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  1. Film maker, impresario, music manager, songwriter and record producer Giorgio Gomelsky – 28 February 1934 – 13 January 2016

    Born in Georgia, USSR, he came to London where he started the Crawdaddy Club and installed the Rolling Stones as house band (he was their manager at the time)

    He brought in The Yardbirds (who he also managed) to replace the Stones and produced their early records.

    He started the now hugely collectable Marmalade record label and signed Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & the Trinity and Blossom Toes

    Gomelsky was also instrumental in the careers of The Soft Machine, Daevid Allen and Gong, Magma, and Material.

    A great man, he was always a champion of British blues and R&B

    • Marmalade also released the pretty far out John Stevens & The Spontaneous Music Ensemble around 1969. The album is sometimes known as ‘Oliv’. Probably paid for from the proceeds of the rest of the catalogue.

          • I’d love to own a copy of ‘Karyobin’ – I think it’ entrancing, by far the most inviting of all the British ‘free improvisation’ recordings I’ve heard (it’s on youtube). There’s a terrific, very readable and non-pretentious book on the golden age of British free music called ‘Beyond Jazz’, published a few months back. John Stevens and his gang occupy a fair amount of it. He was a hugely influential figure in the London-centric jazz world of the mid 60s to mid 70s – the coverage, in the latter 60s, of JS and of the ‘new thing’ he proselytised far outstripped the record sales and audience sizes it received. I find it fascinating stuff.

            • The saxophonist for the SME, Evan Parker said something interesting about Stevens:

              “Stevens had two basic rules: (1) If you can’t hear another musician, you’re playing too loud, and (2) if the music you’re producing doesn’t regularly relate to what you’re hearing others create, why be in the group?”

              This meant that although the music they produced is certainly challenging (and it’s definitely not my cup of jazz tea), it’s by no means blarting skronky free jazz noise.

  2. Brian Jones-era Stones, The Yardbirds, Julie Driscoll, Blossom Toes, Gong……you just said the magic words!

    I last bought a daily newspaper about 20 years ago, and I remember that a day rarely went by without an obituary for an old jazz or blues artist.
    Looks like the next ten years will be the turn of post-war pop/rock music.

  4. In January 1964 Pat Richards launched a monthly magazine, Jazz Beat. It’s first feature was by Giorgio Gomelsky. The mag lasted until December 1966. Here’s a scan of the feature in question. Hope I’ve managed to capture all the “scanning anomalies”.

    Is
    there
    a RHYTHM & BLUES BOOM

    by Giorgio Gomelsky
    JazzBeat January 1964 pps 6 & 30

    THE music known as “rhythm and blues” has been much in the news over the past 6 months or so.

    Everyone in the music business from the Beatles to George Cooper, the agent, from The Shadows to Harold Pendleton of the National Jazz Federation ‑ seems to have expressed almost overwhelming joy about the fact that r & b is “happening” in this country.

    Alter some fairly penetrating scrutiny it becomes fairly obvious that practically everyone is in a considerable “definitional” muddle.

    Most of the confusion arises out of the various, more or less misguided attempts at describing the characteristics of this music. On one side there are the so‑called “purists” and their contention that r & b is the music played in those now almost familiar places on the Chicago South‑Side like “Smitty’s Corner”, small Negro clubs where people like Muddy Waters have made their name.

    This is followed by the affirmations of people in the jazz‑world “proper” who claim that r & b‑in this country at least‑is the music played by a select number of blues‑minded jazz‑musicians who range from Graham Bond to Manfred Mann via Chris Barber.

    A third category states that r & b is the music played at the Flamingo, by Georgie Fame, Tony Sheverton and the Shevelles, etc., yet another is that it is “the American Negro’s pop‑music”, and finally ‑ ‑‑some people hold the view that it is a rich mixture of Liverpool. Manchester, beat and pop Chuck Berry, the Cavern, Ray Charles, skiffle groups off‑beat accents‑‑in short all which sells at the moment

    What is one to make of all this?

    It is evident that before long we will he even more confused and that, a bit of tidying up would help clear the air.

    To start with let us consider the music. We all know that the blues are very important elements in the evolution of jazz and pop music. This unique musical form ‑‑ the only one entirely original created in this century ‑‑ has very much been “the root” in the work of practically every jazzman. An interesting axiom presents itself to us here: “If every, jazzman knows the blues, not all bluesmen know jazz”.

