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Coleridge Goode

Coleridge George Emerson Goode is a former British Jamaican-born jazz bassist most noteworthy for his long collaboration with alto saxophonist Joe Harriott. Goode was a key figure in Harriott's innovatory jazz quintet throughout its eight-year existence as a regular unit (1958–65). Goode was also an important contributor to Harriott's later pioneer fusions of jazz and Indian music. Goode was born in Kingston, Jamaica. His father was a choirmaster and organist who promoted classical choral music in Jamaica and his mother sang in the choir. As Goode recalls: "My name comes from my father putting on a performance of Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast as a tribute to him.... I was born a year after." Goode came to Britain in 1934 as a 19-year-old student at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow (later the University of Strathclyde), and then went on to read for a degree in engineering at Glasgow University. He was already proficient as an amateur classical violinist but turned to jazz and took up the bass after hearing the music of such stars as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Louis Jordan. Abandoning his plans to return to Jamaica to work as an engineer, Goode decided to embark upon a musical career. His primary early influences as a bassist have been Walter Page, Slam Stewart and Jimmy Blanton. Moving to London in 1942, Goode subsequently worked with Johnny Claes, Eric Winstone, Lauderic Caton and Dick Katz, became a founder member of the Ray Ellington Quartet and recorded with Django Reinhardt in 1946. Later Goode played in Tito Burns' sextet and led his own group. before being invited to join Harriott's new band in 1958. During the 1960s and 1970s Goode worked extensively with pianist/composer Michael Garrick. Goode was still performing in the house band at Laurie Morgan's Sunday jam sessions at the King's Head in Crouch End into his nineties. One of the finest jazz bassists who has worked in Europe, Goode is an important link to a proud heritage of Caribbean contributions to the music. His achievements through a long career have been an important inspiration for some leading contemporary black British jazz musicians. In 2002, his autobiography Bass Lines: A Life in Jazz, co-authored with his friend, the academic and jazz writer Roger Cotterrell, not only told his own story but provided poignant and vivid memories of the brilliant and tragic Harriott and of the birth of free form jazz in Britain.

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Album Review

Joe Harriott: Free Form & Abstract Revisited

Read "Free Form & Abstract Revisited" reviewed by Stefano Merighi


La serie “revisited" della ezz-thetics, prodotta da Werner Uehlinger, ha raggiunto ormai un cospicuo numero di CD, tale da costituire un effettivo e riassuntivo corpo sonoro, a disposizione per ri-sistematizzare la storia del jazz d'avanguardia degli anni Sessanta del secolo scorso. Certe edizioni però sono più importanti di altre, nel senso che meritavano sul serio una ristampa (molti titoli invece continuano ad esseere facilmente reperibili nelle edizioni originali...). È il caso di queste due opere del sassofonista Joe ...

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Album Review

Joe Harriott: Swings High

Read "Swings High" reviewed by Chris May


Like many players who are primarily thought of as “experimental" and/or “free form"—and virtually all of the best of them--the Jamaican-born, later London-based alto saxophonist Joe Harriott was also a master of straight four/four jazz and Great American Songbook balladry. Yet in 2022, Harriott (1928-1973) is almost exclusively remembered either for his adventures in Indo-jazz fusion with the violinist John Mayer and, separately, guitarist Amancio D'Silva, or his own harmolodic-esque, but not Ornette Coleman-beholden, albums such as Free Form (Jazzland, ...

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Album Review

Joe Harriott: Free Form & Abstract Revisited

Read "Free Form & Abstract Revisited" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Call it partisanship or maybe musical chauvinism, but North American audiences have traditionally had little appreciation for jazz musicians from the United Kingdom or, for that matter, Europe. Rewind back to 1961, and explain why Americans were not hip to the Joe Harriott Quintet? His two releases, Free Form, released in 1961, and Abstract, in 1963, if released by an American artist would have been held in the same regard as the music of Sonny Rollins or Ornette Coleman. That ...

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Album Review

Joe Harriott Quintet: Free Form & Abstract Revisited

Read "Free Form & Abstract Revisited" reviewed by Chris May


A tiny island, Jamaica has punched far above its weight musically. Dub and reggae are the primary manifestations, but the island has also produced a disproportionately large number of notable jazz musicians, many of whom left during the late 1940s and 1950s to relocate to Britain, Jamaica's so-called mother country during the colonial era. Alto saxophonist Joe Harriott moved to London in 1951. Other early arrivals included flautist Harold McNair, tenor saxophonist Wilton Gaynair, trumpeters Dizzy Reece and Eddie Thornton, ...

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Interview

Coleridge Goode: 100 Not Out!

Read "Coleridge Goode: 100 Not Out!" reviewed by Duncan Heining


To celebrate the 100th birthday of Jamaican-born bassist Coleridge Goode, All About Jazz publishes Duncan Heining's 2012 interview with Goode. A remarkable man and musician, the bassist connects aspects of British jazz from the 1930s through the war years and on through the fifties, sixties and seventies. He played with Caribbean-born and black British jazz pioneers like guitarists Lauderic Caton and Laurie Deniz, with violinist Stéphane Grappelli and bandleaders Tito Burns and Johnny Claes. His most significant and innovative work ...

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