Before I delve into a quick history of European Jazz, we need to look at Miles Davis who moved from hard bop to jazz fusion. He sorted of started the movement towards jazz fusion, in my opinion.
Miles formed his Second Great Quintet in 1964.[4] With the release of Miles in the Sky, Davis permanently abandoned hard bop, instead adopting jazz fusion and avant-garde jazz.[5] In this era he released the studio album Bitches Brew, which was certified platinum, culminating in the long electric jams from the mid-1970s released as Pangaea, Agharta, and Dark Magus. After a six year retirement, Davis released albums under the Columbia and Warner Bros. labels during the period between 1981 and 1991. These recordings combined jazz with popular music genres as he turned more toward the mainstream.[6] He finished his music career with Doo-Bop, in which he experimentally combined jazz with hip-hop, although his 1972 album On the Corner contained beats that would later be sampled for hip-hop.[7]
Around the time of In a Silent Way & Bitches Brew (1969-1970), Miles Davis was fusing jazz and electric rock/funk music into what became fusion music in the 1970's.
Much lesser known but around the same time, European musicians were starting to explore avant garde jazz and fusion themes in their music but it had a more British and less emotional edge than their American counterparts. Some examples of this music were:
Mike Westbrook, Ian Carr, Soft Machine, Septober Energy, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennik & the ICP Orchestra from the Netherlands, Terje Rypdal from Norway, Jon Christensen a great drummer who played with Jan Garbarek a great sax player from Scandanavia. Here are some linkages to great players during this era that started in the 1960's and is still around as of today.
In the late 1960s Christensen played alongside Jan Garbarek on several recordings by the composer George Russell. He also was a central participant in the Jazz band, Masqualero, with Arild Andersen, and they reappeared in 2003 for his 60th anniversary.[4] He appears on many recordings on the ECM label with such artists as Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Bobo Stenson, Eberhard Weber, Ralph Towner, Barre Phillips, Arild Andersen, Enrico Rava, John Abercrombie, Michael Mantler, Miroslav Vitous, Rainer Brüninghaus, Charles Lloyd, Dino Saluzzi and Tomasz Stanko.[5]He, along with Jan Garbarek and Palle Danielsson, was a member of the legendary Keith Jarrett "European Quartet" of the 1970s which produced five excellent jazz recordings on ECMRecords.[1][2]
ECM is an amazing record label of very high quality jazz recordings. The founder and engineer is Manfred C. Eicher (ECM backwards) and all their recordings are highly recommended though many are quite cerebral. Other cool labels are Watt Records (Michael Mantler & Carla Bley) & Ogun Records (Harry Miller)
Ogun Records is a U.K. record label created by the husband and wife team of South African expat bassist Harry Miller and Hazel Miller, with sound engineer Keith Beal, initially to record and release the music being created by the upcoming Brit new/avant jazz musicians - including Keith Tippett (a great keyboard player who played with King Crimson on the 2nd & third albums and is married to Julie Tippett nee Driscoll who played with Brian Auger's Trinity), Mike Osborne, Elton Dean, Lol Coxhill, Harry Beckett, Trevor Watts et al - in the early 1970s, as well as their collaborations with the expatriate members of the South African group The Blue Notes - including Chris McGregor, Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Louis Moholo, andJohnny Dyani - in groups like McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, Dean's Ninesense, and Miller's Isipingo.[1]
The label is active to this day, although it did not have any releases for several years beginning in 1980, during which the Millers lived in The Netherlands. Harry Miller was killed in a car accident in 1983. Hazel Miller started releasing new titles on LP in 1986, with help from John Jack of Cadillac Records, and in 1990 switched the format of releases to CD starting with Elton Dean's Unlimited Saxophone Company. Since then, almost every year has seen one to three new additions to the CD catalog - most are new or unreleased recordings, and some are CD editions of the earlier LP releases.
It should be noted that Elton Dean was not only the sax player for a great version of Soft Machine, but the reason Reginald Dwight is Elton John today. Elton Dean was in a group called Bluesology.
