The excellent Simon Spillett – jazz saxophonist, incredibly prolific and compelling writer of substantial CD booklets, generally around British jazz of the 1950s-70s, and author of the superb Tubby Hayes biography ‘The Long Shadow of the Little Giant’ – has just launched a blog.
Over the past few months, since joining Facebook, he has used it largely as a blog, posting wonderful essays about aspects of jazz history and its people. For various reasons, he has come to more fully embrace writing and ‘being a writer’ recently. In my view, that’s great news – because he’s one of the best, and the latest in a distinguished history of British jazz musicians being equally adept as essayists and long-form writers. Humphrey Lyttelton, George Melly and Dave Gelly are three others that come immediately to mind – though George was, I think, a significantly better writer than musician, per se 🙂
I hope Simon will transfer some of his long-form Facebook essays (some presented there in two or three instalments) on to the new available-to-all blog. Certainly, he will be posting new material there regularly. I take my hat off to him!
https://blog.simonspillett.com/blog/doomed-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-just-start-a-blog.aspx
https://blog.simonspillett.com/blog/doomed-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-just-start-a-blog.aspx
Excellent.
Great stuff, cheers Colin
I don’t know of his parping, but he writes engagingly well.
He’s really good. I went to a screening of the Tubby Hayes film at my local jazz club and SS did a Q&A plus a set of Tubby numbers. Excellent night out. He sometimes plays at the pub at the bottom of my road. When people did things like that.
He’s been on twice, 2018 and 2019, at the Chandos Arms jazz nights in Colindale. Very Hard Bop, lightning-speed stuff. The house drummer, Rick Finlay says he always gets a good workout when backing Spillett.
Strangely only 2 albums as leader in his career so far.
His Tubby Hayes book “The Long Shadow of the Little Giant” is excellent. He doesn’t gloss over Tubby’s personal failings but he doesn’t dwell on them either. It’s very much about the music and the scene going on around it.
Curiously, for someone who has done so much to gather bits of rare Tubbs (and others) audio together for release, Simon has an antipathy to recording himself – and for others doing so (phone camera clips et al.). I think he sets himself impossibly high standards in terms of his own playing and sound – but at the same time I don’t criticise him for it. There’s no point in releasing your own music if it isn’t a wholly positive thing for you.
Yes I’ve seen him a few times. I bought his book off him on the merch table and he signed it. Not the friendliest of people if I recall.
Perfectly civil and polite but not interested at all in chatting.