IDCV, Isidora Edwards / Dimos Vryzas, (Scatter Archive)
Antibes ’62, The Tubby Hayes Quintet (Jazz in Britain)
I was immediately drawn to IDCV, a collaboration between cellist Isidora Edwards and violinist Dimos Vryzas by something it said in the album notes, which described the music as ‘a sound trace of two voices learning how to exist together’. It seemed to sum up a whole approach to improvisation: one cannot simply rely on preconceived gestures to get you through, you have to find your way into the zone and see what you discover. And that, by the sound of it, is exactly what Edwards and Vryas do. I’ll resist the temptation to fill in any background: as, again, it says in the notes, ‘Don’t show me your ID / Don’t show me your CV’. All we know is that these two musicians set off like sonic stalkers into the zone is search of sonic artefacts. What they find is out of this world: sounds fall into orbit around other sounds, scribbled sounds become almost repeated patterns, or drift off in new directions. There is a marked physicality about it: even though we can’t see what’s happening, we’re constantly aware of the hand and finger movements that go into making the music, just as we are of the instruments themselves. Out of this world, but, at the same time, intensely human.
Jazz in Britain have just released a recently unearthed recording of Tubby Hayes and his quintet playing live at the Antibes Jazz Festival in 1962. Hayes, who’d turned professional on leaving school aged 16, had been touring with his own band since the mid-50s. As he said, looking back on his development, ‘I did not really intend becoming a tenor player, though I always liked tenor. I think maybe Dizzy influenced me more than Parker because he was sort of more accessible, he caught your attention more. As far as my influences over the years are concerned, Getz was it at one stage in the proceedings, and later Rollins, Coltrane, Hank Mobley and, to a lesser degree, even Zoot [US saxophonist Zoot Sims].’ The year before Antibes, he’d been signed up by Fontana Records and had been playing in the States.
Not long before the Antibes gig, the Hayes’ quintet had undergone something of a shake-up. A row over pay had led to him seeking new blood and he poached pianist Gordon Beck, bass player Freddy Logan and drummer Allan Ganley from Vic Ash’s band. Beck had turned professional only two years earlier, in 1960. What he lacked in experience, he made up for with talent. As Guardian jazz critic John Fordham said: ‘he hardly ever played a cliche; … his solos developed in constantly changing phrase lengths and rhythms that never sounded glib or routine’. Logan’s career had begun years earlier, in 1949, when he joined pianist/singer Pia Beck’s trio. He’d been working in Australia and had recently made two albums with the short-lived Australian trio, The Three Out. Ganley, a one-time member of Johnny Dankworth’s band, went on to be house drummer at Ronnie Scott’s. They were joined by another Dankworth band veteran, trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar.
Prior to the Antibes gig, they’d recorded two albums together for Fontana, Down in the Village and Late Spot at Scott’s. Their playing is tight and creative and they make music you can place in time simply by listening to it. It’s everything you’d expect from a band of which Melody Maker said: ‘Tubby’s Quintet may be Britain’s greatest ever’ (an opinion echoed by Ronnie Scott). And it really is a snapshot of a moment in time, as, not long after, Beck was to leave (he was to go on to lead his own bands, including, from 1968, the trio Gyroscope, which featured drummer Tony Oxley).
The album comes with a 28-page booklet written by award-winning Hayes biographer Simon Spillett, whose biography of Hayes, The Long Shadow of the Little Giant, came out in 2015. It fills in a lot detail as to the members of the band and the circumstances of the gig. It’s great that these recordings have finally come to light.
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Dominic Rivron
LINKS
IDCV:, https://scatterarchive.bandcamp.com/album/idcv
Antibes ’62:, https://jazzinbritain1.bandcamp.com/album/antibes-62
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