Preacher, leader, sidewinder
The varied career of a British soul-jazz one-off finds a new home. By Jim Irvin.
INVARIABLY SEATED behind a keyboard, Brian Auger, 83, has carved out a unique musical route for himself since the early 1960s: starting out as a jazz pianist, switching to Hammond (Brian Organ!) and R&B, forming Steampacket with Long John Baldry and Rod Stewart, briefly becoming a pop star in 1969 – his distinctive feral Peter Pan look stayed in the mind – with his band The Trinity and the equally striking Julie Driscoll, making a couple of broadly progressive albums under that banner, then living in a ‘jazz commune’ in Prague before spending much of the 1970s and ’80s heading up Oblivion Express, a funky fusion troupe he steered from the United States. Taking sojourns in hard rock and acid jazz in subsequent decades, he has survived mainly in the niches between genres, always following his own lead, and has been described as, “Absolutely one of your favourite musician’s favourite musicians.”
Now, Soul Bank Music has acquired the rights to this one-off’s extensive catalogue. Says founder Greg Boraman: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fully reissue everything Brian has released, and also finally unleash the vast number of musical gems from [his] archive that have never been heard before. It’s a goldmine of sounds from a 60-year career.”
The first release is Auger Incorporated,a career-spanning digital taster compilation, featuring early unreleased tune The Preacher, his 1968 collaboration with Sonny Boy Williamson (the track Walkin’ featuring Joe Harriott and Jimmy Page), tracks from the abandoned Steampacket album (including a bracing cover of Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder), Auger’s hits with Driscoll and The Trinity, plus a previously unreleased tune, Jeanine, and prime moments from Oblivion Express, including some nice live rarities that set up the re-release later this year of the two-volume
Live Oblivion, a sprawling banquet of souljazz jewels including covers of Inner City Blues and Compared To What.
It was their sultry blending of soul and rock with the freedom of jazz that set The Trinity apart at the end of the ’60s. While acts like Cream launched out of the blues, Auger set sail with a view to a more varied, more Mod direction. Thus, Trinity cut songs by Dylan – their chart hit Wheels On Fire plucked from the then unreleased Basement Tapes – Richie Havens (his heady Indian Rope Man), and a rousing tilt at Sly Stone’s I Wanna
Take You Higher on their Befour album. All of these tracks are in Auger Incorporated and sound great. In fact, some of these masters improve upon the contemporary cuts. There were several Brian/Julie/Trinity compilations knocking about in the ’70s – the only way to find their material after the short-lived Marmalade label shut down – some of which were cut rather murkily or at low volume.
Hopefully, some of the Marmalade stuff, like The Trinity’s groovy Definitely What! from 1968, will be coming up. Their collaboration with Sonny Boy Williamson,
Don’t Send Me No Flowers, also from 1968, is among the early titles reissued digitally. Coming over the next few months are Brian’s solo works Search Party (1981), Here And Now (1984), two ’90s Oblivion Express
albums, Keys To The Heart and Voices Of Other
Times and Looking In The Eye Of The World
(2006) produced by Brian’s son, Karma. Later this year come a brace of box sets, one of the Driscoll/Trinity recordings and one dedicated to Oblivion Express, of whom the Beastie Boys once said: “Those who remain oblivious to the obvious delights of Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express do so at their own risk!” Hear hear! “A sultry blend of soul and rock with the freedom of jazz.”