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The Jazz Life— The Don Rendell/ Ian Carr Quintet
The cutting edge of 1960s British Jazz
I’m delving back into the 1960s again, simply because that decade, especially in Britain, was a golden period of modern jazz. And it was the Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet that was at the cutting-edge, creating a clutch of LPs that have all been re-issued as CDs and downloads.
There are four LPs from this group that changed small group jazz forever, and I don’t say that lightly.
Listening to the music again, even as I write, it has a freshness that is still stunning in its simplicity and power, a power that comes not only from the exquisite playing of Ian Carr on flugelhorn and trumpet, or Don Rendell’s tough tenor and soprano sax excursions, or even Dave Green’s constant bass, with the now legendary Michael Garrick on piano, and not least Trevor Tomkins’ ever changing drum patterns — all of which are of the highest standard — but equally from the thought that has gone into the writing and the meticulous arrangements, where the dynamics of each instrument, and the blend of those instruments, brought an insight to small ensemble jazz playing that had not been really been a part of the scene since that first Miles Davis group of the 1950s with John Coltrane.
Two of four LPs, Shades of Blue and Dusk Fire, come from 1965 and 1966, with Phase III, and…
