The Cookers feat. Eddie Henderson preview new Look Out! album

Trumpeter Eddie Henderson and saxophonist Donald Harrison are featured on The Cookers' hard-bop swinger "Traveling Lady" 

Here's the scoop from Gearbox Records...

Look Out! is the triumphant sixth album return of jazz supergroup The Cookers, due out on September 24th on double vinyl, CD, and digital. Recorded at the iconic Van Gelder studio in Englewood Cliffs and cut using a Van Gelder-era '67 Haeco Sculley lathe at Gearbox Records, the seven-song release comprises original, fresh pieces written by Cecil McBee, Billy Harper, and George Cables which channel the heady, aggressive post-bop era of the mid-60s.

Whereas the majority of the jazz tradition’s elder statesmen head their own groups, this is one of the few jazz bands to contain legacy musicians of this calibre functioning as an equitable, long-standing ensemble. Billy Harper, Cecil McBee, George Cables, Eddie Henderson, and Billy Hart all came up in the heady era of the mid ‘60s: Hart and Henderson were members of Herbie Hancock’s groundbreaking Mwandishi group; Cecil McBee anchored Charles Lloyd’s great ’60s quartet alongside Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette; Billy Harper was part of Lee Morgan’s last group, as well as being a member of Max Roach’s Quartet and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers; while George Cables held down the piano chair in numerous bands including groups led by Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Dexter Gordon and Art Pepper. 

David Weiss and Donald Harrison, from a more recent generation and the youngest members of the band, are experts in this forthright lingo, having gained experience performing with Art Blakey, Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard, Charles Tolliver, Roy Haynes and Herbie Hancock.

After 14 years together, again the incredibly high level of musicianship has only increased with the revisiting of their fresh, challenging, boundary-pushing music from these legendary, revered, veteran improvisers.

Pre-order a copy of The Cookers' new Look Out! album directly from Gearbox right here. Listen to "Traveling Lady" following the track listing and credits. 

The Cookers – Look Out! (Gearbox Records)

1. The Mystery of Monifa Brown

2. Destiny Is Yours

3. Cat's Out The Bag

4. Somalia

5. AKA Reggie

6. Traveling Lady

7. Mutima

The Cookers:

Billy Harper: tenor sax

Eddie Henderson: trumpet

David Weiss: trumpet

Donald Harrison: alto sax

George Cables: piano

Cecil McBee: bass

Billy Hart: drums

Produced by David Weiss

Executive Producer: Darrel Sheinman 

Recorded at Van Gelder Recording Studio by Maureen Sickler

Mixed by Katherine Miller

Mastered and cut at Gearbox Studio by Caspar Sutton-Jones and Darrel Sheinman

Mastered using all-valve Decca equalisation and Telefunken limiters. Lacquer discs cut on a Haeco Scully lathe with Westrex RA1700 series amps, Westrex 3DIIA cutting head. Monitored on Audio Note equipment

Archival set of saxophonist Alan Wakeman's BBC sessions due in August

Alan Wakeman – who notably recorded with Graham Collier & Mike Westbrook – has his '69 and '79 BBC sessions released.

Here's the scoop from Gearbox Records...

The Octet Broadcasts comprises two separate recordings from 1969 and 1979 respectively, originally made for BBC radio by British composer/saxophonist Alan Wakeman which is being released commercially for the first time. The album will be available via Gearbox Records as a double LP vinyl set, 2 CD, and digital on August 21st. 

“The next young generation of British jazz” has been applied many times to London’s current jazz scene, but this headline from Melody Maker was also used to describe Alan Wakeman and his band back in 1970. And if a prototype for Binker and Moses' viscerally energetic, semi-free sound is sought, you would be hard pressed to find a closer relative than the second part of climactic Disc 1 highlight 'Dreams'. 

