The Don Rendell / Ian Carr Quintet - Dusk Fire (1966/2018)

A grey-area reissue of this legendary album: the magnificent Dusk Fire album recorded in 1966. Rightly considered a masterpiece of British Jazz, cool and quirky finishing on a high with Michael Garrick's powerful composition Dusk Fire. Rendell/ Carr Quintet shows how far British jazz in the second half of the ’60s had taken new directions. Not a jazz songbook standard in sight, moving away from the usual jazz conventions, heads and solos, rhythm section down in the engine room, improvised virtuosity of the soloists. The writing is more structured, a pictorial composition, storytelling, replete with literary allusions.

British jazz in the ’50s and ’60s never really became mainstream, eclipsed by transatlantic “popular music singers” and groups of young men strumming electric guitars. Even at jazz’s height, original American jazz ruled the charts, not British jazz. Even the local product fissured between reproduced Dixieland clarinet and striped waistcoat “Trad’ Jazz” and the Modernist. Older jazz fans clung on to their Charlie Parker collections, their big band swing albums, some perhaps a few even their Blue Notes. British modern jazz record titles sold in just a few thousands, hence their premium today at auction. British jazz musicians main source of income was not from record sales, or club performance, but laying down background music for film and TV – that was over 50% of Lansdowne Studios main business. However we have reason to be grateful that Denis Preston and others struggled against the tide of popular music to bring us good music, that was not especially popular.