    The blues in fact are as many sided and distinct as flamenco or gipsy music; “delta bluesman” like Big Joe Williams for instance have not all that much in common with a “city bluesman” like Muddy Waters, etc. for in the end the “blues” becomes “the man” and from an “art‑form” it becomes “art”, living and individual.

    Like the “Dixieland” forms of jazz have had great impact on the scene of “commercial” music so have the blues: the “boogie‑woogie” of the late thirties and early forties first brought the blues to the masses, The “city‑type entertainment” created the need for new dances. heavy rhythmical accents were put on the blues and “rhythm & blues” happened, almost by accident.

    One of its “commercial” by‑products was without any doubt “rock and roll’ and the very early Elvis Presley records could very well he accepted as “white r & b”.

    If the white man went commercial why should the Negro not benefit from the situation? Fats Domino, Little Richard and others became household names in the pop world. Their music certainly was r & b although nowadays their repertoire includes other material as well,

    The Beatles ‑ avid listeners of records‑‑‑admit to having been greatly influenced by Negro “commercial” r & b artists, such as Arthur Alexander, James Roy, The Isley Brothers, etc. Chris Barber – who in 1958 brought Muddy Waters to England and whois himself a Chicago r & b fan- saidthat rock ‘n’ roll was rhythm andblues with the music taken out.”. In “Billboard”, America’s music business weekly, rhythm and blues records arethose that sell to the Negro population, even if it is Peter. Paul and Mary!

    What about England? There are groups which profess to play themusic and clubs where these groupsplay, but again one meets the peculiar dichotomy we mentioned before,

    Graham Bond for instance, is amodern jazzman with strong blues affiliations, George Fame, organistand singer admires Ray Charles, The Rolling Stones go for Bo Diddley.Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry, so do the Yardbirds and a few others, Manfred Mann goes his own sweet way and Cyril Davies is generally known as the “Ken Colyer of British R &B”. So, that’s it: “BRRB”.

    One fact is clear: r & b seems to have saved a lot of jazz-clubs from falling attendances. The Marquee. London’s jazz centre, features two r & b nights and is considering a third.The Flamingo packs them in with Georgic Fame, even Studio ’51 has three r & b sessions a week many other clubs, particularly out of London, are starting r & b nights.These are the formerly “jazz-based” clubs. But what about “r & b only clubs’?

    As far as this writer knows in the whole London area there are only 6 of them.

    To the question Is there an r & b scene in Britain we would like to pose the question and welcome readers’ views. G.G.

    • Not to mention all those “quotation marks”…

      I love the reference to the National Jazz Federation – it has a distinct whiff of duffle coats, horn-rim spectacles and chin beards about it.

      • That’s the thing about music journalism from the 60s and earlier. It was uncharted territory, so you got weird things like all those superfluous quote marks.

        A favourite is when they refer to a record topping “the charts”. Like it’s a mythical or non-existent thing they are referring to.

        • Depending on who was doing the writing, it also allowed them to display their condescension and/or contempt for the thing they were writing about, e.g. “the hit parade”, “rhythm and blues”, “beat music” etc.

          (obviously this doesn’t apply to Giorgio’s piece above)

  6. Knew of the guy mainly because I was a huge Yardbirds fan. If I’d been a couple of years older I would definitely have made it to the Crawdaddy (and Eel Pie Island). At least he made it past 69.

    • A couple of years ago I was in Richmond with my daughter and as we came out of the station I enthused about the Crawdaddy club which was originally located just across the road in the Station Hotel.

      The pub had just reopened with a new name and in fact had gone through several renamings over the decades. But we went in for a drink with me continuing to wax lyrical about it being the birthplace of the Stones etc.

      As I was paying for the drinks I tried to engage the young lass behind the bar in conversation about the pub’s musical history.

      My questions were met with a blank stare and a disinterested shrug. That was the end of the conversation, but I couldn’t help feeling the new owners of the Station Hotel were missing a trick there.

  7. Giorgio Gomelsky not only wrote the sleeve notes for the first Yardbirds LP Five Live Yardbirds but he also wrote Got To Hurry the B-Side of their hit single For Your Love under the name Oscar Rasputin

    • Here are Gomelsky’s sleeve notes for “Five Live Yardbirds”:

      FIVE LIVE YARDBIRDS

      “IF ONLY WE HAD A….”

