Book Review: Chris Searle – Talking The Groove; Jazz Words From The Morning Star (Jazz In Britain)

The Costa Book Awards would each year, honour the best fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children’s books and first novels. One category they always missed was the best Bog and Bedside book; those volumes that are structured so you can read as much or as little as time allows and pick it up again anywhere in the book next time. Everybody has one. It was rumoured that Her late lamented Majesty had a copy of the Observer's Book of Corgis on the shelf in her smallest throne room next to Jane’s Fighting Ships for Phil. Had the award been available this year, this new collection by Chris Searle would be an obvious contender.

The good people at Jazz in Britain have compiled a couple of hundred reviews, interviews and comment pieces from Chris’s columns in the Morning Star from the 2010s to 2023 and present them here, along with a double CD, Talking The Groove – Jazz Against Racism, of pieces to accompany the book. Most of the pieces come in at about a page and a half of reading and many have accompanying gig reviews to give a fuller picture. Searle is a great enthusiast for the music with a great fondness for the British free scene centred on Dalston’s Café Oto, though his articles range far and wide; his enthusiasm is best reflected at the end of many of the articles in his urging the reader to buy this album or go to that gig. It’s immensely readable though, if I had any complaint, it’s that structuring the pieces in date order would have been preferable to the collection being in alphabetical order by artist.

As you would expect many of the artists he writes about use their music to promote a generally left-wing ideology. (Searle’s earlier book, Forward Groove, was a series of essays looking at the promotion of civil rights, equality and anti-racism and the anti-war movement of the 60s in jazz from its earliest days). He writes with great empathy for both the artists and their causes and he writes well. Those who come to this book looking for an analysis of the techniques used in particular works will be disappointed. Searle has a deep knowledge of the musicians and their works but confesses in Forward Groove that he doesn’t have that depth of knowledge. This suits me down to the ground as I am in the same boat. I know that the car moves me but don’t ask me to take the gear box apart (or more importantly, put it back together again).

 The CDs clock in at over 2 hours and include numbers by a John Stevens Sextet, several line-ups featuring Chris McGregor, the Trevor Watts Quintet, the Bruce Turner Quartet, Splinters, Mujician and the Trevor Watts/Mark Sanders Duo.

As Searle would write when he hears something he really likes, “Get hold of this book!”.

Talking The Groove is available for £16.99 HERE on the Jazz In Britain Bandcamp page. Dave Sayer