CIRCUS (England) : "Circus"

CIRCUS was a late sixties band who released their wonderful eponymous album in 1969.

Their style is a combination between COLOSSEUM's music, psychedelic pop and prog.

The line-up was :

• PHILIP GOODHAND-TAIT : keyboards
• IAN JELFS : guitar, vocals
• MEL COLLINS : flutes
• CHRIS BURROWS : drums
• KIRK RIDDLE : bass

Dick Heath wrote: Found their eponymous album on Transatlantic Records (when Transatlantic were trying to known for being more than a folk music label)  in a dumper bin for less than quid in 1969, and have always thought what a great mix of new British jazz - i.e. jazz rock. Love their take on  Norwegian Wood.    Andrew from your thread, I presume you are not suggesting Colosseum influenced Circus?

No, COLOSSEUM didn't influenced CIRCUS.

CIRCUS were influenced by British jazz-rock and psychedelic pop ( i think).

Dick Heath wrote: ANDREW wrote: Dick Heath wrote: Found their eponymous album on Transatlantic Records (when Transatlantic were trying to known for being more than a folk music label)  in a dumper bin for less than quid in 1969, and have always thought what a great mix of new British jazz - i.e. jazz rock. Love their take on  Norwegian Wood.    Andrew from your thread, I presume you are not suggesting Colosseum influenced Circus? No, COLOSSEUM didn't influenced CIRCUS. CIRCUS were influenced by British jazz-rock and psychedelic pop ( i think).   In 1969 there wasn't much to be influenced, at least on record - the Softs probably, while wasn't Ian Carr still playing in improv jazz groups at the time? John Surman possibly but with much hindsight (i.e. the 2005 Cuneiform release of), of his 1969 recording Way Back When - most strongly recommended recording, especially to help some minor revision about early British jazz rock. McLaughlin's Extrapolation (with Surman) was more new British jazz than jazz rock fusion  and their joint album was more about free jazz. Gordon Beck had released Experiments With Pop (one of the earliest jazz rock albums release din Europe) but no obvious connections. And thinking about sax lead prog: possibly Audience, KC and VdGG. However, sax-lead blues rock is somewhat more fruitful reference, e.g. Dick Heckstall Smith (with Graham Bond, John Mayall, Wynder K Frog and no doubt Alexis Korner, then Colosseum), John Almond (his 1969 album has just be issued on CD btw). What was Dick Morrisey doing in 1969?

In 1969 tenor and soprano sex and flute player Dick Morrisey formed the jazz-rock band IF with guitarist Terry Smith. They were the young lions of the London jazz scene. Dick's playing was inspirational in any setting, particularly when he led his own superb quartet with legendary drummer Phil Seamen and late pianist Harry South. Dick had also played with THE ANIMALS BIG BAND and with GEORGIE FAME. Terry Smith, armed with a fast and fluent technique, was frequently matched with Dick on exciting jam sessions and it was only natural they should team up in the new venture. The third member of the front line was another highly rated and passionate player, the affable and highly organised Dave Quincy, a mean man on alto and tenor sex. They found the perfect front man in singer John Hodkinson whose bluesy vocal style was comparable to Stevie Winwood of TRAFFIC fame. The group was completed with the addition of John Mealing on keyboards and backing vocals, Jim Richardson on bass guitar and Dennis Elliott on drums. When the band was put together in 1969, Dick, Terry and Dave were all part of a London based ten-piece outfit called J.J. JACKSON's GREATEST LITTLE SOUL BAND IN THE LAND, managed by American producer Lew Futterman. He signed IF to Island label in the UK and to Capitol for the US. They released their first album simply called "If" in 1970 followed by "If 2" in 1970,"If 3" in 1971 and "If 4" ("Waterfall") in 1972.

It will be nice to see IF included in this site.

If 1 and 2 are on CD, compilation of tracks from If 1 to If 3 on Forgotten Roads, also a live CD issued (I think called If In Europe). Had the poor (for If) Teabreak Over ... Back On Your Heads on vinyl, poor because most of the original excellent line-up not present. The 80's Morrisey-Mullins Band recordings worth digging out, including the oft forgotten 1979 recording released on Harvest as Dick Morrssey & Jim Mullin. A one off from MMB's American bass player, Hubbard's Cupboard worth finding too. Dick Morrisey alas died about 3 years ago. Jim Mullin, once of the Average White Band, now playing straight jazz (as opposed to jazz dance); 2 or 3 albums with (a not instantly recognisable) Gary Husband playing drums.

Having the best of several albums, the compilation Forgotten Roads!

 

Life can be full of coincidences. Searching for something unrelated on Amazon.UK, I find their computer telling me I should like the albums shown below - the music contained is was what Ian Carr was doing before Nucleus - so did the Quintet's music influence Circus?

 

For which ALLJAZZ states:

After being out of catalogue for many years, over twenty of the finest '60s/'70s albums by British jazz masters Don Rendell and Ian Carr are now available again. The duo are key collaborators on the crucially important Integration and Greek Variations albums reissued by Universal/Impressed, while the wonderfully eclectic web-based reissue label BGO has released five of the Rendell/Carr Quintet's albums and all of Carr's albums with Nucleus. There's a rare feast of Prime Cut Grade A Meat (sorry, they showed The Wedding Singer on British TV again last night) out there right now.

Change Is is the latest in BGO's Rendell/Carr Quintet strand. Recorded in '69, it is the last album recorded by the Quintet before the two leaders went their mostly separate ways, Carr to form Nucleus and Rendell to lead his own, less feted but equally exciting, two saxes/pianoless Quartet. It showcases all the adventurous and idiosyncratic composing and performing qualities that made the Quintet one of the most distinctive post-hard bop groups of the '60s, and also signposts some of the new directions Carr would take with Nucleus.

