The Penguin Jazz Guide: The History of the Music in the 1000 Best Albums by Brian Morton & Richard Cook

Author:Brian Morton & Richard Cook
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Music, General
ISBN: 9780141959009
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2010-11-04T21:25:58+00:00

MICHAEL GIBBS

Born 25 September 1937, Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe)

Trombone, composer

Michael Gibbs / Tanglewood ’63

Vocalion CDSML 142

Gibbs; John Wilbraham (picc t); Harry Beckett, Nigel Carter, Ian Hamer, Henry Lowther, Maurice Miller, Derek Watkins, Kenny Wheeler (t, flhn); Malcolm Griffiths, Cliff Hardie, David Horler, Bobby Lambe, Chris Pyne (tb); Maurice Gee, Ken Goldy, Ray Premru (btb); Jim Buck Jr, Nicholas Busch, Alan Civil, Valerie Smith (frhn); Martin Fry, Dick Hart, Alf Reece (tba); Duncan Lamont, Mike Osborne, Tony Roberts, Alan Skidmore, Brian Smith, Stan Sulzmann, John Surman, Barbara Thompson, Ray Warleigh (reeds); Gordon Beck, Bob Cornford, Mike Pyne, John Taylor (ky); Ray Russell, Chris Spedding (g); Roy Babbington, Jack Bruce, Jeff Clyne, Brian Odgers (b); John Marshall, Tony Oxley, Clive Thacker (d); Frank Ricotti (perc, vib). September & December 1969; November & December 1970.

Michael Gibbs says: ‘We recorded Michael Gibbs at Decca Studios in West Hampstead and I remember, whilst walking in the corridors, passing Benjamin Britten, who was also recording there!’

Few recording careers have got off to such a glorious start as Mike Gibbs’s. The opening moments of ‘Family Joy, Oh Boy!’ on the eponymous debut could split clouds. Gibbs had come to Britain from his native Rhodesia via Berklee, where he studied with Herb Pomeroy. A very few gigs later he was being talked about as the most vibrant new talent on the scene. Gibbs has the gift that all great leaders of big bands seem to require: that of making complex and daring ideas seem natural and inevitable. In these early records he fused advanced harmonic ideas with a groove that drew on Ellington, Gil and Miles, and rock. Having Jack Bruce and Chris Spedding both play bass guitars on one track was a stroke of genius, and the addition of piccolo trumpet and French horns gives the ensemble a unique cast.

As he demonstrated on Tanglewood ’63, Gibbs could move from sun-kissed delight to moonstruck melancholy in a moment. Something about the voicing of the horns – Gibbs was a (reluctant) trombonist – marked him down as an individualist. He rarely asks for stratospheric playing, concentrating on the middle register. ‘Sojourn’, which follows ‘Tanglewood ’63’ and the appended ‘functional’ fanfare, is a lonely stroll through a rich musical landscape.

The first album pays some dues – to Stan Getz, John Dankworth, Bob Moses and Gary Burton – but it is utterly individual in conception and execution. Gibbs’s charts look challenging, but he has the gift of making difficult passage-work sound coherent and expressive. ‘Sweet Rain’, ‘Throb’ and ‘And On The Third Day’ are classics of British jazz. Surman, Warleigh and Skidmore solo on the first and last, joined on ‘Third Day’ by Mike Osborne and trombonist Chris Pyne for an exuberant finale that brings a wonderful album to a climax.

The end of Tanglewood ’63 is no less joyous, a long feature for guitarist Spedding over a richly textured rhythm, held together by Roy Babbington’s bass guitar, a near-perfect marriage of rock and jazz that was to be Gibbs’s staple for years to come, even when the idea of fusion was in retreat.

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