The new CD realised by Jazz in Britain with seven tracks recorded for BBC in 1965 and 1966 by the Group Sounds Four (Henry Lowther, Jack Bruce, John Hiseman, Lyn Dobson) and Group Sounds Five (Henry Lowther, Ron Rubin, Ken McCarthy, John Hiseman, Lyn Dobson) is an invaluable document from the British modern jazz era!
Taken from Jon Hiseman's archive (that's a real treasure island for the collectors!), these recordings are a rare testimony about the experiences of this extraordinary collective.
We have here the opportunity, among original tracks by Dobson or Bruce, and jazz standards (as the "Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise" or "Night & Day"), to hear Mike Taylor's "Black & White Raga", presumably composed in 1965.
As Duncan Heining wrote in the liner notes, the track "runs out an astonishing (for the BBC) twelve minutes, every minute justified. This is highly sophisticated music, a step beyond much other modal material, alternating as it does the black notes of the piano in ascending and descending patterns. Its only recording, to my knowledge, is on the 2007 release Mike Taylor Remembered, which uses the same arrangement, with Rubin on bass on that date as well. For my money, the GS%R version takes the prize. It has a more open and personalised feel to it. The music breaths and the listener has a sense of a complete composition unfolding through a series of movements".
I'm totally agreed with Heining, we have here probably the more adherent version of Taylor's original idea.
As Jon Hiseman recalled in an interview I got for my 2015 book about Taylor,
"Mike's compositions played for the Group Sound Five were exceptional in that they were so different from the conventional jazz of the time. I recount in my book, Playing the Band, how GS5 was asked to play on the BBC's Jazz Club programme which was recorded in front of a live audience and was compèred by Humphrey Lyttleton. I was acting for the band in dealing with the BBC and was telephoned up by the producer and asked to give him the five jazz standards we would be playing. I told him that we would only probably be able to play free numbers because one of them is likely to last about 20 minutes. This was Mike's "Black & White Raga". The producer was horrified - he was only interested in conventional jazz. I told him that we wouldn't be able to perform unless we could do our own music because that's what the band did and we didn't know anything else. Not strictly true of course, because we could have played anything, but we didn't want to do anything other than present what GS5 was becoming known for. Finally, the producer gave in and on the broadcast, Humphrey Lyttleton actually announces that there will be a departure from the usual procedure in that we would playing something completely different."
Beautifully packaged 180g vinyl Flip-back sleeve or in a digipack standard CD, the album is strictly limited pressing run of 500 copies worldwide. You can listen and buy it at the Jazz in Britain's Bandcamp page at https://jazzinbritain.co.uk/album/black-white-raga
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