JACK BRUCE

SONGS FOR A TAILOR

Cream had barely waved the world a fractious farewell before Jack Bruce embarked on recording his solo debut, Songs For A Tailor, in early 1969. In collaboration with his wordweaving lyricist cum beat poet, Pete Brown, he fashioned an essential collection of songs for all seasons.

Having already dabbled in jazz-rock the previous year by recording Things We Like – which the pernickety bean counters at Polydor had stalled in releasing – Bruce was once again able to secure the services of Dick Heckstall-Smith (sax) and Jon Hiseman (drums), with the welcome addition of Chris Spedding (guitar) plus Harry Beckett and Henry Lowther (trumpets), among other notable musicians.

In his efforts to cross further musical boundaries without reservations, Bruce set exacting standards as a composer.

The complexity of the songs required the technical ability of musicians of the highest calibre and he was never one to accept compromise.

Strains of the theme from The Prisoner may be discerned in the opening bars of Never Tell Your Mother She’s Out Of Tune, which gives some indication of the unfamiliar surroundings into which the captive listener is repeatedly cast throughout the album. Be it Theme For An Imaginary Western, Rope Ladder To The Moon or The Ministry Of Bag, there’s much here to stir the senses and quicken the blood.

This was Bruce at his best, with something to prove and driven to execute his art rock designs. His frequently grievous vocals may have owed as much to Graham Bond as his bass playing did to Charles Mingus, but he was, without a doubt, every inch a unique musical pattern maker.

Admittedly Brown’s wordsmithery wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Often accused of being more Lear than Longfellow, he drew on fathomless wells of inspiration from Shakespeare to Robert Louis Stevenson, Tolkien and Ginsberg; but where his lyrics may have sometimes sounded off-the-cuff, they were invariably handcrafted raiments cut from a cloth of the finest materials. He leads the listener purposefully into the citadels of the heart – if, on occasion, losing his head in the rainbows.

Songs For A Tailor captures the full force majeure of the Bruce/Brown partnership taken at the flood, long before the soap lost its lather or the seas dried up and Bruce succumbed to stranger brews.

Following in the boots of The Beatles and forbearing the shoes of the fisherman’s wife, this album ain’t no hand-me-down zoot suit. This is a finely-spun suite of magical music, beautifully made to measure. Why not step inside the changing room and try it on for size?