Jazz Services - A voice for jazz

This issue features articles on Mike Westbrook, Eddie Harvey, Simon Spillett and the new Jazz Services website; In a double length edition Jamie Cullum is on the psychiatrists's couch with Dr Iain Ballamy.

Saxophonist and composer Steve Williamson (born 1964) was one of number of talented British born black jazz musicians who came together in the Jazz Warriors collective in the mid 1980s. Although the Jazz Warriors would only release one album, 1987's 'Out Of Many, One People', the careers of Williamson, Courtney Pine, Gary Crosby, Orphy Robinson and many others were launched in the process, generating much critical acclaim and media attention. In 1990, Williamson recorded his debut album 'A Waltz For Grace' for Verve with Abbey Lincoln guesting on the title track. Two more albums were released in the early 1990s. He worked with Louis Moholo and Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath (and briefly with Art Blakey) while continuing to lead his own bands. In the 2000s, Williamson was seen with Julian Joseph's Quartet and in 2011 tribute was paid to him in a South Bank Centre concert by The Tommorrow's Warrior's Jazz Orchestra led by frequent collaborator Gary Crosby.

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Gracie Cole (1924-2006) was one of the first female musicians to appear in a dance band that wasn't an 'all girl' group. Born in County Durham, her family moved to Yorkshire when she was two years old. Cole learned the cornet from her father, who was a miner, and she joined him in colliery bands while still in her teens. She performed with various female bands in the early 1940s before joining the celebrated Ivy Benson Band in 1945. Cole stayed with Benson until 1950, leaving to join George Evans along with her new husband trombonist Bill Geldard. Cole and Geldard left together to join the Squadronaires where she played alongside Tommy McQuater and Ron Simmonds and was again the only woman. In 1952 she decided to strike out on her own as a bandleader performing with Cleo Laine and leading. From the 1960s, Cole chose to put her professional career on the backburner to bring up her family, though she returned to performing with brass bands in the late 1970s. Alzheimer's disease brought the curtain down on her pioneering career in the 1990s.

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Obituary in The Guardian by Val Wilmer

Gracie Cole Profile

Ron Simmonds reminisces at Jazz Professional

Recommended Recordings

With Ivy Benson

Jamaican trumpeter Dizzy Reece (born 1931) had a short UK career before moving to New York in 1959, but this included some significant recordings highlighting his originality . He was at school with Joe Harriott and came to Britain at 17 on the Empire Windrush in 1948 (other musicians among the 492 passengers included Lord Kitchener and Granville Edwards). He found it difficult to get regular playing opportunities in London and moved to Paris where he played with Don Byas, Walter Bishop and Kenny Clarke. Returning to the UK in 1952 he played with the bands of Cab Kaye, Kenny Graham, Victor Feldman and Tony Crombie. From 1955, Reece often led his own bands featuring Tubby Hayes, Ronnie Scott and Phil Seamen among others. He composed the music for the 1958 film 'Nowhere To Go'. In 1959 Reece made a permanent move to New York where he recorded several albums for Blue Note. Albums in his own name included Stanley Turrentine, Wynton Kelly and Duke Jordan among a shifting but frequently glittering personnel. After 1960, Reece's recordings have been more sporadic, but when they have appeared - his 1978 'Manhattan Project' for example - they have usually received glowing notices.

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Official Website

Dizzy Reece Discography

Recommended Recordings

With Duke Jordan

Blues in Trinity (1958)

Star Bright (1959)

Ivy Benson (1913-1993) was born in Leeds and was playing piano at an early age. Her first professional appearances were on alto saxophone with Edna Croudson's Rhythm Girls, a Yorkshire-based sextet with whom she stayed from 1929 until 1935. By the late 1930s, Benson was leading her own bands in London. World War II would present opportunities - in 1943, Benson's band became the BBC's resident dance band with their own series 'Ladies' Night'. In the same year, they headlined at the London Palladium for six months. From 1945 until 1950, Gracie Cole was lead trumpet and frequently featured soloist. Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s Benson led bands in shows for overseas servicemen and in 1976 she was featured in an episode of This Is Your Life. Benson retired her group in 1982 shortly before turning 70 and retired to Clacton-on-Sea where she continued to perform on vocals, organ and piano until her death just short of her 80th birthday.

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Ivy Benson online

Wikipedia - Ivy Benson

Recommended Recordings

Ivy Benson and Her All Girls Band 1943-1949

Rudolph Dunbar (c.1902-1988) is remembered today mostly as an influential classical clarinettist and conductor, but he was also a noted jazz musician particularly during the 1920s. He was born in Guyana around the turn of the twentieth century and played with a military band before moving to USA to study at the Institute of Musical Arts, which would later become Juilliard School. In 1924 Dunbar performed with the Harlem Orchestra which included composer William Grant Still on piano - the two would remain friends for many years. Moving to Europe, Dunbar was in the Plantation Orchestra for Charles B Cochran's London revue 'Blackbirds' starring Florence Mills. By the 1930s, Dunbar was dividing his time between teaching the clarinet (for two years he had his own school), European classical recitals, and residencies and tours as a dance bandleader in London. Groups he led included Rudolph Dunbar and his African Polyphony. He also wrote a treatise on clarinet playing in 1939. In 1942, having turned his hand to conducting, Dunbar became the first black man to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra and at the end of World War II he went on to lead the Berlin Philharmonic performing Still's Afro-American Symphony alongside Tchaikovsky and Weber. From 1950 he lived in London, but little of his later life is recorded apart from a few appearances as conductor of orchestras in Poland, Egypt, Russia and Cuba among others.

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Rudolph Dunbar profile

Recommended Recordings

Harlem Orchestra at Red Hot Jazz (1926)

Shake Keane (1927-1997) was a teacher in his native St Vincent before coming to London in 1952 to study literature. He fell in with the strong group of West Indian jazz musicians who were becoming a fixture of the UK scene at the time, and in 1960 he became a member of Joe Harriott's seminal quintet leading to some of the first recorded experiments in free jazz, not just in Europe but internationally. Keane's interest in literature led him into a natural partnership with Michael Garrick in various jazz-poetry presentations. He worked in Germany in the late 1960s with Kurt Edelhagen and the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland big band. Returning to St Vincent in the 1970s, he became Minister of Culture and managed to get himself placed in New York as cultural attache in 1980. He continued to perform on trumpet, flugelhorn and as a poet until shortly before his death.

Recommended Recordings

With Joe Harriott, Michael Garrick

This issue features articles on Lea DeLaria, Martin Speake and Lennis Breslaw; Three for the Road this month are Tom Cawley and Tim Garland; Alan Barnes is on the psychiatrists's couch with Dr Iain Ballamy.

This issue features articles on Val Wilmer, Andy Sheppard and Chris Batchelor; Three for the Road this month are Carlos Lopez-Real, Ray Gelato and the Deirdre Cartwright/Kathy Dyson Duo; Laurence Cottle is on the psychiatrists's couch with Dr Iain Ballamy.

This issue features articles on Get The Blessing, Georgie Fame and Ian Carr; Three for the Road are Chris Biscoe, Led Bib and Partisans; Gerard Presencer is on the psychiatrists's couch with Dr Iain Ballamy.