HARRY BECKETT'S JOY UNLIMITED - Memories Of Bacares

 

(OG 800)

Track listing: The Dew At Dawn/Dreams Come And Go/Crystals/Can't Think About Now

Harry Beckett (trumpet and flügelhorn), Ray Russell (guitar), Brian Miller (electric piano), Daryl Runswick (bass guitar), Robin Jones (percussion). John Webb (drums).

Recorded at "a Hackney Jazz date," The Sussex, 107 Culford Road, London N1, on 25 November 1975. Released: 1976. Produced by Keith Beal and Harry Beckett. Cover design: Stephen Taylor and Liz Naylor.

Harry Beckett was, along with Kenny Wheeler, one of the most respected and long-serving trumpeters on the British and European jazz scenes. Both were expatriates who came to Britain in the fifties and made their decisive mark. Whereas Wheeler was shy and self-deprecating almost to a fault, Beckett was modest but welcoming, good-humoured, inquisitive and open-minded. His presence always lifted the spirits at a performance or recording which, along with his undoubted technical facility and one of the most recognisable tones and voices of any trumpet player (memorably likened by John Fordham to "an infectious giggle"), meant that he was in demand for well over half a century in all kinds of musical surroundings, from pop to free improvisation and from bebop to reggae and dub. He must surely have been the only musician to have worked with Charles Mingus, Donovan and Jah Wobble.

That modesty also meant that Beckett worked as a bandleader only very intermittently. Joy Unlimited arose from the title of a 1975 album which, though initially credited to Beckett alone, featured the same instrumentation, and many of the same musicians, as the first "Joy Unlimited" album proper (although Robin Jones and John Webb replaced Martin David and Nigel Morris). The aim of this band, as Beckett wrote in his liner note to Memories Of Bacares, was to play "joyful music using styles of jazz rock and Latin American rhythms and voicings."

 

The result was probably the most straight-ahead album Ogun had yet released, although the fact that it was a live recording meant that the musicians were able to stretch out a little more than they had done on the 1975 studio disc - and the fact that it came out on Ogun should have alerted listeners to remain on their toes and not get too comfortable. I am imagining (since I was too young and too far away at the time to know any better) that Hackney Jazz was one of those Jazz Centre Society-type catchall holdings for various sponsored club nights, but the Sussex (which today trades as the Scott Head) was an imposing pub in the de Beauvoir Town no-man's-land somewhere between Islington and Dalston.

 

It is a tribute to Beckett's band that at no point during this album are we led to think that we are in a pub around the corner from Kenneth Griffith's Michael Collins House gaff on Englefield Road, but rather on a beach perhaps as distant and unreachable as the one painted on the album's cover. Since Beckett hailed from Barbados, I anticipated that "Bacares" referred to a beach there, but it is geographically likelier that it had Barcarès in mind - there is a Bacares, but it is an inland village in Andalucia; still, Beckett was a very well-travelled man.

The trumpeter was already into his fifties when this music was recorded, hence the music on Bacares feels no need to "prove" anything. Instead, there are few pieces of mid-seventies jazz, or Latin jazz, or jazz-rock, or fusion, or call it what you will, as enveloping and reassuring as "The Dew At Dawn," a melody so simple but gorgeous that it was covered by one of the later editions of Soft Machine. This music is peaceful but we are not really allowed to forget that the peace has come at a price. Everyone is restrained and delicate; the central pulse is slow, mellow and appropriately oceanic, with only Daryl Runswick's bass solo seeking to probe outside that cocoon. If this had been something by Freddie Hubbard on CTI, hipsters and tastemakers would be singing its praises.

Things speed up with "Dreams Come And Go," a groove so solidly infectious that it would be fair to call Prince's "I Would Die 4 U" a distant relative. One immediately feels the ebullience and, yes, joy that the band are radiating. Brian Miller is already experimenting with his Fender Rhodes comping while Runswick rips out chunky bass chords. Beckett is then alone with just drums and percussion powering him along, before Ray Russell's guitar slowly creeps out of the background to launch his own excitable solo, with Miller immediately falling in behind him (after already having gone semi-outside with his playing). Percussion becomes looser and Runswick slowly slips out of time and melody constraints behind Russell. Robin Jones then gets a solo before Beckett returns just in time for a free coda. As the percussive tempo briefly resumes, the free mêlée continues above before reaching a final, high unison which is answered by whoops from the Sussex's patrons. Actually, the above description doesn't begin to do justice to this glorious, freewheeling performance which if anything is borne out of absolute confidence and interdependence - the band just sound palpably like they're having a fantastic time working, playing and pushing their own boundaries together.

"Chrystals," which opens side two, is the album's big setpiece. Miller begins unaccompanied and the minor key waltz theme is then stated by the band. As with "The Dew At Dawn," Beckett's solo is at times quite Milesean, but this is not the 1975 Miles of Dark Magus, and his easy grace perhaps won over some souls who found Davis' more recent (at the time) labyrinths less than penetrable. Meanwhile Miller and (more subtly) Runswick are behind Beckett all the way. The music slowly becomes more populated, and again Russell comes out of the shadows (literally; his guitar here sometimes recalls the work of Hank Marvin). The responses become more staccato and the overall music more agitated - almost Can-like at times - before returning to the basic waltz tempo (although I detect an edit to Beckett's solo). Miller takes up the reins for an inventive solo while the rest of the band steadily turn up their volume behind him, like a pregnant thunderstorm ready to break. Miller's chords and arpeggios strive higher and higher before he plunges back down to the other end of his keyboard.

Then Ray Russell gets his big solo. The nearest thing to a front-line partner to Beckett in this band - although all six players are equals, and it is a measure of the trumpeter's modesty and generosity that for a large part of this record he stands back and lets his colleagues have their say - Russell had by this point reined back slightly from the "British Sonny Sharrock" tag which some had applied to his more avant-garde playing, earlier in the seventies (e.g. Live At The I.CA., which also involved Beckett, or Bill Fay's Time Of The Last Persecution) but remained an elemental guitarist, and his ecstatic solo on "Crystals" is practically all-out rock. The band enthusiastically ascend towards a crescendo, before skilfully alternating between freeform and 3/4; a final climax also appears to have been edited prior to a final thematic statement. Miller, Runswick and Jones together take the piece out, the pianist signing off with an upstroke question mark - well, what did you think of that?

The closing "Can't Think About Now" is a relatively straightforward jazz-rock groove, in the manner of a cop show theme. Miller again plays a compelling solo - it really is a mystery why he isn't feted as a major talent; he never settles for the obvious gestures and moves the music forward in a guess-what-note-I'm-going-to-play-next fashion. There's another fierce guitar solo from Russell before the band settles down for Beckett's final say (to which Russell and, more cannily, Runswick immediately respond, Russell even echoing the trumpeter's musical flurries back at him). The whole band work the tension up again before returning to the theme, at which point the music fades out.

There is never any doubt while listening to Memories Of Bacares that it represents the work of a fully integrated band of musicians who know and are thoroughly comfortable with each other. These are, for the most part, highly respected players as opposed to "stars" as such. However, it remains one of the happiest and most approachable albums Ogun have put out, and I think would be revered as something of a classic were younger listeners made aware of it. Its joys are, indeed, unlimited.

Current availability: The album has yet to be reissued, although the original Joy Unlimited album, recorded for Ogun's sister label Cadillac, was re-released in 2022 to much acclaim, so who knows - maybe a twofer (with OG 020) might be forthcoming? In the meantime it can be listened to here on YouTube.