British bassist/ composer
Graham Collier, (extravagantly pschedelicised on the album cover, in keeping
with the era when this album was recorded) shows on this album that any
comparison with the bassist/composer that was Charles Mingus are not entirely
just hot air. Of course it helps if you can surround yourself with absolute
first-division talent to bring these compositions to life.
Collier had recorded the Down Another Road studio album in March 1969 and followed it up with a tour of European Festivals using the same group that had appeared on the studio recording. Of the music on the album, five tracks made it into the live set list with the seventeen and a half minute Danish Blue being replaced by the shorter Burblings For Bob.
Collier had, by 1969,
fused what he had learned as the first British graduate of Berklee with
influences from Mingus, Gil Evans and, to a lesser degree, Ellington along with
the vibrancy of developing American funk and rhythm and blues and his English
roots to create music with the breadth of those great American composers and
arrangers and the drive of more contemporary sounds from outside of the jazz
canon.
Of course all this
attempted analysis of how Collier combined all of these American influences is
tempered by the fact that the tunes on the album include one dedicated to a pub
in the home counties, (The Barley Mow) and
another named after a breed of Scottish cattle, or possibly a bloke from the
granite city, (Aberdeen Angus).
From the off it sounds
like there are more on stage than just the sextet. Opener, Burblings For Bob’s, discordant opening resolves itself into
something balletic Beckett’s full voiced trumpet solo gains a melancholic
backing from bass and piano before Sulzmann joins in to give a flowing solo
that could have come from Gershwin. The group turns on a sixpence into a
driving backing for more from Beckett with driving bass playing to the fore.
Eight minutes into the first tune and already this group has shown more imagination
than many achieve across a full album. Karl
Jenkins’ oboe is an acquired taste. I suggest you acquire it quickly because
it’s not the last time you’ll be hearing it.
Why the next piece is
called Molewrench is beyond me. I
will acknowledge the value of a good molewrench, having found one to be more
effective than, for example, plumbers’ grips. In a small field this may well be
the best known tool titled tune after MC Hammer’s Hammer Time. But enough whimsy. The piece itself is another driven
by Collier’s muscular bass playing which is high in the mix as other
instruments, including that oboe, dance around it. That propulsive force is
maintained as the brass join in, Marshall very busy on the drums. This piece is
nearly half as long again as the studio version so it really has time and space
to develop. The discordant closing has a gospel call and response over the top
and, as the two themes merge together, it is striking again exactly how much
there is in this one track. Lullaby for A
Lonely Child is a Karl Jenkins composition, the only non-Collier track on
the album. It’s a slow paced, elegant piece that works as a showcase for Stan
Sulzmann on alto.
Title track, Down Another Road, is a piece of
finger-snapping R’n’B featuring a chirruping solo from Beckett on flugelhorn
that grows into a long fluid solo in the higher register. As the rest of the
band creep up on him Sulzmann takes off into a long, joyous solo that probably
raised the roof on the night and blew a few valves for those listening to the
live broadcast on Sveriges Radio.
The
Barley Mow is a piece of English pastoralism, evoking
the peace of the countryside in the Home Counties where the pub sits. Beckett’s
flugelhorn and Jenkins’ sinuous oboe conjure up images of rolling hills and a
disappearing way of life.
Collier’s bass and Jenkins’
piano roll us into closing track, Aberdeen
Angus. This is another upbeat piece which, again, owes much to, then
contemporary, soul music. It’s a joyous and celebratory way to close the set,
even if we don’t get to find out if Angus is bovine or human. Marshall drives
it from the back and it swings like a mommy-kisser.
For more information
about Collier’s life and times I could do no better than direct you to John
Fordham’s Guardian
obituary from 2011.
Down Another Road @
Stockholm Jazz Days ’69 is available now from all of the usual retailers and
from My Only Desire Records at http://www.myonlydesirerecords.com/
Dave Sayer
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