Chris Searle
978-1-0683644-2-6
JAZZ IN BRITAIN
If you have read “Talking The Groove” Chris Searle’s previous book you will know what to expect in the 491 pages.. The list of Contents also serves as a kind of index.
Searle likes to give his political views, and there is nothing wrong with that. Most of the audience for the book will agree with him. There is a great deal of preaching to the converted.
This is a book to refer to. Most of the entries are less than a page and it is possible that many readers will encounter entries about musicians that they know little about. Many of the comments in the book were written in 2025 so there is a chance to experience the shock of the new.
There are unexpected pleasures: the description of Carla Bley’s playing: “Her tunes are replete with monkian starts, stop, pauses, sudden bursts of notes, quizzical interludes and lingering codas, each performance a rhapsody of the unexpected hinged with the defiant, exactly replicating her long jazz life. Elegiac and wistful too” The chapter on Maria Schneider and her album “The Thompson Fields” is sensitive and penetrating and illuminating..Stan Tracey is celebrated as Searle reviews many of the CDs Tracey recorded with Ronnie Scotts with Rollins, Witherspoon, Griffin and Kirk.
Searle’s range is wide, he appreciates the piano playing of BusterWilson who worked with Kid Ory. Chris first encountered his playing when he bought an EP in Romford in 1959.
Searle frequents London clubs The Vortex club in Dalston is a place that Searles likes to visit. He calls it “a blessed venue”. In his review of an Evan Parker session with Barry Guy and Paul LyttonSearle compares the live session with listening to resulting record some time later at home.The Pizza Express in Dean Street played host to Jason Moran and Searle was there to observe and review Moran’s playing accompanied by a tape of Moran’s grandparents.Lou Donaldson and Lonnie Smith at the the Jazz Cafe sings and plays the blues with Searle comparing Donaldson to Charlie Parker. Evenings at Ronnie Scott’s are described when the Mingus band was in residence. Mingus music and ideas are described with relish by Searle,. Mingus, of course, wrote music that teemed with social comment.. There is a description of the Cafe Oto where the Sun Ra Arkestra touched down in 2015.
The avantgarde excites the sympathy of Searle., although it is true to say that he does not compartmentalise jazz.. He is proud to proclaim he can listen to an avant garde player one day and Monty Sunshine the next. There are accounts of the playing of Larry Stabbins. An album and a live performance by Peter Brotzmann at Cafe Oto in 2023 is celebrated.
Charlie Haden was a prime subject for Searle. His review of the The Ballad of the Fallen record by Haden and the Liberation Music Orchestra brings out the revolutionary message of the music in the orchestrations by Carla Bley.
Searle likes to bring in family memories to his writings. A review of an Evan Parker album sets off memories of a ffamily trip tp the Isle of Sheppey where his father bought drinks and orange juice. In the same review, Searle brings in Coleman Hawkins, Louis Moholo – Moholo neither who played on Evan Parker’s album!
Chris McGregor, the Brotherhood of Breath and the South African diaspora brings out the passion, the cry against injustice. Searle sketches out the history of the exiled musicians, their lives in London and elsewhere and the incorporation of so many free musicians from the Lonfon scene. Finally, he describes the memorial album (Ixesha) that was recorded by all those who wanted to remember the Brotherhood.
This is a great book that is fervently written , with love, deep knowledge and the feeling that jazz has much to teach a troubled world. I can’t think of a writer on jazz who has the range of references that you find in these pages.