From about 1960, organist Reggie Dwight – then aged 13 – and his neighbor, singer and guitarist Stewart "Stu" Brown, performed with a local group, the Corvettes, in Pinner, Middlesex, a suburb of London. After that group split up, the pair formed a new group, Bluesology, with Rex Bishop (bass), and Mick Inkpen (drums).[2][3] According to Dwight the band's name was in homage to the Django Reinhardt album Djangology.[4] There had also been a 1956 piece named Bluesology by John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet.[5] By 1962 they had begun playing local pubs, and in 1963 they won a regular weekly slot at the Establishment Club in London, playing tunes by Muddy Waters, Jimmy Witherspoon and Memphis Slim, among others.[6] In 1965, they turned professional, and signed a contract with an agency which began hiring them out as a backing band for visiting American performers, including The Isley Brothers, Doris Troy, Billy Stewart and Patti LaBelle.[6]
After recording a demo they were signed by Fontana Records, and recorded their first single, Dwight's song "Come Back Baby", in July 1965.[3] In November 1965 they released a second single, "Mr. Frantic", again written and sung by Dwight, and again unsuccessful. After a tour of Germany the band returned to England to work as the backing band for Major Lance with an expanded line-up of Dwight, Brown, Pat Higgs (trumpet), Dave Murphy (saxophone), Fred Gandy (bass) and Paul Gale (drums).[6]
In September 1966 the band was invited by vocalist Long John Baldry to become his regular band.[3] Only Dwight and Brown agreed, thus forming with Baldry a new version of Bluesology, along with Fred Gandy (bass), Pete Gavin (drums), Neil Hubbard (guitar), Elton Dean (saxophone), Marc Charig (cornet), and Alan Walker (vocals), and, for a brief spell, singer Marsha Hunt.[6]As Stu Brown and Bluesology, they recorded the single "Since I Found You Baby" for Polydor Records, produced by Kenny Lynch.[3][4]
As Baldry's music drifted more towards the cabaret market, Dwight became disenchanted with the band, and so simultaneously began to develop songwriting skills in collaboration with Bernie Taupin whilst working as a session musician. Dwight, Brown and Dean all quit Bluesology in late 1967, Brown's replacement being Caleb Quaye, only for the band to call it a day the following year.[3]
And of course, one cannot forget Robert Wyatt and Mike Ratledge, members of the original Soft Machine. Here is a Wikipedia entry -- the only part I disagree with is that Robert Wyatt was probably not "fired" from Soft Machine; he was rendered a paraplegic from a nasty fall and could no longer play drums (his subsequent work is all highly recommended).
Soft Machine -- Beginnings, psychedelic, jazz fusion[edit]
Soft Machine (billed as The Soft Machine up to 1969 or 1970[1]) were formed in mid-1966 by Robert Wyatt (drums, vocals), Kevin Ayers (bass, guitar, vocals), Daevid Allen (guitar) and Mike Ratledge (organ) plus, for the first few gigs only, American guitarist Larry Nowlin.[2] Allen, Wyatt and future bassist Hugh Hopper had first played together in the Daevid Allen Trio in 1963, occasionally accompanied by Ratledge. Wyatt, Ayers and Hopper had been founding members of the Wilde Flowers, later incarnations of which would include future members of another Canterbury band, Caravan.
This first Soft Machine line-up became involved in the early UK underground, featuring prominently at the UFO Club, and subsequently other London clubs like the Speakeasy Club and Middle Earth. Their first single 'Love Makes Sweet Music' (recorded 5 February 1967, produced by Chas Chandler), backed with 'Feelin' Reelin' Squeelin' (January 1967, produced by Kim Fowley—rumored to have Jimi Hendrix playing rhythm guitar, who was recording "Hey Joe" in the same studio).[3] In April 1967 they recorded seven demo songs with producer Giorgio Gomelsky in De Lane Lea Studios that remained un-released until 1971 in a dispute over studio costs.[4] They also played in the Netherlands, Germany and on the French Riviera. During July and August 1967, Gomelsky booked shows all along the Côte d'Azur with the band's most famous early gig taking place in the village square of Saint-Tropez. This led to an invitation to perform at producer Eddie Barclay's trendy "Nuit Psychédélique(fr)", performing a forty minute rendition of "We Did It Again", singing the refrain over and over, achieving a Zen-like quality. This made them instant darlings of the Parisian "in" crowd, resulting in invitations to appear on leading television shows and at the Paris Biennale in October 1967. Upon their return from their sojourn in France, Allen (an Australian) was denied re-entry to the United Kingdom, so the group continued as a trio, while he returned to Paris to form Gong.
Sharing the same management team as Jimi Hendrix, the band were rewarded with a support slot on the Jimi Hendrix Experience's North America tour throughout 1968.[2] Soft Machine's first album - a psychedelic rock/proto-prog classic - was recorded in New York in April at the end of the first leg. Back in London, eventually guitarist Andy Summers, later of The Police, joined the group, fresh from his stint with Dantalian's Chariot (previously Zoot Money's Big Roll Band). After a few weeks of rehearsals, the new quartet began a tour of the USA with some solo shows before reuniting with Hendrix for a final string of dates in August–September 1968. Summers, however, had in the meantime been fired at the insistence of Ayers,[5] who departed amicably as well after the final tour date at the Hollywood Bowl, and for the remainder of 1968 Soft Machine were no more. Wyatt stayed in the US to record solo demos, while Ratledge returned to London and began composing in earnest. One of Wyatt's demos, Slow Walkin' Talk, allowed Wyatt to make use of his multi-instrumentalist skills (Hammond organ, piano, drums and vocals) and featured Jimi Hendrix on bass guitar.[6]
In January 1969, in order to fulfil contractual obligations, Soft Machine reformed with former road manager and composer Hugh Hopper on bass added to Wyatt and Ratledge, and set about recording their second album, Volume Two, which launched a transition towards a purely instrumental sound resembling what would be later called jazz fusion. In May 1969, this lineup acted as the uncredited backup band on two tracks of Syd Barrett's solo debut album, The Madcap Laughs. The base trio was late in 1969 expanded to a septet with the addition of four horn players, though only saxophonist Elton Dean remained beyond a few months, the resulting Soft Machine quartet (Wyatt, Hopper, Ratledge and Dean) running through Third (1970) and Fourth (1971), with various guests, mostly jazz players (Lyn Dobson, Nick Evans, Mark Charig, Jimmy Hastings, Roy Babbington, Rab Spall). Fourth was the first of their fully instrumental albums, and the last one featuring Wyatt.
