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What vinyl are you spinning right now??


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2 minutes ago, sidewinder said:

Yeah, sadly not easy to find. When it came out circa 1975 it went pretty well immediately into the deletions bin and sold very poorly. One of his very best too !

It's odd what catches the public's fancy and what goes unnoticed.  Since he's not well-known in the U.S., I was very late to the party with Garrick.  But now I consider him to be one of the most interesting jazzmen of the 1970s.  The way that he put his very English stamp on jazz was unique and wonderful. 

I'm very grateful that Michael Dutton reissued Troppo -- and Garrick's other Argo releases -- on CD on his Vocalion label.  All of those Argo albums are amazing -- especially the ones with Winstone. ;)  

 

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42 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

It's odd what catches the public's fancy and what goes unnoticed.  Since he's not well-known in the U.S., I was very late to the party with Garrick.  But now I consider him to be one of the most interesting jazzmen of the 1970s.  The way that he put his very English stamp on jazz was unique and wonderful. 

A lot of those 60s/70s artists are not particularly well known in the UK either. It took me years to find out about the scene. These reissues have been valuable as history writing, in themselves.

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I wouldn’t say that Garrick is/was not well known in the UK - from the 60s he had a pretty high profile in what was admittedly a fairly low key scene, when compared with e.g. the pop world. It is true though that his profile did drop after the mid 70s and only came more to prominence in the 1990s onwards with the publicity generated from Gilles Peterson and crate diggers ‘resurrecting’ his earlier works as part of the British jazz resurgence.

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Interesting.

As an outsider looking in -- and, given my age, someone who didn't even begin listening to jazz until the mid-80s -- it seems like the Rendell-Carr Quintet (both before Garrick joined as well as after) had a higher profile than Garrick's work as a leader. 

After the breakup of R-CQ, it seems like Carr continued to make a bigger splash than Garrick. 

Do you gents think those perceptions are correct?

I definitely was aware of Carr and knew about his music long before I knew anything about Garrick.  Albums like Belladonna and Elastic Rock as well as his authoring a book about Miles probably contributed to that.

 

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1 hour ago, sidewinder said:

I wouldn’t say that Garrick is/was not well known in the UK - from the 60s he had a pretty high profile in what was admittedly a fairly low key scene, when compared with e.g. the pop world. It is true though that his profile did drop after the mid 70s and only came more to prominence in the 1990s onwards with the publicity generated from Gilles Peterson and crate diggers ‘resurrecting’ his earlier works as part of the British jazz resurgence.

I saw Garrick in the early noughties doing a Sunday lunch pub gig in Herts.

A trio, he played electric piano.  I got the impression there was maybe three other people there who knew who he was.  The rest just enjoyed their lunch...

1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

Interesting.

As an outsider looking in -- and, given my age, someone who didn't even begin listening to jazz until the mid-80s -- it seems like the Rendell-Carr Quintet (both before Garrick joined as well as after) had a higher profile than Garrick's work as a leader. 

After the breakup of R-CQ, it seems like Carr continued to make a bigger splash than Garrick. 

Do you gents think those perceptions are correct?

I definitely was aware of Carr and knew about his music long before I knew anything about Garrick.  Albums like Belladonna and Elastic Rock as well as his authoring a book about Miles probably contributed to that.

 

As someone who started listening to Jazz at almost the same time I'd agree.

The Nucleus albums had had some cross over to rock listeners of my acquaintance before then, a lot more so than Garrick who I hadn't heard of in mid 80s.

In the mid 80s we were having a 'London Jazz Revival ' which meant for me a lot of exposure for Courtney Pine, Steve Williamson, Andy Sheppard, Tommy Smith et al. My exposure to the Garrick's generation really only came with Gilles P's compilations.

.

Edited by mjazzg
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The other Brits will tell me if I am wrong (I am much too young to have heard this music at the time and may have just missed the critical discussion when I was younger), but until reasonably recently I don't remember much reference to any of the late 60s / early 70s non-avant scene.

