Musical ephemera from Australia and beyond. Jazz, soundtracks, field recordings, vaguely ethnic, folk, pop and whatever else I may find in the second-hand shops of Victoria.
Here's a lesser known release from the later career of Urban Bowerbird patron saint, John Sangster. This is one of a handful of releases on Sangster's own 'Rain Forest Records' imprint, put out in the early eighties - Peaceful being another. Expect more of Sangster's idiosyncratic, mischievous, trad-influenced jazz played by the likes of Tony Gould, Ian Bloxsom, Errol Buddle, Graeme Lyall, Len Barnard and Bob Barnard. Mediafire.
When
discussing The Hobbit Suite record two years ago, I offhandedly described John Sangster’s Lord of the Rings LPs as too ‘trad-jazzy’ for my tastes. I have
been revisiting a few of these albums of late – prompted in part from reading Sangster’s
autobiography Seeing The Rafters
(1988) – and I’ve gotten new insights into the man’s work that have caused a
revision in my thinking on these albums.
Sangster’s
Tolkien-themed series of albums comprised, The
Hobbit Suite (1973), Lord of the
Rings (1975), Lord of the Rings Vol.
2 (1976), Double Vibes: Hobbit
(1977), Lord of the Rings Vol 3.
(1977) and Landscapes of Middle Earth
(1978). All of these were double LPs released on EMI apart from the two hobbit
records which were single LPs released on local jazz label Swaggie. The EMI
records have all been excellently remastered and re-released on CD by Move Records. Swaggie have remastered and re-released The Hobbit Suite and selections from Double Vibes which features the
aforementioned album plus four songs from the latter title. (Given the paucity
of reissues of Australian jazz recordings from the sixties and seventies, this
may provide some indication of the esteem in which these records are still held
by people in the local music industry.)
The Hobbit Suite was apparently quite a spontaneous
recording with a small ensemble and most of the tracks are first takes. After
the success of this record Sangster was emboldened to try more ambitious
arrangements for the new music he was writing and went to a major label that
could support his vision. These records feature expanded brass and string
sections in addition to the core jazz band.
For
the past year or so I have been thoroughly listening to the first two LOTR albums and The Hobbit Suite which preceded them. (I haven’t heard LOTR Vol 3. or Landscapes of Middle Earth at all – and I won’t do for quite some
time. Sangster died in 1995, his musical output was finite and I’ve got to make
this stuff last.)
Firstly,
despite the aesthetics of the cover art and the song titles being allusions to
Tolkien at face value, Sangster’s autobiography makes clear that these records
too, are autobiographies. His life, in musical form. For example, the ‘Knockabout
Trolls’ from The Hobbit Suite? Those ‘trolls’
are Sango and Sluggsy AKA his mate, drummer Len Barnard, doubling on washboard out
the front of the band! And as for the stoned laughter and banter in the
background of Longbottom Leaf from LOTR Vol 2. well, let’s just say that they
may well have been method-acting. Legolas et
al may hail from Middle Earth, but the bird calls in the field recordings
on these albums are clearly from natives of the New South Wales temperate
forests, near Sangster’s home of Sydney.
In
addition to these coded titles, the music itself represents the myriad of
styles that Sangster has played in, beginning in the burgeoning Australian jazz
scene of the forties. From his book: “If you want a musical autobiography, it's
all there in the Lord of the Rings albums. A crazed montage of all the jazz
(and other) idioms I've been involved with during my life. All the musics I
love are in there; some plainly stated, some distorted and disguised a little
bit the way memories sometimes go."
My
dismissive description of the LOTR
records as merely ‘trad jazz’ is just plain wrong; these records encompass a
ridiculous range of music from within and without the jazz scene, such as old-style
trad, ragtime, be-bop, big-band/swing, blues, film music, avant garde and musique
concrète. The fact that the first LOTR record
has a track like Uncle Gandalf Needs You
followed immediately by Ents And Entwives
is a feat of juxtaposition that shows how ballsy Sangster really was. Sangster
worshipped old greats like Bix Beiderbecke and Ellington, but he was equally a
fan of experimental icons like Sun Ra, Moondog and Xenakis and all these influences
coexist on these discs.
