For a Loved One) John Sangster Jazz Music Series: Volume 2 Requiem (For a Loved One)
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John Sangster JAZZ MUSIC SERIES 2Requiem (for a loved one) John Sangster Jazz music series: volume 2 Requiem (for a loved one) 1 Good-bye Bo Diddley 4’13” 2 A song for Bo 3’56” 3 Sweetheart of 1000 P’s 3’26” 4 Kisses for a koala bean 6’07” 5 Little lively one 4’45” 6 Nor ever got to Paris France 4’33” 7 Little sweet one 3’58” 8 Oo-roo Boddil 3’09” 9 Little lovely one 5’52” q0 Requiem 4’50” The music was recorded in 1980 and remastered from the original mixed tapes by This is the second of five Move Records in 2018. volumes of “suites” written by John Sangster for this lively little orchestra. P 1980 / 2018 Move Records move.com.au The second in a part of Suites written for this 7 Little sweet one 3’58” fine small orchestra, one that includes some Sweet, she was, and lovely, and Here’s one of the themes from the Koala of Australia’s foremost jazz musicians: Bean song, as a duet for Tony Gould and Bob lively, and little. And dearly Barnard. Bob Barnard: Cornet loved. Bo Diddley we called her Ron Falson: Trumpet and yes she met the real one, 8 Oo-roo Boddil 3’09” Tony Gould: Piano the black one, the big one after Clarinets state the triplet motif again, then Paul Furniss: Alto Saxophone and Clarinet whom she was nicknamed; Keith Hounslow’s pocket-cornet, with the Errol Buddle: Tenor Saxophone and Clarinet and he laughed and gave her a plunger mute. Herb Cannon or John Costelloe: Trombone Len Barnard: Drums great hug. But she never got to 9 Little lovely one 5’52” Tom Sparkes: Clarinet and Cor-Anglais Paris France. This one for Herb Cannon’s trombone, with John McCarthy: Clarinet the clarinets. Chris Qua: Tree-bass And the featured soloists: Graeme Lyall, 3 Sweetheart of 1000 P’s 3’26” q0 Requiem 4’50” Tenor and Soprano Saxophones, and Keith Yes, a thousand and more, and boy! Did she Hounslow, Pocket-Cornet and Flugelhorn. The music was recorded and mixed August/September 1980 in the know about Parties, and having a Good Time. Sydney studios of EMI by Martin Benge and John Sangster, who also Graeme has a good time in this one, too. produced the album. The pieces are copyright JSM. 1 Good-bye Bo Diddley 4’13” Graeme Lyall has the tenor saxophone 4 Kisses* for a Koala Bean 6’07” * These kisses are from Roger, Pog, Chauncey, improvisation, and John McCarthy does the Roger Bell’s nickname for her. The Koala Bean. Norman, David, and me. And George. clarinet decorations. There’s a cor-anglais, of course, and Paul, and the three brass: Bob on the left-hand and Ron 2 A song for Bo 3’56” Falson on the right-hand channel, and Herb Clarinets, Len’s finger-cymbals, Bob’s plunger Cannon’s trombone. solo. The one where he holds the plunger just out a bit. Then the saxes, with Bob this 5 Little lively one 4’45” time in the Harmon mute, and then John Keith Hounslow’s flugelhorn; some triplet Costelloe. There’s a recurring motif in most stuff, then Bob Barnard with the plunger. of the pieces that make up this Suite; built of Herbie Cannon’s trombone improvisation, triplets, it tells her name. then the flugel again. And a bit of the lively to get us out. A brief coda for Keith. 6 Nor ever got to Paris France 4’33” A Lament…for Graeme Lyall’s soprano saxophone, with the orchestra. Cozzie and the clarinets have the triplet thing this time. JOHN SANGSTER 1928-1995 a slow boogie-woogie piece, diffidently mid-winter 1960. and reflectively but somehow The bassist on those records was John Sangster was one of the most individualistically. the powerful – musically and physically talented of all Australian jazz It was at the third convention – Lou Silbereisen, who had spread the musicians, a technician and creator who (Prahran Town Hall, 1948) that he made good word about Sangster so that he embraced and understood more styles the first of several indelible marks on became the drummer for the second of the music than any other. He was an the Australian jazz scene, playing hot British and European tour of Graeme expert drummer and vibraphone player, and exiting cornet in a style like that Bell’s band. a soulful trumpeter and, in arranging of New Orleans veteran Thomas ‘Papa Sangster was now up and away and composing, he always took into Mutt’ Carey and he won an award from on the international drum scene, account the personality of the exponent. Graeme Bell as ‘the most promising recording on drums with black blues Australian reeds virtuoso Don player’. He