Edge of time
A new book chronicles the original flowering of British jazz, record sleeve by rare record sleeve
“IT’S a really interesting cultural moment that didn’t last long,” says Richard Morton Jack of the scene comprehensively documented in his new book Labyrinth: British Jazz On Record 1960-75, which reproduces and annotates the sleeves of vanishingly rare original albums by the likes of Stan Tracey, Mike Taylor and The Don Rendell/ian Carr
Quintet. Invisibly underground even at the time, and only just starting to be acknowledged and reissued, the few extant copies can sell for thousands. “Enlightened executives were able to squander money as they were making so much from rock, and recognised that this wonderful music deserved to be recorded.”
The great British jazz singer Norma Winstone, 82 – recently in the news when a 1977 track by her band Azimuth was sampled by Drake – charts her own early progress through the British jazz scene. “When I heard Kind Of Blue,” she says, “I imagined a voice in this modal music.” London pubs employed jazz trios, offering an apprenticeship. “I met [pianist and later husband] John Taylor singing at the Albert in Chingford.”
By 1966, Winstone was running a night at Hackney’s Krays-owned Regency Club, where she booked trumpeter Ian Carr. Meanwhile, pianist Michael Garrick hothoused his own material at Marylebone’s Phoenix pub. “Michael gave me some songs, I took a wordless solo, and he asked if I’d like to sing sax parts. That started things off for me in a different way.” Winstone would also frequent John Stevens’ free jazz sessions, which birthed the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. “Kenny Wheeler was there, and [future Bitches Brew bassist] Dave Holland. I sang my own ideas, and listened.”
Still, Winstone was kept waiting for a promised audition at Ronnie Scott’s Soho club. “I went up to Ronnie and said, ‘Do you not want English singers in your club?
You’ve never had one.’”
The episode indicates American jazz’s presumed supremacy, but as the ’60s progressed, more distinctive music emerged from the UK scene. “People weren’t saying, ‘We want to be different from American music,’” Winstone says. “But they were improvising and writing individually.” Saxophonist John Surman’s self-titled 1969 debut revealed pastoral qualities, reflecting his West Country roots. Winstone agrees an English character inevitably emerged. “Yes, and John [Taylor] always loved impressionist stuff. We were interested in music other than jazz.”
“Michael Garrick brought in British church and classical influences, and Eastern timesignatures,” Jack adds. “He was on a mission to reject anything not coming purely from within his own interests.” Musicians who’d migrated from the Commonwealth also “made a big mark”. Jamaican Joe Harriott ploughed an ambitious if unrewarded furrow, forging a form of free jazz in parallel with Ornette Coleman, and making Indojazz albums with Indian violinist John Mayer. Winstone’s first recording saw her spectrally blending with Harriott’s alto on 1969’s Humdono, whose sleeve adorns Labyrinth’s cover. “Joe knew what he was worth,” she says. Obscurity had its cost, though, Harriott dying destitute in 1973.
Winstone’s own debut came with 1972’s Edge Of Time. “Of course it was a bit mad and out, and it got deleted, like all those things. Soon after that, English companies stopped doing anything with English jazz. Luckily I wasn’t stuck here, because free music had erupted all over Europe.” Winstone and Surman, now two of the scene’s few survivors, record for German powerhouse ECM to this day.
Back home, an era was over. “By the mid-’70s, record companies began asking, ‘Why are we releasing LPS that are selling 83 copies?’” says Jack. “And that lovely door, opened by the time’s enlightenment, closed.”
“When I heard Kind Of Blue, I imagined a voice in this modal music” NORMA WINSTONE