I’m
glad I persevered with these records as these are superb examples of Sangster’s
work and are significant albums, not just for Australian jazz, but Australian
music in general. Is it too much to hope that one day Sangster’s music will see
a resurgence amongst the hipsters and the Oz music bourgeois alike, and Sango
himself celebrated as an unheralded genius? I really hope so. Australians are
famously unwilling to revere their own as cultural figures worth praising, but
a talent like John Sangster must transcend this and take a rightful place in
the antipodean cultural canon alongside the likes of Barry Humphries or Charles
Blackman. On yer Sango.
Although they show up with some regularity, I’ve stopped buying Eric Jupp albums when I find them in op-shops these days. I’ve listened to a few, and Jupp’s LPs are typically schmaltzy lounge-room jazz firmly ensconced in an old-school, conservative musical mindset. It's pleasant enough stuff and features some great players, but not really my thing. I bought Making It Happen from the Salvos because it features an original composition by John Sangster, and due to the presence of some of my favourite sixties/seventies Oz jazz players (John Sangster, Don Burrows, George Golla, Derek Fairbrass, Warren Daly).
This feels like an album where the young turks have dragged old fart Jupp into a more hip, modern set of songs. It’s not that hip though; there are still a number of soundtrack numbers and standards that are ever-present on these sorts of LPs - Theme From Exodus, Tara’s Theme from Gone With The Wind, Live For Life theme, Nino Rota’s A Time For Us from Romeo & Juliet and Hava Nagila. Most of these are pretty nice, if forgettable.
The bulk of the set however is made up of instrumental arrangements of contemporary pop songs such as Puppet On A String (Sandie Shaw, 1967), Sounds of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel, 1966), The Other Man’s Grass Is Always Greener (Petula Clark, 1967), When I’m 64 (The Beatles, 1967), Help Yourself (Tom Jones, 1968) and Spinning Wheel (Blood, Sweat and Tears, 1969). A lot of these tracks are pretty great and the playing is always top-notch - for example, check out Burrow's echoey clarinet solo in the impossibly jaunty rendition of When I’m 64.
The highlight is unquestionably Kaffir Song written by John Sangster. Most people would be familiar with this song from The Jazz Sound of The Don Burrows Quartet. In my opinion, the version on Making It Happen is superior. It’s a more fast-paced, less conspicuously ‘jazzy’ version and the interplay between the percussion and the bass is far more complex and interesting. (As amazing as the bass work is, the bassist is not credited in the liner notes - I’m guessing it’s Ed Gaston, but who knows?) It’s a looping, hypnotic trip into faux-exotica highlighted by Burrows high-pitched Bb school flute.
The other track which I really like is the Live For Life theme. From what I can tell, the original recording of this theme was a slow waltz - here Jupp reimagines the piece as a frantic whirlwind of exotic strings and horns, with the same picked bass tone as featured on Kaffir Song. It sounds like the kind of song that would played in a sixties movie over a montage of people doing important things very quickly.
Label: Columbia
Released: 1969? (There is no date listed, but the latest of the cover songs was released in 1969).
Players: Eric Jupp - piano, arrangements and musical direction.
