JULIE TIPPETTS

Sunset Glow (Remastered Edition) CHERRY RED

The erstwhile Ms Driscoll’s neglected gem rediscovered.

It’s slightly puzzling to reflect on why Julie Tippetts’ name isn’t better known among fans of 70s progressive music. A few years before her solo debut 1969, she had fronted a landmark hit of the late 60s. Maybe the fact that the song in question, a cover of Dylan’s This Wheel’s On Fire, stormed the charts as Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity, is a clue: under her married name her profile was – perhaps deliberately – not maintained.

In some ways that’s a shame because her second solo album, from 1975, is a seductive affair, drawing on the jazz stylings she had been exploring with Auger and as a session singer for the likes of Robert Wyatt, Carla Bley and with her husband, free jazz pianist and Centipede leader Keith Tippett.

There’s a strong whiff of another jazz-influenced chanteuse, Roberta Flack, on opener Mind Of A Child, albeit with gently psychedelic brass accompaniment that nods towards the jazzier direction she was following in her session work by this point.

A beautifully bucolic drift permeates the title track as drowsy trumpet puffs intoxicating clouds around her velvet vocal tones, while Oceans

And Sky is underpinned by a languid groove as wah-wah guitars prowl underneath it and improvised tickles of piano lace its path. A change of pace on the slight acoustic interlude Now If You

Remember is just as striking with its brief injection of folky wistfulness, but even when conventional song structures fall away on Lilies, and Tippetts’ yearning tones are haunted by freeform piano and pattering Asiatic percussion, it’s no less compelling.

As the album meanders to a close on the mournful Behind The Eyes (For A Friend), there’s a feeling that Tippetts could vocally emote for another hour without ever losing her audience.

As it was, for those in the know, Sunset Glow remained a sought-after ‘lost’ album – now repackaged without need for extra tracks, just a touch of sonic polish that makes that bewitching voice shine even brighter.