The Octet Broadcasts is made up of two BBC sessions from 1969 and 1979 respectively. Taken and mastered from the original analogue tapes by Gearbox, the album offers a snapshot of a time when British jazz was at another high, featuring such names as John Taylor, Alan Skidmore, Paul Lytton, and Art Themen, who themselves were contemporaries of and collaborated with the likes of Evan Parker, Michael Garrick, Ian Carr, and Roscoe Mitchell. 

Wakeman, influenced by Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus and mentored by Mike Westbrook, was composing singular, large ensemble pieces at a time when jazz had long left the limelight and rock was in the foreground. His brand of warm, pastoral jazz, reminiscent of brass bands and traditional chorales whilst also fit to bursting with free improvisation and dramatic motifs, is representative of a magical period in British jazz which deserves to be unearthed and heard again.

An extract from the liner notes: 

Broadly speaking,  it was an exciting time for the performing arts in the late 60s and 70s, when many different disciplines and styles intermingled happily in theatre, rock, classical music, film and jazz. Concerts would become events, with visual projections, costumes and more interactive elements for audiences to appreciate.

 A distinctive, freer style of jazz was emerging in Europe and I became hugely influenced during my sixth form years by being exposed to the thoughts and music and musicians associated with Mike Westbrook when he came to teach art at my school (an experience that must have put him off teaching for life)... I should add that I wrote all the music for both dates with the particular musicians who took part in mind: the Ellington concept of the musicians making the music. - Alan Wakeman

Check out the trailer clip followed by the track listing below. 

Alan Wakeman – The Octet Broadcasts 1969 and 1979 (Gearbox)

A1 Dreams

A2 Forever

B1 Merry-Go-Round

C1 Charles Fox Introduction

C2 Chaturanga

C3 Manhattan Variation 

D1 Vienna

D2 Robatsch Defense

D3 Kingside Breakthrough

D4 Charles Fox Conclusion

1969 (Introduced by Brian Priestley)

Alan Wakeman - tenor sax, clarinet

Alan Skidmore - tenor sax, flute, two gongs

Mike Osborne - alto sax, clarinet, tambourine

Paul Rutherford - trombone, gong

Paul Nieman - trombone, gong

John Taylor - piano, castanets

Lindsay Cooper - bass, sleigh bells

Paul Lytton - drums

1979 (Introduced by Charles Fox)

Alan Wakeman - tenor sax, soprano sax

Alan Skidmore - tenor sax

Art Themen - tenor sax

Henry Lowther - trumpet 

Paul Rutherford - trombone 

Gordon Beck - piano

Chris Lawrence - bass

Nigel Morris - drums

Nucleus meets Leon Thomas at Montreux '70

The previously unreleased live pairing of Nucleus and Leon Thomas is out now on Gearbox.

Gearbox recently announced the first official release of the Montreux Jazz Festival concert featuring trumpeter Ian Carr’s pioneering Nucleus performing with US vocalist Leon Thomas on a set of Thomas’ repertoire recorded in June 1970. According to Carr, the collaboration with Thomas is a combination of the “rock thing...with the roots of the music.” Check out the track "Echoes" below featuring an oboe solo from Karl Jenkins. The analog mastered double vinyl version of Nucleus with Leon Thomas: Live 1970 (with MP3 download) is available from Gearbox Records.

Track Listing: The Creator Has a Master Plan; Echoes; Damn ‘Nam (Ain’t Going to Viet Nam); One; Chains of Love; The Journey

Personnel: Leon Thomas - vocals, Ian Carr - trumpet & flugelhorn, Karl Jenkins - oboe & piano, Brian Smith - soprano & tenor sax, flute Chris Spedding - guitar, Jeff Clyne - bass, John Marshall - drums.