I first saw this album on the old Votary Records trades page, listed as ‘for Libaek completists only’. It’s a fair assessment of this LP - Libaek merely provides accompaniment for Australian seventies television star Gerard Kennedy as he recites Rod McKuen-style poetry over a smooth jazz backing. It may be instructive to focus on the music and the poetry separately:
THE MUSIC, BY SVEN LIBAEK. Sven’s compositions on the LP are quite good, if a little innocuous (it is intended as background music after all). There are some great moments though, which is not surprising as this was recorded right in the middle of Libaek’s golden era - he would go on to record the soundtrack for Inner Space a year after this release. None of the musicians are credited, but I am pretty confident that the usual suspects are playing on this record: George Golla on guitar, Don Burrows on flutes, John Sangster on vibes and percussion and so on. Many tracks also feature the addition of string sections which tends to bring out great stuff from Sven. The frustrating thing is that there are very few moments on the LP where the music is brought to the forefront and given a chance to be heard. Autumn is one such track, where we get a chance to hear haunting flute lines cycle over orchestral strings with a cool jazz underpinning from the rhythm players. The twin, harmonising sax lines bookending Spring are another lovely touch. A few themes are repeated and developed over a couple of tracks which adds some depth, and was not something that Sven usually did. But unfortunately, any moments of Libaek goodness invariably get interrupted by Gerard Kennedy’s awkward, artless spoken word.
THE POETRY, BY GERARD KENNEDY. Let me be blunt; the poetry on this record is bad. Really bad. Really, really bad. I think I could state without risk of hyperbole that this is the worst poetry I have ever heard. Gerard affects a bad boy, outsider persona for the poetry, but also injects a strange sort of cutesiness that, while not necessarily at odds with the material, fills me with an intense sort of simultaneous rage and embarrassment. Embarragement?
Throughout Seasons Of Love, Kennedy’s turn of phrase is embarrassingly unselfconscious and pretentious - I could pick almost any line from the album to illustrate this, here’s a random sample: ‘[Let’s] put up a maze of love with walls a thousand thoughts thick’ from I Think I’ll Build A Wall or “You moved [...] proud and graceful like a young gazelle picking her way through the forest.” from The Quiet Time Of Reason. There are really only two themes that are touched upon in the poems (if I was being kind, I’d call it consistency): Gerard describing how he is an outsider (Travel Broadens The Mind, I Am An Island) or musings on wanting to find love, but being too much of a free-thinking bohemian to be able to love just one woman (all the other tracks). Gerard is always alone, even in a crowd. The rain is his brother, and the wind is his friend.
Of course, Kennedy can’t be blamed for the abysmal standard of the poetry because despite the strongly personal nature of the verse, he didn’t actually write it. The poetry itself is credited to one Warwick Randall. One website I read even suggested that ‘Warwick Randall’ was a pseudonym for Kennedy, but from what I can ascertain, Randall is a real person. He has a couple of books of poetry to his name, is credited as working with Kennedy on a number of television shows and wrote for Melbourne broadsheet The Age in the early eighties.
The fact that Kennedy didn’t even write the words that he delivers with such hammy enthusiasm only adds to the weirdness of this record. Did Kennedy recognise his limitations as a poet and outsource the job? Did he think that his friend was a criminally under appreciated poet and wanted to bring his work to a wider audience? Perhaps Gerard just wanted to portray himself as a tough yet arty nonconformist but didn’t actually have the poetic skills required for an LP of this nature and so turned to a lesser known, but confident poet whom he happened to know through work? I have so many questions about the execution and production of this LP, but I suspect that everyone involved with Seasons Of Love instantly forgot about it soon after it was released.
...And yet, I keep listening to this LP. I tend to eschew the ‘so bad it’s good’ school of music appreciation (I prefer music that’s ‘so good it’s good’) but there’s something about Seasons Of Love that keeps me coming back. There’s something mesmerising about this seventies wannabe alternative pin-up boy effusing cringe-inducing poetry (that he didn’t even write) over a backdrop of sweet, smooth jazz from a composer who was at the top of his game and probably wrote this material in his sleep. If nothing else, it’s a fascinating cultural artifact - when, where, could this have ever been considered cool?