first recorded 30 December, singer Big Bill Broonzy in Germany, Burrows wrote in his opening to the and participated in the traditional and recording on trumpet and drums forward of Sangster’s autobiography, jazz scene, including through the in the Abbey Road studios in London Seeing the Rafters: “The man is unique”. community centred on the house of with a combination of the bands of Bell Unique he was, this drummer, Alan Watson in Rockley Road, South and English trumpet master Humphrey trumpeter, vibraphonist and composer Yarra. Lyttleton. who died in 1995 after a four-year fight At the fourth convention, In August 1978 Sango was on with a liver complaint. Sangster (or Sango, as he liked to be the television program This is Your In 1992, Sangster was saying with called) stood one morning with a band Life, in an episode that paid tribute to pride that the doctors could hardly in Greville Street, Prahran, playing Graeme Bell. Sango is thanking him discern his liver in their X-rays. In chorus after chorus of Mahogany Hall for allotting him a trumpet solo on the Seeing the Rafters, a quote accompanying Stomp. One afternoon, in a Town Hall Bell-Lyttleton recording sessions. We a 1950 photo of the Graeme Bell band backroom, he produced two pieces of also see Lyttleton that day, waiting to (in which Sangster was drummer) wood (whatever they were, they weren’t surprise Bell on This is Your Life, saying reads: “Happy days – may we live long drumsticks) and beat out a crackling, of Sangster, after seeing him for the and die roaring”. Sangster, bon viveur, stimulating rhythm on the back and first time in twenty-six years: “He’s lived it up through happy days, nights, seat of a wooden chair. c h a n g e d”. months and years. Next thing we knew, he had Sangster had changed into Sangster came on to the bought the drum set of Russ Murphy, the most complete Australian jazz Melbourne jazz scene in 1946, the year Graeme Bell’s first drummer, and on musician, a change that first became of the first Australian Jazz Convention, that kit he recorded on drums for apparent after he returned from Japan but it was at the second convention that the first time, on a classic revivalist and Korea with Bell (Sangster’s second I first set eye and ear on him as he sat at survivalist jazz session led by Roger overseas tour with him) and came to the piano during a lunch break, playing Bell (youngers brother of Graeme) in live in Sydney. He expanded physically and musically. He had never been The ever busy Sangster managed then cornet, learning from recordings one of the totalitarian, crushingly to continue to still play with Bell from with friend Sid Bridle, with whom he restrictive traditionalists, and it was time to time, but he also worked with formed a band. in Sydney that he composed his Hobbit the Ray Price Quartet on trumpet and Isabella’s hostility towards John Suite and The Lord of the Rings trilogy played drums with the Port Jackson and his jazz activities came to a head on – the latter of which has, 25 years Jazz Band. He later played vibes and 21 September 1946, when she withdrew later, been re-released on Move. In the drums at El Rocco, Brougham Street, permission for him to attend a jazz musical styles and compositions of Kings Cross, the headquarters of event; in the ensuing confrontation he these extraordinary works (musical modern jazz in Sydney, with such killed her with an axe but was acquitted ‘plays’, Sangster used to call them) one pianists as Col Nolan and Judy of both murder and manslaughter. catches glimpses not only of the best old Bailey. He also played drums for a He married Shirley Drew 18 Australian jazz tradition of Bell’s early long time with Don Burrows, one of November 1949. In 1950 recorded revivalist bands, but also of Thelonious his most ardent admirers, who – to (drums) with Roger, then Graeme Bell, Monk and Dizzy Gillespie, and of Nat thunderous applause – played the and was invited to join Graeme’s band and Cannonball Adderley. Sangster composition, Rivera Mountain on drums for their second international At the same time, Sangster the at Carnegie Hall, New York City, in July tour (26 October 1950 to 15 April 1952). listener was becoming more involved 1972. During this tour Sangster recorded with such avant-garde players as It was with Burrows that Sangster his first composition, and encountered Sun Ra, Archie Shepp and Ornette went to Expo 67 in Montreal. We saw Kenny Graham’s Afro-Cubists and Coleman, and also with Japanese him off at Sydney Airport.