Mike Westbrook: Celebration (1967) Deram

Selection:  Pastoral – Awakening (Westbrook/ Surman) 13:12

.  .  . 

Tracklist:

A1. Pastoral 02:41
A2. Awakening 10:31
A3. Parade 07:56
A4. Echoes and Heroics 00:17
B1. A Greeting 05:40
B2. Image 06:38
B3. Dirge 04:14
B4. Portrait 07:32

First two tracks merge together, lacking a track-break, so the selection is both Pastoral and Awakening..

Artists

Mike Osborne, alto saxophone; Bernie Living, alto saxophone, flute; John Surman, baritone saxophone, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet; Harry Miller, bass; Tom Bennelick, french horn; Mike Westbrook, piano; Dave Chambers, tenor saxophone, Clarinet; Malcolm Griffiths, trombone; Dave Holdsworth, trumpet, flugelhorn; George Smith, tuba; Dave Perrottet, valve trombone; Alan Jackson, drums; recorded 29th July and 5th August 1967,  John Surman/ Mike Westbrook, compositions; Eddie Kramer, producer and engineer, Graham Keen, photography; Alan Jackson, cover design; liner notes, the notable jazz writer and experimental jazz promoter, Victor Schonfield (sadly passed away May 2022)

Producer/ engineer Eddie Kramer lists on his credits Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced, Axis Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland, Traffic’s Mr Fantasy, then goes on to add Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, and just about everyone in the the British Rock Hall of Fame. Westbrook looks like the odd man out with a jazz concert band, an acoustic 12-tet, no 300-watt Marshal stacks or amplified instruments.  Trust The Tracking-Force, Luke.

Bass player Harry Miller: native of Capetown, South Africa, joined Manfred Mann, played in Brotherhood of Breath, was a member of Keith Tippett’s big band Centipede, co-founded Ogun Records, moved eventually to Holland, where he sadly died in a car accident in 1983. 

Music

Celebration jazz orchestra composition, melodies, modes and tempo dictated by Westbrook and Surman, but with ample freedom in the solo passages. It is not a swing-band, or a big-band power-outing, or a stimulus-package ensemble with three of everything. It is somewhere between Gil Evans and George Russell, with a touch of Mingus, and a smidgin of  Ellington and (runs out of reference points) and,. . .  and none of these.

The solo voices are the cream of British  jazz instrumentalists of the late Sixties – John Surman,  Mike Osborne, Malcolm Griffiths, Dave Holdsworth.  Despite its origin in the political/social cauldron of 1967 it is not the voice of “protest” left to folksingers, it is a celebration of music, with an occasional digression into the meme of conflict – Westbrook’s pieces often make reference to “war” by way of a musical metaphor, an instrument-battlefield, cacophony. 

The construction is a coat of many colours, melodic passages, repeating themes, modal breakouts which underscore solo improvisation floating on air, and artists allowed out of the rhythm section pen for a brief bass or drum solo. To coin a cliché, it’s good stuff and sounds great! (Hoffmen™)

Vinyl: Decca Deram SML 1013 Stereo original

Another piece of rock-solid engineering from Decca, quality recording, mixing, mastering and pressing . Decca integrate the ensemble and the voices of the soloists organically inter-twined, just lie back and let it roll over you. 

Deram is short for Deramic Sound, or in full, Decca Panoramic Sound, a Decca engineering development in the later 60s to exploit multi-track recorders, taking a further step beyond early left-right-centre stereo. Decca was then, at heart, a sound engineering company: the engineer’s core belief being that everything can be improved, by engineers, of course. Sadly, this was later replaced by the belief that everything can be made more cheaply, and if it sounds worse, they’ll never notice, a different sort of progress.

Instead of overdubbing and mixing four individual mono tracks from a four-track recorder, Decca engineers used two four-track machines to record and layer multiple two-channel stereo recordings, permitting instruments to be placed in any position within the stereo field. Panoramic Sound resulted in a more complex but natural spread of instruments, an image which is easier for the listener to reconstruct than artificial left-right-centre. You can hear it strongly at work in Celebration, a perfect vehicle for Westbrook’s twelve piece Concert Band.

For a less kind take on Decca and Deram, from the pages of Record Collector magazine. In the Garden Of Deram.  RC represent a different kind of collector to LJC, and has a recurrent theme about record companies being “run by people (old men)  who don’t know what’s going on“.  It also has a less fastidious take on accuracy:

“Deram was named after Decca Ceramic, a defunct brand of turntable pick-up”

Whichever origin of name you prefer, Decca will always be known as the label who in 1962 turned down The Beatles (“guitar groups are on their way out’) But two years later still signed The Rolling Stones. Seems guitar groups made an unexpected comeback.

For the benefit of Record Collector readers, Decca (UK) has had a woman as President of Decca Records Group since 2017, Rebecca Allen. She came up the classical route, but is also responsible for Decca’s current jazz output (umm, or the lack of). 

Collector’s Corner

Mid-September, mark your calendar, John is back: 

Tone Poet continues to lead the way, mono AND stereo edition complete with alternate takes, on vinyl, pulling ahead of The Evil Silver Disc. You almost feel sorry for the CD. (I said “almost”)

1577 was recorded September 15, 1957, very early days in Van Gelder two track recording, never intended for stereo. Mono is the edition of choice, as Rudy intended, and what Coltrane heard during playback in the studio.

Joe Harley and Kevin Gray discuss the production here (Youtube) 37 minutes in, Rudy compressing and hotter, fascinating

LJC 

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