Springboard – Polydor special 545 007, 33 1/3 rpm (UK) 1966

 

Rare British LP

 

This music is spectacular! This LP is spectacular! This cover is spectacular!

Recorded in 1966… this music is another musical BOMB, forseeing the free improvised music to come only years later.

The music is very much based in a Free Jazz / Ornette Coleman – tradition… looking for new ways, new paths to follow… and most of all creating its own musical language.

Together with the more experimental records of Joe Harriott and the SME´s Challenge  LP on Eyemark, this is a music that really defines the borderline between a European free jazz tradition and the openness to come.

Extremely interesting period in the history of jazz, if you ask DC!

Trevor Watts dancing around in melodic frenzy and beauty! KILLER playing by him.

And the rhythm section of late great bass player Clyne and Stevens himself are just mindblowing and swinging like mad! Ian Carr is making some of his very finest moments of his recorded output with this amazing Springboard unit!

We love the cover drawings made by a young family member of the Steven´s. Also with very on-the-spot liner notes but the very same 6 year old Richie Stevens.

 

NOV 2012: essential PS……… DC has been talking to Mr Trevor  Watts about these recordings and the general times in UK around mid 60´s. There seem to have been a missing bit, to be added to the puzzle about how and when the free improvisation movement ( or whatever you wanna call it…) was born and developed in especially the vibrant UK.

True is that the starting point of more freer jazz in the UK and Europa started around the release of this LP Springboard and the first Lp w SME that came out before Springboard: Challange on Eyemark

http://matsgus.com/discaholic_corner/?p=879

What was not known to us, is that the main inspiration, except the concept of playing with various percussive techniques on all instruments, is that fact that John Stevens got tremendously inspired musically after a trip to Denmark in 1964! He heard the legendary saw player Niels Harrit ( also playing sax  as a member of the danish pioneers The Contemporary Jazz Quintet!!!) – came back to England and wanted to develop new forms for jazz, entirely different from the jazz structures and forms existing at the time!!!

According to Mr Watts, this trip to Denmark was very essential for the development of the new music! and John Stevens is to blame… and not least Niels Harrit. we can only recommend to find those GREAT and mind bending records by The Contemporary Jazz Quintet!!!!

 

 

Trevor Watts – alto sax

Ian Carr – cornet

Jeff Clyne – bass

John Stevens – drums