Joe Harriott & Tubby Hayes: Two Aces

Saxophone blasting beacons of British jazz, alto ace Joe Harriott and tenor titan Tubby Hayes recorded far too few studio sessions as leaders in their tragically short lives – both of which  coincidentally ended in 1973 with Harriott dying of cancer at 44 and Hayes five months later while undergoing heart surgery at just 38 – so the recent surfacing of brilliant live recordings by each at their peak from the BBC's Jazz For Moderns transcription series is cause for celebration.
When Harriott turned up at St. Hilda's Studios in Maida Vaile back in 1962, it was in the company of his classic quintet with Shake Keane (trumpet, flugelhorn), Coleridge Goode (bass), Pat Smythe (piano) and replacing Phil Seaman, the great Bobby Orr (the drummer, not the celebrated Bruins defenceman) who had recorded the fantastic Abstract album a few months earlier which would deservedly receive a glowing five-star review in Down Beat from my pal Harvey Pekar, the first-ever British jazz recording to be so honoured.

As Pekar astutely noted, there were significant conceptual differences between Harriott's "free form" approach and that of Ornette Coleman, the most obvious being that Harriott was pursuing a true group improvisation where each member was playing off the others whereas Coleman was still tethered to the steady pulse of a bebop-style rhythm section. And that comes across on the Joe Harriott Quintet's Jazz For Moderns (Gearbox) LP, primarily with the tracks Pictures and Tonal, the two Harriott compositions drawn from Abstract, which are nicely contrasted by the inclusion of their takes of Dizzy Reece hard bop thrillers Shepherd's Serenade (from 1958's Blues In Trinity) and Variations on Monk (from 1959's Star Bright).
Since Harriott's other important recordings from the period, 1963's Movement and 1964's High Spirits along with 1969's Hum Dono (a stellar collaboration with late Goan guitar great Amancio D'Silva) remain frustratingly out of print, Gearbox's limited-run 180 gram vinyl edition of the Jazz For Moderns set is all the more welcome.
Likewise with their simultaneously released Tubby Hayes Band Jazz For Moderns LP finds the hugely talented saxophonist/vibraphonist showing off his compositional chops at St. Hilda's in the company of trumpeters Jimmy Deuchar, Bobby Pratt and Eddie Blair, trombonists Keith Christie and Ken Wray, Alan Civil on French horn, alto saxophonist Johnny Scott, tenor saxophonists Bob Efford and Vic Ash, baritone saxophonist Harry Klein, David Snell on harp, pianist Gordon Beck, bassist Freddy Logan and drummer Allan Ganley.
Serious Tubbs-ophiles will note that that it's the exact same line-up which accompanied Hayes for the BBC Jazz Session set two months prior and they're also playing the same five-song program: Take You're Partners For The Blues, Souriya, Down In The Village, Early Morning Afterthoughts and the gentle Horace Silver ballad Peace (off 1959's Blowin' The Blues Away).

However the performance isn't at all a note-for-note recreation, more like a deeper exploration of now familiar themes which should become clear when you hear the way Hayes gets into his soulful ballad Souriya at the end of the first side. The jazz dance crowd will have their interest piqued by the inclusion of Down In The Village and this swinging version of the Hayes vibes feature doesn't disappoint. The classy sleeve art in period-appropriate designs and informed liner notes (Simon Spillett, who's currently working on a Tubby Hayes biography tentatively titled The Long Shadow Of The Little Giant, contributes a thoughtful and well-researched essay to the Hayes LP) make for better than average reissue packages but evidently Gearbox pressed up only 500 copies of each title on vinyl so it might be wise to visit Dusty Groove (www.dustygroove.com) on the double before they're gone for good. Mind you, they're not cheap but worth every penny.
For further reading on Joe Harriott, check out Alan Robertson's excellent biography Joe Harriott: Fire In His Soul (Northway Books) from 2003 and the Coleridge Goode reminiscence Bass Lines: A Life In Jazz also published by Northway Books in 2002.

Links
Gearbox Records http://gearboxrecords.com
Simon Spillett on Tubby Hayes http://www.jazzscript.co.uk/extra/art.hayes.html
Northway Books http://www.northwaybooks.net/