I knew of Tubby Hayes / Ronnie Scott (who I think were regarded as a little shopworn) and I certainly knew Courtney Pine (who was in critical high regard then). I was vaguely aware that in between these two lay other periods of flowering of British non-avant jazz. But I don't remember anything being much discussed other than Stan Tracey's Under Milk Wood (which I think was taken as emblematic of the late 60s flowering) and snide references to Nucleus and the perceived decline of Soft Machine.

I think that the current run of reissues has really pushed the late 60s and 70s period back into the spotlight for Brits too. At least it has done for me.

Probably it is the same story everywhere. 70s US jazz is certainly better known everywhere since the Strata East and Black Jazz reissues began.

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The period from the late 90s to about 2005 and ‘Jazz Britannia’ saw a big raising of profile for that period of British Jazz. I recall a JazzUK mag interview with Peterson, Michael Garrick and Don Rendell. Garrick was gobsmacked at the resurgence of interest in those old recordings, most of which sold around 1000 copies or less. Still got that article filed away somewhere.

Those two ‘Impressed’ compilations were great. My vinyl copy of Vol 1 came from Graham Collier as thanks for help given. Wish I’d asked him to sign it ! Vol 3 as I recall was download only supplied by Tony Higgins and was not unlike the recent Decca sampler set.

I hope they get things rolling again at Decca with the ‘British Jazz Explosion’.

Edited by sidewinder
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59 minutes ago, sidewinder said:

The period from the late 90s to about 2005 and ‘Jazz Britannia’ saw a big raising of profile for that period of British Jazz. I recall a JazzUK mag interview with Peterson, Michael Garrick and Don Rendell. Garrick was gobsmacked at the resurgence of interest in those old recordings, most of which sold around 1000 copies or less. Still got that article filed away somewhere.

I would love to see that article if you ever come across it, sidewinder.  

 

1 hour ago, Rabshakeh said:

I think that the current run of reissues has really pushed the late 60s and 70s period back into the spotlight for Brits too. At least it has done for me.

Probably it is the same story everywhere. 70s US jazz is certainly better known everywhere since the Strata East and Black Jazz reissues began.

Yes.  Good point.  It seems like there has been a seismic shift in attitudes towards 70s jazz over the last decade or two.   Not just in the U.S. but everywhere.

It's good that musicians who were ignored back in the day are -- in some cases -- finally being recognized.  Of course, many of them have already passed.  But their legacies remain out there & available to us in the form of records.

 

 

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46 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

 

Yes.  Good point.  It seems like there has been a seismic shift in attitudes towards 70s jazz over the last decade or two.   Not just in the U.S. but everywhere.

Someone really should do a blog on 70s music...

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8 hours ago, mjazzg said:

I saw Garrick in the early noughties doing a Sunday lunch pub gig in Herts.

A trio, he played electric piano.  I got the impression there was maybe three other people there who knew who he was.  The rest just enjoyed their lunch...

On the other hand, in 2005 he played to a full house in Jazz Britannia at The Barbican, with his big band and in the small group. The BBC show I witnessed was a full house too.

Local Sunday pub lunch gigs on home turf I would suggest, maybe aren’t representative of the full picture. Similarly, I saw Mike Westbrook playing to less than 10 people over the past year at a small venue, yet he had packed houses at Ronnie Scott’s recently.

There’s no doubt that his profile dropped big time in the 80s and I recall only that Hep LP with Don Weller coming out at that time. Maybe his bio will shine some light on this but the sale of Argo to Polydor caused quite a bit of grief in the late 70s and maybe this led to a lowering of profile in terms of recording. As the bio makes clear though, he was extremely active, including involvement in youth music education.

Edited by sidewinder
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a3551584084_10.jpg

Joshua Jaswon Octet - Polar Waters [Ubuntu, UK 2023]

A completely new name to me when I heard a track on the radio last weekend.

All our recent chat about British Jazz, here's a writer/arranger/player who sounds to me steeped in that tradition (even has a Norma Winstone-esque vocalist in the frontline) but at the same time presenting something modern and fresh. A real find

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