The opening “Elastic Dream” introduces several of the ideas Carr would develop with Nucleus: an imaginatively constructed, serpentine theme, performed by an expanded line-up featuring two basses, and linked to the following track by a free-improvised passage; the only important Nucleus ingredient it lacks is guitarist Chris Spedding. It's a brilliant piece, full of fresh instrumental textures and quirky solos and almost orchestral in its arrangement.

Intimations of Nucleus aside, one of the other big excitements of Change Is is the debut recorded appearance of tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Stan Robinson—soon to be a founder member, with drummer Trevor Tomkins, of the Rendell Quartet—who guests on two tracks. Robinson, who stands thrillingly shoulder to shoulder with Rendell in the section work, gives a truly bad ass, booting tenor solo on Mike Pyne's funked up “One Green Eye.”

Other highlights include Michael Garrick's raga based “Cold Mountain,” building up from a slow burn start into a wild dervish dance foregrounding Rendell's skirling, snake charmer soprano and Garrick's hammered, rapid fire chord clusters, the icing on the cake being the pleasingly bizarre traces of Kurt Weill in the theme statements; Garrick's use of harpsichord on the Horace Silverish “Boy, Dog And Carrot;” and on the closing “Mirage,” Rendell's and Carr's muscular, in a Kind Of Blue groove solos, among both men's most memorable.

Given its position in the end-of-one-era/start-of-another development of Rendell's and Carr's music, Change Is is a remarkably cohesive work, wholly enduring and richly enjoyable, and it's a joy to have it back.

Note for further investigation : Despite very clearly growing out of the American jazz tradition—and despite also a sustained enthusiasm for Balkan, Indian, African and Middle Eastern musics—there is something unmistakably but somehow indefinably British about Rendell's and Carr's music. It's nothing as obvious as, say, the use of English folk songs, Welsh harps or Northumbrian pipes, it's a lot more ”other” than that, more to do with emotional atmosphere and maybe the approach to collective music making, and would probably require a few thousand words to nail down satisfactorily. But someone ought to try.

Track listing: Elastic Dream; One Green Eye; Boy, Dog And Carrot; Cold Mountain; Black Hair; Mirage.

Personnel: Ian Carr, trumpet/flugelhorn; Don Rendell, tenor saxophone/flute/soprano saxophone; Michael Garrick, piano/harpsichord; Dave Green, bass; Trevor Tomkins, drums; Mike Pyne, piano on “One Green Eye;” Jeff Clyne, bass on “Elastic Dream;” Guy Warren, talking drum/bells/maracas on “Elastic Dream” and “One Green Eye;” Stan Robinson, tenor saxophone/clarinet on “Elastic Dream” and “One Green Eye.”

Wow!... there's obviously alot Circus fanatics out there, especially concidering i thought they were a largely forgotton band. I think i would like thier record, i like Jazzy flute/sax driven proto stuff. I dont know if anyones mentioned this but dont you think its interesting how the keyboardist, Phillip Goodhand-Tait persued a solo career with Andy Latimer, Andy Ward and Doug Fergusson as his backing band and when they went on to form Camel, they eventually got Circus' leader Mel Collins! Funny how its all linked together!

Miles Davis had since 1967 been gradually bringing electric sounds into his bands, and moving more toward the rock 'n' soul 'n' funk rhythms, vamps, and bass lines of James Brown and WOODSTOCK stars Hendrix and SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE, "Bitches Brew"'s long and intrepid jams threw down the gauntlet. He may not have been the first to fuse jazz and rock, but no one did more significantly, creatively, or enduringly than did Davis.

Dick Heath wrote: ANDREW wrote: Miles Davis had since 1967 been gradually bringing electric sounds into his bands, and moving more toward the rock 'n' soul 'n' funk rhythms, vamps, and bass lines of James Brown and WOODSTOCK stars Hendrix and SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE, "Bitches Brew"'s long and intrepid jams threw down the gauntlet. He may not have been the first to fuse jazz and rock, but no one did more significantly, creatively, or enduringly than did Davis. There was a third black act involved in the psychedelic scene, now largely forgotten, The Chambers Brothers (whose classic Time Has Come Today, now sounds a touch dated). I wonder who they influenced if anybody?

Like their West Coast contemporaries SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE, THE CHAMBERS BROTHERS shattered racial and musical divides to forge an incendiary fusion of funk, gospel, blues and psychedelia which reached its apex with the perennial 1968 song "Time Has Come Today", an 11-minute psychedelic soul epic in its original album incarnation.

THE FAMILY STONE's eclectic musicand multiracial composition made them distinctive from the numerous flower-power bands in San Francisco, and their single "I Ain't Got Nobody" , became a regional hit for the local label Loadstone. The band signed with Epic Records shostly afterward, releasing their debut album, "A Whole New Thing", by of the end of the year. The record stiffed, but the follow-up, "Dance To The Music", generated a TOP 10 Pop and R&B hit with its title-track early in 1968.

I think SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE together with JAMES BROWN influenced MILES DAVIS in his 1967 release "Miles In The Sky", still one of Davis' more overlooked works, signalled that the floodgates of what would come to be called "fusion" were about to be cast wide open.

And in 1969, when he recorded "In A Silent Way" and "Bitches Brew", twin touchstones in fusion's development phase, Miles Davis would once more be cast in his favorite role : ceaseless explorer.