George Golla has played on countless records accompanying Don Burrows, Sven Libaek, John Sangster et al, but he very infrequently released LPs under his own name and own direction. This is one of those records, and it’s a nice one. Wives & Lovers is a crowd-pleasing set of standards, Beatles covers and Brazillian bossa. I recall seeing a live LP of Golla and his band which was recorded at a popular pancake eatery in Sydney - I imagine this is exactly the kind of set they would playing, one that would ensure that the punters were hearing something they were familiar with or at least something that was engaging on first listen. Only one piece, Waltz To Adelaide, is a Golla original and it’s a damn shame that there aren’t more on this record because it’s the album's standout for me - a Libaek-esque waltz with nice dynamic changes and great work from the horn section. In fact, it’s as good as Libaek’s best, and the way that it is arranged and executed as a complete, concise song actually exceeds most of Sven’s work in this regard.
Of the two Beatles covers, Day Tripper probably wouldn’t sound out of place on an album of novelty easy-listening covers, but it’s pleasant enough. Fool On The Hill is quite an interesting interpretation of this song and reimagines it as an odd shuffle with a sort of weird sense of unease in the chorus. The standards are pretty standard, although Wives and Lovers is great, and the Brazilian stuff on side two is good, but still feeling a bit safe and diluted for a popular audience. Overall, a lovely late-sixties Oz jazz album with some unevenness in the quality, but worth it for Golla’s Waltz To Adelaide and a few others.
Label: Festival Released: Sleeve says 1970, disc says 1968. Players: George Golla - guitar Don Burrows - flute, alto flute, alto sax Errol Buddle - bassoon, tenor sax Pete Haslum - trombone John Sangster - vibes, percussion Derek Fairbrass - drums Ed Gaston - bass (credited on the back as ‘Ed Faston’ - no respect at all.) George Thompson - bass
This is the sort of music that ideally should be listened to while sitting on a pristine Australian beach with a beer, maybe enjoying a cheeky Winnie blue (or some of Australia's other well-loved herbal produce) while listening to the native birds calling in the coastal scrub. I'm a little surprised, in fact, that Sangster didn't incorporate field recordings of birdsong or other native bioacoustics into this LP as he has with so many of his others. (Especially with titles like 'Reed-warbler Song').
This set is quite consistent in its instrumentation, comprising acoustic guitar, vibes and other melodic percussion instruments, smooth sax and flute. Overall the LP is reminiscent of the quieter sections of Sangster's fantastic Australia And All That Jazz records. The relatively straightforward arrangements and breezy exotica feel also evoke the vibe of John Zorn pieces like The Gift.
This record is an artefact of late 20th century Oz exotica which evolved from an appreciation of Australia as something of a tropical paradise. (See Sangster's own aptly titled Paradise for an excellent example of this cultural phenomenon). And unlike the unobtainable island fantasies of the original American exotica wave of the late fifties, this was a paradise that was easily accessible to any Australian with a bit of time, a serviceable caravan and a desire to seek out their own Antipodean Eden. Sangster clearly loved to view Australia in this way. In a country that is often ashamed of celebrating it's own 'Australianess', Sangster's music stands out as an unabashed statement of what makes it worth celebrating.
Label: Rain-Forest
Released: 1980
Players: Errol Buddle - tenor saxophone
Mal Cunningham - flutes
Terry Walker - acoustic guitar
Tony Ansell - electric piano
John Sangster - vibraphone, marimba and percussion
If I had to name an all-time favourite genre it would be nature documentary soundtracks - particularly if they're Australian and from the sixties or seventies. Admittedly, it's a fairly limited genre, so at this point, finding a new one (new to me, anyway) is pretty exciting. While doing a little wandering on the internet, I found the soundtrack to Shell's Australia; a thirteen part series by Robert Raymond documenting the natural history of Australia which originally aired in the early seventies. The soundtrack, titled The Australian Ark,was composed by Derek Strahan during 1969-70 and features the talents of a number of Oz jazz players including John Sangster and Derek Fairbrass. I've only been listening to it since I obtained it this morning, but from my initial impressions, it sounds really, really good. The inclusion of Sangster on percussion lends the soundtrack a very similar feel to Sangster's own soundtrack works and also the celebrated soundtracks of Sven Libaek. I don't have a rip of this album - it was never released on vinyl, although a cassette tape was released by Strahan in 1980 - but the whole thing can be purchased on CD or mp3 from CD Baby. Strahan seems to release all his music independently, so purchasing this album will directly support this Australian composer and his fine work.
