OUT OF NOWHERE. The uniquely elusive jazz of MIKE TAYLOR. : August 2016

28/08/2016

Ron Rubin's personal journal.

Mike Taylor on piano and Ron Rubin on bass.

At some point, me totally run aground with Mike Taylor's enigmatic story, one of the keystone of my writing was the discovery Ron Rubin had a personal journal about that period. Talented Jazz double bass player, pianist and composer (read a good profile of him at http://www.sandybrownjazz.co.uk/profileronrubin.html), he kindly gave me photocopies of it and I had many new references for Mike's life, expecially about the last part of it.

So I'm very grateful of him for this crucial gesture and I tribute now his importance for my book reproducing here below some pages of this precious diary...

07/08/2016

Mike Taylor quoted on Kris Needs' article on "Mojo" last issue...

On "Mojo" last issue (# 274, September 2016, page 68), KRIS NEEDS writes a very good article about Graham Bond's controversial life quoting Mike Taylor just in a short passage:

"Underrated, Bond recruited 21-years-old drummer Jon Hiseman, an accountant who'd previously played with the New Jazz Orchestra. They had been in troduced by British jazz pianist Mike Taylor, with whom Bond would often lodge and take acid (Taylor co-wrote three tracks on Cream's Wheels of Fire, before slipping into LSD-induced madness. His body was found on the beach at Leigh-on-Sea in January 1969), but Hiseman was cut from a different cloth, taking over the band's accounts and insisting his bandleader get off smack".

Apart the fact Taylor co-wrote the Cream's tracks when he was taking LSD, alternating lucidity and madness; Bond didn't lodge often with Mike, because it is documented just one time in 1967 at the Kew's 54, Forest Road flat (finally left to Jon Hiseman).

Then, from the official Death's certificate we know that Mike Taylor's body was found at "Leigh Creek, opposite "Lady Saville" one quarter of mile from the shore", not on the beach...

Here below you can see two recent pictures of the area where Mike passed away and two old shots of the Lady Saville.

After having dedicated a very good review to my book on "Record Collector" (read here), the strange thing is that Needs doesn't quote "Out of Nowhere" in any parts of this article...

OPINIONS

"An exhaustive near hagiography... Out of Nowhere encompasses the virtues of oral history: dogged research, exhaustive detailing and reproduction of key items in Taylor’s life and music".

KEN WAXMAN, "Jazz World"

"Well researched and well illustrated..."

BRIAN PRIESTLEY, "Jazz Wise"

"A fascinating account of a musician who epitomised the creatively significant mid-to-late 1960s period of British jazz... a welcome addition to the canon of British jazz biographies..."

ROGER FARBEY, "Jazz Journal"

"A morbid tale then at the outset, at some considerable remove from sentimental fandom... This book, not huge in length, is packed full of carefully gathered research...".

STEPHEN GRAHAM, "Marlbank"

"An excellent and obviously very painstaking piece of research. Thank you very much both from self and on behalf of the jazz community for preserving the memory of an unique artist".

JOHN JACK, manager of the Ronnie Scotts

"It's a fine book and the only one of its kind about Mike. Gradually the book will be included in stories about Mike so people might begin to seek it out. Congratulations."

DAVE TOMLIN, sax player, poet and writer

"With his two albums barely-reissued Holy Grail collectables, Taylor seemed doomed to obscurity until Luca Ferrari spent two years interviewing those who had known and played with him, while doggedly trawling archives and public records to emerge with the first book about this fascinating figure. His English sometimes may not to be perfect but just the fact this essential document now exists deserves the highest praise".

KRIS NEEDS, "Record Collector"

"Sublime!"
J.J. TIMMONS, Amazon UK

"A valuable biography..."

RICHARD WILLIAMS, "The Guardian"