap in the face for any jazz musician who had been contributing, anywhere, but particularly here, since the early 1960s, to the expansion of jazz as a progressive musical force. The music is an overforced, hubristic misrepresentation of the style of modern jazz around in this country in the late 1950s - a music shaped both by lack of exposure to "the genuine article" as a consequence of the preceding quarter of a century-long mutual MU/AFL ban on visiting bands and limited access to imported recordings. Doubtless the uninformed youngsters on the rooftops and in the back yard there, and the many who frequented dance floors, inpired to dance by the Jiving Lindy Hoppers, would have experienced this music as being "contemporary" whereas in fact it merely regurgitated ideas long superseded by that time, the "energy" expended in a session where only the final number was allowed to breathe at a pace comfortable enough for solos to be thought through without having to rely on stock clichés repeated ad nauseam, more a metaphor of the competitive "performance principle" that had come to rule over all thinking about "national recovery". There is at least one interview of the time - probably there are more - in which these principles, and the Thatcherite self-reliance motto underpinning them, were clearly expressed by Mr Chase, along with indelicately spewed forth invective against mamby-pamby arts council support of any kind for the music - after all, the black American greats never depended on such! - but we don't get them here, just a few autobiographical soundbytes that don't really cohere with any consistency. But hey - that was real jazz, wasn't it???!!!

[Ian Thumwood]

Having now just watched this documentary I'm reminded of what it was about Chase that both disappointed and disturbed me about the "hard bop revival" that took place here in the mid-1980s: the selfconsciously effortful quest to "appeal to the yoof". Everything about that performance amounted to a slap in the face for any jazz musician who had been contributing, anywhere, but particularly here, since the early 1960s, to the expansion of jazz as a progressive musical force. The music is an overforced, hubristic misrepresentation of the style of modern jazz around in this country in the late 1950s - a music shaped both by lack of exposure to "the genuine article" as a consequence of the preceding quarter of a century-long mutual MU/AFL ban on visiting bands and limited access to imported recordings. Doubtless the uninformed youngsters on the rooftops and in the back yard there, and the many who frequented dance floors, inpired to dance by the Jiving Lindy Hoppers, would have experienced this music as being "contemporary" whereas in fact it merely regurgitated ideas long superseded by that time, the "energy" expended in a session where only the final number was allowed to breathe at a pace comfortable enough for solos to be thought through without having to rely on stock clichés repeated ad nauseam, more a metaphor of the competitive "performance principle" that had come to rule over all thinking about "national recovery". There is at least one interview of the time - probably there are more - in which these principles, and the Thatcherite self-reliance motto underpinning them, were clearly expressed by Mr Chase, along with indelicately spewed forth invective against mamby-pamby arts council support of any kind for the music - after all, the black American greats never depended on such! - but we don't get them here, just a few autobiographical soundbytes that don't really cohere with any consistency. But hey - that was real jazz, wasn't it???!!!

I saw Tommy Chase at a jam session in Edinburgh festival in 1987 and there was a preening arrogance about him that seemed off-putting. However, I don't feel that I can agree with this assessment. In my opinion the Tommy Chase quartet was really part of the "jazz revival" of the 1980s but never really seemed part of jazz. Even at 20, I felt there was something artificial about his approach to jazz and his quest for "street cred" never seemed a comfortable fit. What I would say was that he was quite genuine in his enthusiasm for jazz whereas I don't think anyone other that "Wire" readers at the time really gave him that much attention. There were other groups like "Team Ten" which seemed equally superficial and similarly given a wide berth.

It is odd to see Chase's name crop up. He was really part of his time and about as serious a jazz artist as Sade. That approach to jazz was purely cosmetic even if it was a total rejection of the fusion that came before. Anyway, I don't think anyone really respected this music as much as what the two Marsalis brothers were doing at the time. Chase seemed to hark back to 50's Jazz Messengers more than anything post-Miles.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I'm not going to defend Chase, who never made any impact on me, and on the interview clips seemed a Pillock, "no-one told Picasso what to do" etc. Yeah, well..., but I think his enthusiasm, although blinkered, was sincere. Doesn't make his output anymore valid or enduring though. But he did work will Ray Warleigh and Harry Beckett, and tour with Al Haig and Jon Eardley. He seemed to me in the kind of James Taylor (organ) bracket. And that's no recommendation.

[Serial_Apologist]

I saw Tommy Chase at a jam session in Edinburgh festival in 1987 and there was a preening arrogance about him that seemed off-putting. However, I don't feel that I can agree with this assessment.

And yet everything you write does manage to agree with what I'm saying! :p