Jon Hiseman

[Beef Oven!]

Thanks for posting this, S_A

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks in return to you all for responding.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Thanks to you again. It's very sad, he always seemed so committed and enthusiastic, at all stages of his career. I confess I'm no fan of the rockier end (or Chris (Farlow), but there is c 40 minutes of him playing with Georgie Fame's Quartet (Lynn Dobson, tenor/flute, Colin Hodges? bass), live at the Lucerne Jazz Fest 1967 on YouTube. A surprisingly jazzy set "Bluesology" etc) with both Fame and Dobson stretching out. Jon is himself is very very good.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks to you again. It's very sad, he always seemed so committed and enthusiastic, at all stages of his career. I confess I'm no fan of the rockier end (or Chris (Farlow), but there is c 40 minutes of him playing with Georgie Fame's Quartet (Lynn Dobson, tenor/flute, Colin Hodges? bass), live at the Lucerne Jazz Fest 1967 on YouTube. A surprisingly jazzy set "Bluesology" etc) with both Fame and Dobson stretching out. Jon is himself is very very good.

Thanks for this Bluesie - Will check that out this afternoon.

[Serial_Apologist]

Here's the link to the abovementioned Georgie Fame slot at Lucerne, '67. I didn't notice any personnel announcements on the link (I could be wrong there), but it could probably be Colin Hodgkinson (he of the later much-celebrated Back Door of originally North York Moors fame) on bass guitar - still pretty rare in an ostensible jazz combo, though I think Sun Ra had gone in for it prior to then), and Lyn Dobson on flute and tenor, sounding sub-Joe Hendersonish. Henry Lowther mentions somewhere about Lyn being a hard man to work alongside, as he would play in the style of his latest hero and expect drummers in particular to also play accordingly. Lyn had earlier been alongside Henry Lowther in Manfred Mann, when Jack Bruce also in there, marking time between Graham Bond and Cream, ("Soul of Mann"), and would provide those amazing flute superpositions on Soft Machine's "Third" 3 years later, counterpointing against Elton Dean's electronically distorted saxello, effectively backdropped by looping figures in odd meters. The last I heard of him must be more that 25 years ago when he did a one-off improvised gig at Keith Tippett's Rare Music Club in Bristol alongside someone on homemade electronics and percussion, and was very good, very affable and very hippily attired, beads bells and whatnot, and living in a tepee community somewhere in N Wales, from what I remember. Saving the Wales. Here's the link to the concert - and congratulations to Bluesie for discovering it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttiN2zNOEPg

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Here's the link to the abovementioned Georgie Fame slot at Lucerne, '67. I didn't notice any personnel announcements on the link (I could be wrong there), but it could probably be Colin Hodgkinson (he of the later much-celebrated Back Door of originally North York Moors fame) on bass guitar - still pretty rare in an ostensible jazz combo, though I think Sun Ra had gone in for it prior to then), and Lyn Dobson on flute and tenor, sounding sub-Joe Hendersonish. Henry Lowther mentions somewhere about Lyn being a hard man to work alongside, as he would play in the style of his latest hero and expect drummers in particular to also play accordingly. Lyn had earlier been alongside Henry Lowther in Manfred Mann, when Jack Bruce also in there, marking time between Graham Bond and Cream, ("Soul of Mann"), and would provide those amazing flute superpositions on Soft Machine's "Third" 3 years later, counterpointing against Elton Dean's electronically distorted saxello, effectively backdropped by looping figures in odd meters. The last I heard of him must be more that 25 years ago when he did a one-off improvised gig at Keith Tippett's Rare Music Club in Bristol alongside someone on homemade electronics and percussion, and was very good, very affable and very hippily attired, beads bells and whatnot, and living in a tepee community somewhere in N Wales, from what I remember. Saving the Wales. Here's the link to the concert - and congratulations to Bluesie for discovering it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttiN2zNOEPg

"...Lyn was a well-known face on the London scene. He had played the flute solo on Manfred Mann’s “Pretty Flamingo” and recorded with the Small Faces. He was a member, along with John McLaughlin, of Georgie Fame’s first post-Blue Flames bands in 1967, and could be heard with the People Band, which also included Terry Day and Mike Figgis. He played with the Keef Hartley Band, he would appear on the title track of Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter and on John and Beverley Martyn’s The Road to Ruin, and in the 1990s he made a couple of albums with the Third Ear Band before going to live, I believe, on Crete."