Their propensity for building extended suites from regular sized compositions, both live and in the studio (already in the Ayers suite in their first album), reaches its maximum in the 1970 albumThird, unusual for its time in each of the four sides featuring one suite. Third was also unusual for remaining in print for more than ten years in the United States, and is the best-selling Soft Machine recording.[7]
This period saw them gaining unprecedented acclaim across Europe, and they made history by becoming the first 'rock band' invited to play at London's Proms in August 1970, a show which was broadcast live and later appeared as a live album.
Post-Wyatt era[edit]
After differences over the group's musical direction, Wyatt left (or was fired from[8]) the band in August 1971 and formed Matching Mole (a pun on machine molle, French for soft machine. Also said at the time to have been taken from some stage lighting equipment "Matching Mole".). He was briefly replaced by Australian drummer Phil Howard. This line-up toured extensively in Europe during the end of 1971 (attested by the "Drop" 2008 release) and attended the recording of their next album, but further musical disagreements led to Howard's dismissal after the recording of the first LP side of Fifth before the end of 1971 and, some months later, to Dean's departure. They were replaced respectively by John Marshall (drums) and, for the recording of Six (1973), Karl Jenkins (reeds, keyboards), both former members of Ian Carr's Nucleus, and The Softs' sound developed even more towards jazz fusion.
Jenkins era[edit]
In 1973, after the release of Six, Hopper left and was replaced by Roy Babbington, another former Nucleus member, who had already contributed with double bass on Fourth and Fifth and took up (6-string) electric bass successfully, while Karl Jenkins progressively took over the role of band-leader and main composer. After they released Seven (1973) without additional musicians, the band switched record labels from Columbia to Harvest. On their 1975 album Bundles, a significant musical change occurred with fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth adding guitar as a very prominent melody instrument to the band's sound, sometimes reminiscent of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, setting the album apart from previous Soft Machine releases, which had rarely featured guitars. On the last official studio album Softs (1976), he was replaced by John Etheridge. Ratledge, the last remaining original member of the band, had left during the early stages of recording. Other musicians in the band during the later period were bassists Percy Jones (of Brand X) and Steve Cook,[9] saxophonists Alan Wakeman and Ray Warleigh, and violinistRic Sanders. Their 1977 performances and record (titled Alive and Well, ironically) were among the last for Soft Machine as a working band. The Soft Machine name was used for the 1981 record Land of Cockayne (with Jack Bruce and, again, Allan Holdsworth, plus Ray Warleigh and Dick Morrissey on saxes and John Taylor on electric piano), and for a final series of dates at London's Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in the summer of 1984, featuring Jenkins and Marshall leading an ad hoc lineup of Etheridge, Warleigh, pianist Dave MacRae and bassist Paul Carmichael.
Legacy[edit]
Since 1988, many live recordings of Soft Machine have been issued on CD. In 2002, four former Soft Machine members - Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean, John Marshall and Allan Holdsworth - toured and recorded under the name Soft Works[10] (initially called 'Soft Ware', debuting at the 2002 Progman Cometh Festival).
From late 2004 onwards, with John Etheridge replacing Holdsworth, they toured and recorded as Soft Machine Legacy.[11] They released three albums: Live in Zaandam[12] (2005), the studio album Soft Machine Legacy[13] (2006) and Live at the New Morning[14] (2006). After Elton Dean died in February 2006, the band continued with British saxophonist and flautist Theo Travis, formerly of Gong and The Tangent.
In December 2006, the new Legacy line-up recorded the album Steam[15][16][17] in Jon Hiseman's studio, which was released by Moonjune Records in August 2007, before a European tour in autumn. In 2008, Hopper was sidelined by leukemia and the band continued live performances with Fred Baker. Following Hopper's death in 2009, the band announced that they would continue with Babbington once again stepping into the role formerly held by Hopper.[18]
In 2013, the Legacy band released a new studio album, titled Burden of Proof.[21] In an early 2013 interview, Travis stated that, "legally we could actually be called Soft Machine but for various reasons it was decided to be one step removed."[22]
Personnel[edit]
Members[edit]
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Timeline[edit]