Here's another gem from Urban Bowerbird favourite Sven Libaek. These two tunes are taken from the nature documentary soundtrack Nature Walkabout, however these are quite different versions to the tracks that appear on the LP. These versions are shorter and have faster tempos than the album versions and a few changes in orchestration and arrangement. The two tracks also seem to be played by a more stripped-down version of Sven's usual ensemble - there are no saxophone, flute or trumpet parts, just piano, guitar, bass, vibes and harmonica on Bush Theme. I am unsure why different versions of these songs were released on the single - is this a standard practice? I have a 7" single from Libaek's Inner Space soundtrack (Thatcherie/Sounds Of The Deep) and it contains exactly the same versions as featured on the LP. Weird.
I always felt that Bush Theme was one of the weaker tracks on Nature Walkabout and I think the increase in tempo and the concision of this arrangement improves it immeasurably. Lonely Australian Landscape on the other hand is one of my favourite of Sven's compositions and I like it even better with this pacing and arrangement. It takes what is already a great melody and gives it an incredible urgency and energy.
Label: Festival Released: 1966 (I assume; that's when the Nature Walkabout soundtrack was released.) Players: Unsure, but here's an educated guess: Sven Libaek - piano
George Golla - guitar John Sangster - vibes, percussion Ed Gaston - bass Derek Fairbrass - drums Richard Brooks - harmonica
I love John Sangster. The fact that this man is not considered a national treasure may be one of the greatest injustices of Australian history. Anyway, here we find him doing what he does best: playing slightly weird, trad-ish jazz with his mates in an attempt to evoke the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (the man had vision). This record is similar to the later works that Sangster would do in this series, Lord Of The Rings Volume I (1975) and II (1976). Favourite titles are Gandalf The Whiz and Bilbo Baggins Takes A Trip. Favourite song is the awesome coolness of Beorn's Bear Dance. Just a straight-up great jazz record with a hell of a lot of personality and an incredible level of musicianship. If this album piques your interest, check out the totally brilliant Australia And All That Jazz.
Label: Swaggie, produced by Nevill L. Sherburn.
Released: 1973
Players: John Sangster - vibes, marimbaphone, celesete, percussions
Bob Barnard - trumpet, flugelhorn
John McCarthy - clarinet, soprano, tenor saxophone
This LP seems to be one of the lesser heard of Libaek's albums from his golden era in the sixties and seventies. I can't imagine why - it's a fantastic set of music as good as (or better than) his soundtrack work which has enjoyed such a resurgence in appreciation over the last few years. In any case, the majority of the pieces on this album are from film and television soundtracks composed 'in the last year or so' and then rearranged and rerecorded for this album. The liner notes don't mention which soundtracks, but the titles give clues: Gold Coast Fanfare, Lake Moondara, Northern Territory and so on.
EDIT: I've noticed from the liner notes of the Nature Walkabout soundtrack that some of these earlier works are mentioned. Man And A Mural was from the soundtrack to an 'award winning art documentary film' of the same name which was produced and edited by Nature Walkabout producer Bill Copland. Done Away With was part of the music Sven wrote for a 'TV play' of the same name by Pat Flowers. Versions of Northern Territory and Theme From An Unwritten Movie were released on a 1963 EP by balalaika player Andy Sundstrom on CBS when Libaek was at the helm as A&R man. I recently tracked down this EP and wrote a post on it here.
The compositions are played by that great team of Sydney jazz players familiar from countless other Australian recordings of the era: Don Burrows, Errol Buddle, George Golla, John Sangster and Derek Fairbrass amongst others. This is a superb album which deserves to be placed in the same league as Libaek's best.
Postcript: The excellent ABC podcast RareCollections recently ran a two-part interview with Libaek containing a lot of great information from Sven. Check it out here.