- Richard Williams Blue Moment Blog July 2016

I'm fairly sure I also remember a YouTube video with Lyn taking about his influences, life and career. Very amicable. I knew him (as a player) through the Nick Evans connection, the only name jazz musician I ever went to school with. Fats Navarro was a year or two older and wouldn't talk to us....

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Yep, there's about five minutes on YouTube with Dobson talking about working with Peter King (alto) and touring Sweden with him and an addicted Cecil Payne in the Maynard Ferguson band. Shame there's not more.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

This has gone up on YouTube (in full) in the past two weeks...

"First aired on BBC1 in 1979 and now available to view for the first time online: “Jazz, Rock and Marriage”. The full length version of Mike Dibb’s film of the life, careers and music of Barbara Thompson and Jon Hiseman, including the Bracknell Jazz Festival performance"

My "linking" is hit and miss so better just type the programme title into Utube. Both Jon and Barbara still looking very, enthusiastic, young and fresh.

BN.

[Old Grumpy]

This has gone up on YouTube (in full) in the past two weeks...

"First aired on BBC1 in 1979 and now available to view for the first time online: “Jazz, Rock and Marriage”. The full length version of Mike Dibb’s film of the life, careers and music of Barbara Thompson and Jon Hiseman, including the Bracknell Jazz Festival performance"

My "linking" is hit and miss so better just type the programme title into Utube. Both Jon and Barbara still looking very, enthusiastic, young and fresh.

BN.

Thanks, BN:

Jazz, Rock and Marriage


OG

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks, BN:

Jazz, Rock and Marriage


OG

Wonderful - thanks v much, OG.

[Serial_Apologist]

Just wanted to add to the above, having now watched, to say what an utterly wonderful and revelatory documentary Jazz, Rock and Marriage was, transporting me (at any rate) back to halcyon times. Among its most rewarding moments are the excerpts showing Paraphernalia in rehearsal and studio, the participants talking about the challenges in Barbara's writing, and the object lessons in jazz drumming from Jon Hiseman, who has a gift for demystifying complex processes in the heat of performance. What lives on is a powerful sense of self-actualisation, to miss-borrow Maslow's term (with which I have a number of disagreements but not in this instance), that is consequent on harmonising discipline and spontaneity in practice - a concept that is better understood in some so-called eastern spiritual disciplines than in our hidebound post-Christian attitudes to what involves awakening.

I shall reproduce the link on the "Fusion/experimental" board for the benefit of our cousins across the genres; while I know there are a few regulars here who disparage a lot of jazz-rock fusion I hope they might put aside their prejudices and give this a chance. You won't regret it!

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Jon explaining paradiddles, and the complexities built upon, and his so obvious enthusiasm, should be on all music courses! I think that's what really came across to me, not being a fan of all the output or that era, is what genuine people they both were and their commitment to their music and to each other. A wonderful marriage in every sense. Really glad I watched it.

[CGR]

What an excellent old film. Pity the BBC don't do more like that these days. Whatever happened to serious BBC arts programming?

[Serial_Apologist]

What an excellent old film. Pity the BBC don't do more like that these days. Whatever happened to serious BBC arts programming?

It would appear to have also died. Mike Dibb is still around, I believe, but whether or not the Beeb or any other mainstream b/casting outlet would employ him today is another matter. Luckily I have his programmes on Miles (advised by Ian Carr) and Keith Jarrett on VHSs.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

It would appear to have also died. Mike Dibb is still around, I believe, but whether or not the Beeb or any other mainstream b/casting outlet would employ him today is another matter. Luckily I have his programmes on Miles (advised by Ian Carr) and Keith Jarrett on VHSs.

He produced the classic and highly influential "Ways of Seeing" series of programmes on art with John Berger. And much else. More recently he's produced a film on CLR James, the late admired Trinidadian Marxist, historian and cricket aficionado. But not, I think, for the cultural desert that is now (and has been for decades) the British broadcaster media.