      OR

      “CONFUSSION HE SAY: TOO MUCH VAGUENESS MAKETH A SONG”

      All through the afternoon ‘people’ were wandering about the red and white stripes of the empty MARQUEE CLUB muttering singularly private things to themselves. From a detached distance it all looked like some abstract ballet about people supposed to be at work but in fact doing all they can to avoid it. There were wires lying around and if you pulled one of them a Dickensian gentleman, with a cocker-spaniel face, would lope from some back door and mutter things like:

      “ If only I could get some ortophonic, omni-directional, inter-coaxial plugs, there wouldn’t be any problems… of course, we would also need some split attenuators to regulate the oscillatory feedback and moving coil D3822-B8 mikes, otherwise…Of course I can’t get them…if only we had more time…”

      “ I suppose he’s the engineer” someone said.

      All is vague, with just that little touch of nervous tension so that everybody knows that something is supposed to happen sooner or later. The idea was to do a ‘live recording of the most blueswailing YARDBIRDS in one of their ‘natural surroundings’ and no-one in the audience was to know what was going on. All one can say is that after that evening’s session the audience deserved a medal, or all of Manfred Mann’s five autographs. Far from remaining in the dark, they were introduced to the most blueswailing about twelve times: “And now, the most blueswailing BIRDYEARDS- sorry, hum, I’ll start again. And now the most yardwailing BLUEBIRDS- sorry- FIVE LIVE YARDBIRDS- FIVE LIVE YARDBIRDS…” Hamish Grimes, that grossly underpaid writer of Crawdaddy advertisements, had been chewing his nails all day long. When it came to compering the evening he had bitten off his right hand on which he had written the “script” with a Japanese pen.

      “ Of course, if only we had the mixer ready we could get some echo going…” said the cocker-spaniel face. “You mean we don’t have a mixer ? ?”

      Keith Yardbird was busy painting a huge sign carrying the following information: ‘Monkey-Love-Schoolgirls-Smoke-Respectable’. One could see him walking up and down in front of some Eastern Embassy…Later he hung the sign up on the stage.

      I think it is still there.

      Sam Yardbird wasn’t there though, and nor for that matter was Chris Yardbird, and Jim Yardbird had gone off searching for a new foot-pedal. Eric Yardbird was in a corner breaking the strings of his guitar.

      It seemed to give him confidence.

      It was getting dangerously near the end of even a ‘late’ afternoon, and, frankly, we had got nowhere. In a few moments hundreds of mody-bodies would rush into the Club, falling over the wires, the booms, the mikes, and probably the cocker-spaniel face. We would lose control, but, on reflection, that did not seem to matter all that much because we had never succeeded in gaining it in the first place.

      “ I just managed to fix a split attenuating box…and the signal-to-noise ratio should be” …thump…(!)

      “ Never mind, we’ll go for a drink.”

      Afterwards all seemed just as vague as before but the worrying had stopped. Sam Yardbird turned up, so did Chris Yardbird, and Jim Yardbird returned with a brand new foot pedal, and the evening got underway: “And now, the most blueswailing BIRDYARDS…sorry…YIRDBARDS…”

      Strangely, very strangely, the place really became alive, the band, the audience, the meters on the recording gear, and before long the vagueness had become a ‘sound’, urgent, precise, real.

      After the first set we played the tape back. “Yes”, someone said, “that’s not bad”. “Of course, if we had those omni-directional inter-co-axial plugs, you know” …thump…(!)

      “ Never mind, we’ll have another go.”

      I remember Bill Relf, the road manager (Bill, Bill, Bill we love you) holding onto his audience microphone boom as if it were a Watusi spear in a tribal ‘punch-up’, (for that matter I remember someone else holding that same boom. He looked like five people and we are not allowed to mention his name).

      In the end we thought the job had been done. Something of the excitement and freshness of the YARDBIRD sound had been captured on tape. Some parts of the performance could have been better, maybe, the recording itself could be improved on, perhaps? Perhaps, but who knows, it could also have been much worse.

  8. Very much of their time (1964). Great to see Hamish Grimes mentioned there. He not only introduced the band on Five Live Yardbirds but went on to design many famous LP sleeves.

