Sold Date: February 15, 2019
Start Date: May 22, 2017
Final Price: $22.00 (USD)
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Not since the days of the teenaged Tubby Hayes had the UK jazz scene witnessed a young musician with so frighteningly advanced a talent as Dick Morrissey. By 1961, aged twenty, he had recorded his début album It’s Morrissey, Man! for Fontana and he soon found himself a popular draw in London’s club land. Recordings for radio broadcast ensured the band’s message reached a wider audience. Taped for the series “Jazz For Moderns”, the previously unreleased sessions heard on this new album are especially valuable. Not only do they plug a gap in the Morrissey discography – they are thought to have been recorded in early 1964 - but because, through Jackie Dougan’s indisposition due to tonsillitis, Bill Eyden is also featured, making this the first recorded example of the regular line-up of the later 1966/67 Dick Morrissey Quartet. If Morrissey’s début album showed him to be a logical successor to Hayes, then these follow-up sessions provide a much stronger case for the younger man’s own, if anything even more soulful, individuality. Throughout this record, there is a wonderful, almost tangible, sense of a band enjoying its work, something which in the stone-faced world of British modern jazz wasn’t always apparent. This infectious enthusiasm stemmed directly from the leader - “always jumping from foot to foot, urging his side-men on with whoops of glee” as Jazz Journal put it. Classic British modern jazz albums are rare beasts, owing to all sorts of factors, many of which are nothing whatsoever to do with those performing on them. This new release, capturing the era in which London produced its own take on the jazz trends of the day, is a valuable addition to that select catalogue. Not only does it showcase four of the UK’s best bop-apprenticed jazz talents in top form, all of them alas long gone, it provides moods and grooves that remain strong enough to catch a new generation of listeners.  

Simon Spillett. 

SIDE ONE 1. Down Home (Newborn) 2. Love For Sale (Porter) 3. I Married An Angel (take one) (Rodgers/Hart) 4. I Married An Angel (take two) (Rodgers/Hart) 5. Landslide (Land) 6. Introductions 

SIDE TWO 1. Down Home (Newborn) 2. Minor Incident (South) 3. Gypsy (Rose) 4. Bang (take one) (Reece) 5. Bang (take two) (Reece) 6. Down Home (Newborn) 7. Introductions