Presents a tipping point between overt structure and the freer forms that have characterized his work since.
Bagatellen (2008)

Down Another Road

 



Aberdeen Angus featuring Harry Beckett, the tune Babyshambles listen to on their tour bus.

Manuscript: For the version heard here a conventional 'who plays what when' arrangement was produced. Later arrangements have been derived from a lead sheet similar to this, but with open collectively improvised passages between each separate motif.

Featuring
Harry Beckett (flugelhorn)
Stan Sulzmann (alto & tenor sax)
Nick Evans (trombone)
Karl Jenkins (piano & oboe)
John Marshall (drums)
Graham Collier (bass)


Recording History
First issued on LP by Fontana, 1969
First issued on CD by Disconforme, 2000
Remastered and repackaged by BGO records as part of a 2 CD compilation, 2007
Remastered by Tom Leader of LCL Digital.

The Tracks
Down Another Road A new version was included in seven's and eight's, by rising star Ben Lamdin's nostalgia 77 and had over 6,000 plays on their MySpace page. '[Performing] lost jazz masterpieces, new group composition and improvisation, the nostalgia 77 octet are hotly tipped as the new British jazz explosion.'
In 2007 Universal Japan illegally released this track as part of a 2 CD compilation by DJ/Producer Jazztronik. Although I was pleased, it was a blatant breach of my copyright. When I complained they paid compensation, but took the album off the shelves... (This is one episode in a long-running fight to get Universal to acknowledge that I was reassigned the rights to three of my early albums in 1996. The full story will be carried elsewhere in due course.)
Danish Blue
The Barley Mow

Babyshambles
Aberdeen Angus was played, as a website review of the compilation had it, by 'the Jazztastic Graham Collier and his amazing drummer', and appears on Back to the Bus, Babyshambles, (DMC) a selection of tracks, also including The Clash, Stone Roses and Bert Jansch, that Pete Doherty's pop group listen to on their tour bus. Drummer Adam Ficek, who heard the track when studying with John Marshall, commented in the liner notes that 'This is the stuff before British jazz went wrong. Emotional, raw'.

Lullaby for a Lonely Child (Composed Karl Jenkins) is included on Gilles Peterson's Impressed, a collection of British jazz from the sixties and seventies, which also included Graham's composition 'Rolli's Tune'** which was decribed by John L. Walters in The Guardian as 'beguilingly complex in execution, but very simple in structure… demonstrates Collier's characteristic knack for creating and sustaining a mood from minimal materials.'
Molewrench

HBFlareUp
** 'Rolli's Tune', which was also used as background music in the BBC television series The Long Firm, was taken from Harry Beckett's acclaimed album Flare Up, now a Jazzprint CD. The album includes three other Collier tunes, 'Go West', 'The Other Side' and 'The Third Road'. The latter tune has also appeared on three different albums by ex-Mingus trumpeter Ted Curson, who added lyrics to Graham's melody when they worked together in Hamburg many years ago. The albums - with no lyrics and varying degrees of composer credit - are I Heard Mingus, 'Round about Midnight, and Travelling On.

Some Reviews
A record that deserves the highest praise... warmly recommended.
Charles Fox, Radio 3 (1969)

There are many traces of Mingus in his writing … and some of his more lyrical pieces remind me a little of Ellington …But on such influences he has grafted a definite personality and style of his own.
The Times (1969

Collier's stature as an original and imaginative composer is already entirely evident by this stage. The highly effective fusion of sophisticated written structures with fiery, free-influenced soloing has worn well.
Kenny Matheson, Jazzwise (2000)

A great classic.
Philippe Renaud, Improjazz (2000)

The music on this double-disc set leaps out of the speakers with the kind of life, sensitivity and expressionism that’s defined this seminal British musician then, and ever since.
John Kelman, All About Jazz (2007), reviewing the BGO compilation

Chosen as one of the records of the year in 1969 by Ron Brown, Charles Fox and Derek Jewell.
Chosen by Alyn Shipton in 2005 for the eMusic Dozens European Jazz: ‘Collier’s finest and most balanced album’.

BGOCD767
Remastered versions of Down Another Road, Songs for My Father and Mosaics were released on a bargain price double CD by BGO in 2007.

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