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…