    And @colin-h will be pleased to know there’s a Mahavishnu connection here.

    Giorgio Gomelsky produced Extrapolation the 1969 debut LP by John McLaughlin. It was originally released on Giorgio’s own Marmalade records label.

    http://i.imgur.com/mA3cGoL.png

      • The “Slowhand” nickname was Giorgio too, I think:

        From Wiki: Yardbirds’ rhythm guitarist, Chris Dreja, recalled that whenever Clapton broke a guitar string during a concert, he would stay on stage and replace it. The English audiences would wait out the delay by doing what is called a “slow handclap”. Clapton told his official biographer, Ray Coleman, that, “My nickname of ‘Slowhand’ came from Giorgio Gomelsky. He coined it as a good pun. He kept saying I was a fast player, so he put together the slow handclap phrase into Slowhand as a play on words”

  11. Here’s the background to that picture. It was taken at the home of Baron Ted Willis, the Labour party activist and TV screen writer (he wrote Dixon Of Dock Green and many other programmes for the BBC).

    In 1964 the Yardbirds played an impromptu gig in his back garden. Seems it was a publicity stunt organised by Giorgio Gomelsky, after Ted Willis had criticised The Beatles and other current pop music.

    http://i.imgur.com/mRCOigx.jpg

    And here’s a wider shot of the picture in the OP showing young Eric looking on while the grown-ups (Giorgio and Ted) talk

    http://i.imgur.com/4zr7Ocf.jpg

  14. Here’s what I wrote about Karyobin in a 1996 issue of Record Collector (with a couple of modern footnotes).

    Island ILPS 9079 – THE SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE – KARYOBIN (ARE THE IMAGINARY BIRDS SAID TO LIVE IN PARADISE)
    Karyobin Part I  Karyobin Part II 
    • Release Date  1968
    • Highest Chart Position  none
    • Musicians  Derek Bailey – guitar  John Stevens – drums  Dave Holland – double bass  Kenny Wheeler – flugelhorn and trumpet  Evan Parker – soprano sax
    • Producer  Eddie Kramer
    • Studio  Olympic Sound Studios, London
    • Recording Date  18th February 1968
    • Cover Design  David Chaston
    • Sleeve Notes  Victor Schonfield
    • Painting of Karyobin  Robert Macauley
    • Liner Photography  John Kilby

    Unlike the other quality prog labels (Deram and Vertigo spring to mind), Island never really seemed entirely comfortable with jazz (or jazz-rock, for that matter) in all its myriad forms. In fact, of all the pink label releases, only really the SME and If (plus, at a pinch, The Alan Bown), wildly different though they are in approach, could be safely classified as such.

    Featuring such seasoned free-form jazzers as Derek (wrongly credited as “Dennis” on sleeve and label) Bailey, John Stevens, Evan Parker, Kenny Wheeler and Dave Holland, Karyobin does not, it must be said, make for particularly easy listening. Consisting of just two untitled, side-long slabs of structureless improvisation (guaranteed room-clearers both), this must surely rank as one of Island’s most ambitious projects of any era and is almost certainly the most bizarre thing that producer Eddie Kramer ever put his name to.

    Still, full marks to Blackwell & Co for giving an airing to such a challenging, synapse-shredding release – even if it did sink without trace amid the label’s big-name blues/psych/rock albums of the day.

    Originally issued as a curious Island/Hexagram Records hybrid (label and sleeve carry both logos), disappointing sales ensured that today this is one of the most elusive pink label LPs of all, with a current asking price in excess of fifty pounds (more like £300 in 2016).

    Alongside the expected ILPS 9079 catalogue number, the label shows, in brackets, a second, unexplained designation: (ILPS 60). This anomaly also crops up – as ILPS + 60 + A2/B2 – as the matrices. What can it all mean? While the back cover boldly claims Hexagram to be “A division of Island Records”, surely Chris Blackwell’s largesse didn’t extend to granting the offshoot its own numbering system within – but separate from – the main Island 9000 series? Answers on a £5 note to the usual address please.

    A genre classic, apparently. File under: Impenetrable.

    • Known Label Variations  1st pink label, then deleted
    • Currently available on CD  Chronoscope/Harmonia Mundi CPE 2001-2 (now also deleted)

    http://i.imgur.com/bevCEO3.jpg

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