Search the Community

The idea for this thread comes from the discussions that we have been having recently in relation to British jazz, as a result of the Decca reissue series, the release of the new Modern Jazz: Britain comp, and the recent discussions surrounding Simon Spillett's excellent blog and the Jazz Britannia series. Plus the interesting recollections of some of the members based in Europe about the scenes there in past decades. It seems to me that there is very little coverage of the modernist/progressive jazz scenes that blossomed outside of America in the years prior to 1969/70. (By "modernist" and "progressive" jazz, I mean jazz that sought to respond to the musics of Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis and mid-period John Coltrane, i.e., roughly bebop, cool, hard bop and post bop in US terms (I understand that in England at least the terms used were "modernist" or "progressive").) The fact is that most of what we regard as the major "jazz hubs" outside of the States (i.e., France, the UK, Japan, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, to name a few (for the purposes of this thread let's ignore South America, South Africa, West African and the Caribbean, which had their own unique scenes too, but of a quite different type)) had domestic jazz scenes that were domestically popular, often in competition with some more traditionalist dancehall type jazz scene. Looking back at the UK scene (and I wasn't there, so this is second hand) it seems striking the extent to which these scenes developed in isolation and in a world of (from today's perspective) extreme information scarcity. Despite this, they had their own hierarchies of local heroes (e.g. Tubby Hayes or pre-vanguard Albert Mangelsdorff) and their own "classic" albums. Not all of this stuff was strictly competitive, and, for the most part, these scenes have not survived to make it into the history books. Most histories of jazz, to the extent that they cover the European and East Asian scenes at all, start in the late 60s, at precisely the point that international touring opened up, and the more distinctive local Avant Garde and Fusion scenes began to grow. The result of this neglect is that someone from England (to take the example that I know best) is far more likely to hear about Derek Bailey, Soft Machine or Evan Parker than Stan Tracey, Ronnie Scott (other than as a club owner) or Don Rendell, who remain largely unaccessible and whose albums are unknown to anyone who wasn't there at the time. The fact is, however, that these pre-avant garde/fusion "modernist" scenes that existed in Europe and East Asia between 1945 and 1969 were fruitful and did produce interesting artists and good records. Given the concentration of knowledge and expertise on this board, I would be interested to hear from forum members with their views on these local scenes; any memories that people have of them; and favourite artists. Most importantly, what are your favourite or recommended records from Europe or East Asia between 1945 and 1969? Famous or unjustly buried by time.