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Harry Beckett

West Indian Harry Beckett, born in Barbados, brought his own highly personal approaches to the trumpet to the cultural stew of the mid- to late 1960s.

Such is the distinctiveness of Beckett's playing that it continues to be the musical equivalent of DNA, and the elements of it were in place by the time he gained a significant break on record in the band of bass player and composer Graham Collier. Down Another Road, recorded in March of 1969, finds Beckett playing flugelhorn exclusively. August 1970 both Beckett and Evans were working with guitarist Ray Russell on his Rites And Rituals album.

As the 1970s progressed the British jazz scene maintained creative momentum. Elton Dean's band Ninesense, in which Beckett replaced the South African Mongezi Feza, who sadly died prematurely, made a session for BBC Radio 3 in March of 1978. Here Beckett is right at home in a band made up of players who'd all served apprenticeships on the scene, and contributed much to the growing depth of British jazz at a time when the commercial fortunes of the music were not at their highest.

Such has been the breadth of Beckett's musical interests, from post-bop to free improvisation, that finding him working in 2000 with the London Improvisers Orchestra is symptomatic of his musical philosophy. On the orchestral improvisation Proceeding 3 his trumpet is but one voice in a democratic ensemble where, if anything, the very notion of the virtuoso soloist, motivated solely by the opportunity for ever greater technical display, is negated.

When Chris McGregor went to Nigeria to immerse himself in West African music. He wound up using two Ghanaian musicians and one Nigerian drummer on the soundtrack, which helped bring McGregor to the attention of Arts Council of Great Britain. The council provided a grant to McGregor that allowed him to put together a large band, the Brotherhood of Breath. The group signed with RCA subsidiary Neon Records. Its roster included trumpet player Harry Beckett.

Brotherhood was the last studio release by the group, which disbanded in 1974 when McGregor moved to Aquitaine, France. They re-formed occasionally through the late 1970s and 1980s for festivals and one-night shows. In 1989, the Brotherhood of Breath toured with avant-garde jazz musicians Archie Shepp, and the group laid plans for a United States tour the following year. That tour was cancelled after McGregor was diagnosed with cancer.

Brotherhood of Breath had earned a reputation as a springboard for jazz talent; Skidmore and Harry Beckett went on to become successful solo artists and bandleaders on their own.

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Album Review

Graham Collier: Down Another Road @ Stockholm Jazz Days ’69

Read "Down Another Road @ Stockholm Jazz Days ’69" reviewed by Chris May


In 1969, when the composer and bassist Graham Collier took his sextet to Stockholm Jazz Days to give a live performance of their album Down Another Road (Fontana, 1969), the presence of a British band onstage at a European jazz festival was exceptional. The idea that British musicians would one day have their names on the marquee at US festivals, as Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming and Nubya Garcia have in the 2020s, would have been regarded as ...

13
Album Review

Mike Gibbs: Revisiting Tanglewood 63: The Early Tapes

Read "Revisiting Tanglewood 63: The Early Tapes" reviewed by Chris May


With British jazz in 2021 in better shape than ever before, record companies are being emboldened to revisit their tape libraries and reissue historic but long deleted albums. At the same time, recently formed specialist labels such as Jazz In Britain are making available club and radio broadcast recordings which have never been released before. The Rhodesian-born, Berklee-schooled orchestral-jazz composer Michael Gibbs, a truly iconic figure who continues to inspire young British musicians, is receiving attention on both fronts.

14
Album Review

Ian Carr: Solar Session

Read "Solar Session" reviewed by Chris May


One of the first European jazz bandleaders to embrace synthesizers, bass guitars and other electric instruments, trumpeter, composer and author Ian Carr forged a singularly British style of jazz-rock with his band Nucleus, which he formed in 1969 and with which he recorded a dozen albums through the 1970s. Carr had previously paid extensive dues in acoustic jazz, most notably as co-leader with saxophonist Don Rendell of the highly regarded, culturally inclusive Rendell-Carr Quintet from 1964 to 1969.

4
Album Review

Harry Beckett: Joy Unlimited

Read "Joy Unlimited" reviewed by Chris May


The Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett moved to Britain when he was 19. His first known recording session came in 1961 alongside Charles Mingus. This happened during the London sessions for the Tubby Hayes album All Night Long (Fontana, 1962), which was chronicled in the 2020 All About Jazz article Jazz & Film: An Alternative Top 20 Soundtrack Albums. To debut with Mingus was an auspicious beginning and Beckett never looked back. Seemingly loved by everyone who met ...

3
Album Review

Harry Beckett: Still Happy

Read "Still Happy" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay


Barbados-born Harry Beckett was known across the jazz world, respected as a major player on the UK scene for many years, winning the Melody Maker Trumpeter of the Year award in 1972 and recording or performing with a host of musicians including Louis Moholo, John Dankworth and John Surman. Like many jazz players he was in demand as a session player across genres--he's on Jack Bruce's magnificent Songs For A Tailor (Polydor, 1969), as well as albums by The Faces, ...

330
Album Review

Harry Beckett: Warm Smiles / Themes For Fega.

Read "Warm Smiles / Themes For Fega." reviewed by Hrayr Attarian


Although Europe has produced many an accomplished and innovative jazz musician, a great number of ultra-talented ones remain in obscurity. Vocalion puts the spotlight on one such forgotten genius, British trumpeter Harry Beckett. The double CD combines the latter two of his three sessions for RCA; which were not only his debut recordings as a leader but also remain the most critically acclaimed of all his work. Each CD is, in fact, a straight reissue of each album: 1971's Warm ...

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Roads Less Travelled

Harry Beckett: Wide Open Roads

Read "Harry Beckett: Wide Open Roads" reviewed by Nic Jones


As discussed in the last article in this series, the dissemination of jazz on record, together with the abilities of musicians from outside of the USA, ensured that the jazz language was relatively quickly assimilated on a large scale. So far as the British jazz scene was concerned, the Jamaican trumpeter Dizzy Reece, born January 5, 1931, was making an impact by the mid-1950s, and just over a decade later both the Canadian Kenny Wheeler and Reece's fellow West Indian ...

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296

Obituary

RIP Harry Beckett (1935-2010)

RIP Harry Beckett (1935-2010)

Source: LondonJazz by Sebastian Scotney

The much-admired trumpeter and flugelhorn player Harry Beckett died this afternoon after a stroke on Tuesday. His last gig was Big Band Britannia with Guy Barker's orchestra last month. The roll-call of bands he was in makes him a central figure of the 60s/70s British scene: Ian Carr's Nucleus, the Brotherhood of Breath and The Dedication Orchestra, London Jazz Composers Orchestra, John Surman, Octet Django Bates Ronnie Scott's Quintet, Kathy Stobart, Charlie Watts, Stan Tracey's Big Band and Octet; Elton ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Down Another Road @...

My Only Desire Records
2023

buy

Solar Session

Jazz In Britain
2021

buy

Revisiting Tanglewood...

Jazz In Britain
2021

buy

Joy Unlimited

Cadillac Records
2020

buy

Still Happy

My Only Desire Records
2016

buy

The Modern Sound of...

Self Produced
2009

buy

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