Mike Westbrook - Live 1972 (Cadillac 50th Anniversary) (Live & Remastered 2023) (2023)

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cadillac Music & Publishing we’re delighted to announce this special reissue of Cadillac’s very first release, Live from 1973. With additional tracks, mastered by Jon Hiseman of Colosseum, and released with the blessing of Mike Westbrook, Live 1972 stands out as a document of the Westbrook project in transition, and as a bloody great slab of music in its own right played by a brilliant collection of musicians.

Cadillac’s origins, founded 1973 and celebrating its 50th year, go back to when John Jack took over Ronnie’s Old Place in 1965 and turned it into a musical and cultural laboratory for the new wave of British jazz musicians then appearing in London. One of these was a young man from the West country, Mike Westbrook.

John remembers: “For several years I had been hearing the name Westbrook but failing to actually hear him, now his sextet with legends-to-be John Surman, Mike Osborne, Malcolm Griffiths, Alan Jackson and man of many bands Harry Miller on bass became a fixture of the ‘all-nighter’”

The relationship formed in the basement club deepened and John became Mike’s manager. In 1973 came the “...launch by Mike Westbrook and myself of a label to market some recordings of Mike’s band that RCA declined.”

Mike remembers “The only album I had made for RCA by then was Metropolis on their new Neon label. John was very involved in setting up the deal with RCA/Neon. By ’73 I was due to make a second album. I was moving on from the big band. We offered them the ‘Live’ recording. They rejected it. Maybe they were expecting a follow up to Metropolis. Also the technical quality of Live was not exactly ’studio'.”

Cadillac, sharing its name with Westbrook project Solid Gold Cadillac, utilised the same logo and the catalogue prefix SGC. ‘Live’ (SGC1001) was the resulting album by this short lived band, their only recording.

Reissuing this album makes sense as the first in catalogue, as co-label founder Mike’s album, and as a brilliant and lesser known part of the Westbrook oeuvre. It has been reissued before, by the now deceased Hux label (with some extra material which we have retained) and in Japan, but it’s a joy to be able to bring Live 1972 back into the fold again.