Sandy Brown was one of the great characters of British jazz – traversing/transcending all the factions in a career from the 50s to the early 70s (and an untimely passing). He made trad jazz, ‘mainstream’ jazz, a proto jazz-rock record in 1968 with John McLaughlin on guitar (‘Hair At Its Hairiest’, yes, a jazz version of ‘Hair’ – available in full on the Fellside/Lake CD titled ‘Work Song’, a lost gem well worth seeking out), wrote for ‘The Listener’ and designed recording studuios for a living – including, from memory, the one in Lagos that Macca used for ‘Band On The Run’. He wrote a very eccentric autobiography in the third person, posthumously published as ‘The McJazz Manuscripts’.
I heartily recommend exploring his works.
I’ve just noticed this half-hour TV concert on YouTube, so pour a glass of McWhisky and enjoy the great man (with a borrowed/so-so rhythm section) on some foreign platform before the flood…
Oh, and just for @Johnny-Concheroo, I should point out the vocal blues nod to the blues boom of the period, from 18:40 onwards for 7 minutes. I wasn’t previously aware that Sandy sang, but he’s surprisingly impressive.
That’s a very convincing vocal performance Colin.
Here’s Big Bill Broonzy’s take on the song circa 1952
Gives new meaning to the phrase ‘I see my coughin’ coming…’!
Actually, I might have a version of Big Bill singing this on a couple of his UK EPs I bought last year at a great second hand store in Ayr (Ayr’s rock – they missed a trick in naming the place…). These late 50s/early 60s EPs are wonderful artefacts, aren’t they?
* Just checked: I do indeed have a version of it, on Bill’s ‘Southern Saga’ EP. I also have, from the same small haul, a Johnny Duncan & His Blue Grass Boys EP on Columbia, which features no less than Sandy Brown guesting, on that well-known bluegrass instrument ‘the clarinet’.
Here’s ‘Freight Train Blues’ from it. His solo is at 1:30 in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJTyamX5Zg4
Great stuff. Thanks Colin. Sandy was a true original in a time when musical boundaries were becoming more blurred.
That’s the spirit, jazzer. I recommend his book, if you haven’t read it. Second-hand copies aren’t too pricey. We need more free-spirited characters in life.
“Untimely passing” seems to be the mot juste for many stalwarts of the British jazz/blues scene of the fifties and sixties, sad to say…