Memories

[Dave2002]

I don't know a great deal about jazz - but I have been to some events. I heard Duke Ellington plus band a few times - really great, and in the 1960s I'm sure I must have heard Dizzie Gillespie, Jimmie Smith, Mahalia Jackson - most probably at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. I can't find any details of any of those events though, so at times I wonder if I imagined them. I also heard Gerry Mulligan - though not sure if in Manchester.

Trying to remember everything that one has been to can sometimes be a strain. Does anyone else remember these?

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Not those...my early British concert going was Bristol or London....but Miles played the Free Trade Hall in Sept 60, the post Trane quintet with Sonny Stitt.

Available now on a 2cd set from Lonehill Jazz!

BN

Btw...a stack of 60ish stuff is now coming out from old European radio dates/concerts. Baden Baden radio esp. are going thro the vaults.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

yep and there were quite a few Jazz at the Philharmonic tours in those days .....

[Ian Thumwood]

It is staggering to recall just how few gigs there seemed to be when I first got in to jazz. Because I had grown up listening to big bands, these were always the first gigs that I went to when I was about 13- 15. The most jazz orientated gigs seemed to be the ones which were free and I can remember going to here a gig one Sunday lunchtime in Southsea by a local rehearsal band (one of the two leaders was called Porter) that played a lot of the then contemporary Buddy Rich arrangements. At that time, I think that the more adventurous big bands were performing music by the likes of Rich and Thad Jones as there was still a very strong, core audience that expected big bands to play Glenn Miller. Needless to say, the more "professional" big bands that I saw at that time were the Basie band ( I think this was shortly after Thad Jones stopped fronting the orchestra) and Lionel Hampton. In the second decade of the 21st century, it is hard to imagine just how uninspiring the jazz scene was in the UK in the late seventies and early eighties. As a teenager unable to get access to pubs and clubs, my ability to hear jazz live was limited.

Three gigs really stand out in my mind. By the time I started work I was lucky enough to hear George Russell front an Anglo-American big band and this was shortly followed up by a Loose Tubes concert in the unlikely venue of the Guildhall and a small group led by Don Cherry. At the time, the raucous blast with which Cherry commenced the concert was hugely shocking and I only started to get in to the music after the first few numbers it was so different.

What I find curious nowadays is that things which seemed quite fresh and challenging have now gone decidely mainstream. Hearing John Surman solo over a sequencer is pretty easy to listen to and not as startling as it was when I first heard him do this around 1987. If you turn up a gigs nowadays, even the audience for musicians I would have considered "cutting edge" in the mid 1980's seem of retirement age. last night, there were probably only a handful of people in the audience younger than me. What is noticeable is that the old notion of Hard bop (or "energy music" to give the more full on stuff from the early 80's the title it was lumbered with at the time) seems really quaint these days. I went to one gig about 6-7 years ago and an old bloke behind me was complaining about a British band (might have been Steve Fishwick or soimeone of that ilk) playing Horace Silver numbers and how he wanted to hear something different these days.

In many ways, I feel that jazz has picked up the baton from the mid 80's and whilst the music may have appeared to have gone in to terminal decline when I first discovered jazz, it was woken up with a vengance. I love a lot of the current musicians even if popular movements like Nu Jazz or the Euro-ECM stuff seems to have had it's day. Jazz has achieved more and become far more diverse over the last thirty years as it has done at any time in the past. I don't think you will see the likes of Ellington, Coltrane or Miles again as jazz has become far more varied. Over the years, I 've gone to hundreds of concerts and festivals even if I no longer go to every concert in the fear that the chance to hear the music might diminish. In my opinion, it seems to wax and wain. The last few years have seen a paucity of jazz locally or musicians I really want to hear.