Bass on Top a column by Harry Miller: The Saxophone Trios ![]() Harry Miller, Louis Moholo, Peter Brötzmann © 2024 Gérard Rouy 41 years ago, on December 16th, 1983, South African expatriate bassist Harry Miller, died at only 42 of injuries sustained in an automobile crash. He had been on tour with Dutch trombonist Willem van Manen’s Springband when the group’s van went off the road. Trumpeter Jeff Reynolds and trombonist Joep Maessen died on the scene while tenor saxophonist Maarten van Norden and trumpeter Louis Lanzing were also injured but eventually recovered. [van Manen died in another car accident this year on September 26th at 84, 21 days after van Norden passed away at 68 of unknown causes.] The accident brought to a tragic close to Miller’s prolific and wide-ranging career, one that traversed styles and continents and was documented on just over 100 recordings. Miller was many things to many people. Some may know him for his menacing intro to “Formentera Lady” (featuring the lyrics of recently deceased Peter Sinfield) on King Crimson’s 1971 album Islands, others through his work in the bands of avant-blues guitarist Mike Cooper. If you go back far enough, maybe he was heard in rock bands like The Vikings prior to leaving South Africa. Perhaps, apart from his own music, Miller is most celebrated for the work he did on behalf of others via Ogun, the label he co-founded in 1973 with his wife Hazel and which documented (and continues to do so) a wide swathe of English jazz from the mid-1970s onward, including Miller’s own projects and those of musicians and groups who would not have had the chance to make albums otherwise. As Hazel Miller recently wrote in an email, “the majors were totally ignoring this developing creative era of UK and European jazz/improvised music.” Miller left South Africa with his friend and musical collaborator Manfred Mann in 1960. Arriving in London he freelanced until accepting an offer to work on cruise ships traveling from England to New York. It was there that he heard period jazz players and had his musical trajectory altered. Upon his return to London in 1963 he dove into that city’s bustling, multivalent scene. We find first record of Miller the jazz player from May 31st, 1964 as part of the Henry Lowther/Lyn Dobson Quintet, released in 2012 on a companion sampler CD to the Duncan Heining book Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers And Free Fusioneers: British Jazz 1960 – 1975. The compilation also included a June 9th, 1966 track that saw Miller with a future collaborator and half of the titular inspiration for this piece: alto saxophonist Mike Osborne (more music from that session came out on the 2015 Cuneiform Osborne compilation Dawn, with liner notes by this author). One imagines, however, that Osborne and Miller had regularly crossed paths before. In between those two sessions a crucially important thing happened, not just for Miller but for British jazz and, by extension, the jazz world at large: South Africa’s Blue Notes – pianist Chris McGregor, alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, trumpeter Mongezi Feza, bassist Johnny Dyani, and drummer Louis Moholo – played at Ronnie Scott’s after several months in Europe, including a spot at the 1964 Antibes Jazz Festival (original tenor saxophonist Nick Moyake would leave before they came to England; another fellow expatriate and McGregor collaborator, Ronnie Beer, depping at Scott’s; Beer and the rest of the Blue Notes were on McGregor’s 1968 Very Urgent album). British jazz from a decade earlier had already been buoyed by the contributions of Black arrivals from the West Indies like Joe Harriott, Shake Keane, Wilton Gaynair, Harold McNair, Dizzy Reece, Harry Beckett, and Coleridge Goode. The Blue Notes brought their country’s musical flavors and, immediately working with local players, added a new piquancy to the stew. Miller did not know The Blue Notes back in South Africa, meeting them along with the rest of the London scene. As Hazel Miller wrote he was, “delighted to meet them, enjoying and relating to the music from ‘home’.’’ As with Osborne, it is almost definite that Miller played with members of The Blue Notes separately – maybe even became a second bassist on a gig or two – but the first document comes from 1968 and the album Dudu Phukwana And The “Spears” (the saxophonist’s last name was misspelled on the cover, even though it was correctly spelled on the tape box and elsewhere). Produced by Joe Boyd (noted for his early work with The Pink Floyd and Soft Machine), the album featured McGregor, Feza, Moholo, and Miller. By the time of the Pukwana album, Miller had already been part of Mike Westbrook’s band, which included Osborne. Over the next 15 years, he would appear on a long list of essential albums led by Westbrook, John Surman, Alan Skidmore, McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, and Keith Tippett’s Centipede and later Ark. In addition to a slew of collaborative projects, with Peter Brötzmann, Irène Schweizer, and others, Miller also stepped out front, leading his Isipingo band, putting out albums on Ogun and VaraJazz during his lifetime: in 2006, Cuneiform issued Which Way Now, documenting a Bremen concert. Over 40 percent of Miller’s recorded appearances found him alongside Moholo, making them one of the most significant rhythm sections in European jazz history. And thus, we can finally get to the subject at hand: Miller, with Moholo, working in saxophone trios, specifically those with Osborne (1970-75) and Brötzmann (1979-80). There is no record/recording of Osborne and Brötzmann ever working together. It may have been Osborne’s descent into mental illness, cutting off his career by the early ‘80s, which led him not to be part of the 1980 work by Barry Guy’s revived London Jazz Composers Orchestra (of which Osborne was an original member in 1972) where Brötzmann was present. It may have happened somewhere, as Evan Parker described Osborne as “a voracious sitter in” and the two men were known definitely to be in the same spot at the same time at least twice: the 2. Internationales New Jazz Meeting Auf Burg Altena in June 1971 and the New Jazz Festival Balver Höhle in July 1974. But to this author, it seems unlikely that Osborne and Brötzmann played together. Despite coming up at the same time and having numerous shared associates, they are just too different: Osborne was a bebopper born 20 years too late while Brötzmann was an abstract expressionist with a saxophone instead of a paintbrush. How then did these two disparate figures work with the same rhythm section? One reason is that, upon comparing them, Osborne and Brötzmann did share one quality: an almost manic forward motion, barely under control, like they are trying to outrun their demons. Osborne’s approach was more rhythmic, Brötzmann’s dynamic, but both needed in this unadorned context players who could match their energy. Given Brötzmann’s much longer career, we can hear where the Miller/Moholo tandem fit in a continuum alongside Peter Kowald/Sven-Åke Johansson and, decades later, William Parker/Hamid Drake. One major difference between Miller in these two trios is that with Brötzmann he spent more time playing arco, the better to respond to the saxophonist’s keening wails, Moholo at his most impressionistic. With Osborne, we hear more of Miller the peerless walker, he and Moholo the rails on which a seemingly brakeless car hurtles and careens. It is also important to mention that while Osborne was solely an alto player, Brötzmann moved among many reeds and arco applied with various dynamics was more elastic. Another distinction between the groups was that Osborne played tunes while Brötzmann worked in free improvisation. And even within a format that is far less hierarchical than one where a chordal instrument is included, Miller and Moholo had a different role – however expansive – with Osborne than Brötzmann. With the former they were more of a traditional rhythm section, playing with someone whose sense of time was one of his strengths. The latter allowed for a gooier aesthetic, the drive of the extemporization coming from anyone and also possible in opposition rather than confluence. It is instructive to make a direct comparison, using side-long performances from Osborne’s All Night Long (Ogun) and Brötzmann’s Opened, But Hardly Touched (FMP). A concert recording made in April 13th, 1975, in Willisau, the A side of the Osborne album is a medley: “All Night Long / Rivers / ‘Round Midnight / Scotch Pearl” medley, with Osborne tunes bookending a free improv and Thelonious Monk’s classic melody. Recorded at a Berlin gig in November 1980, “Double Meaning” was the D side of the original double LP. These were chosen as both live recordings cresting 20 minutes in length. The Osborne begins with the briefest of alto fanfares before dropping into a maelstrom. The intensity is almost overwhelming but all three are moored to a pulse, like tetherballs in a hurricane, only moving so far afield of the central pole. When Miller switches to arco for the improvised “Rivers,” it is to make things even more frenetic. Monk’s tune, so often turned as sappy as possible, has a snappy martial cadence from Miller and Moholo, the former almost in Paul Chambers mode. Osborne’s puckered tone is in wonderful complement to Miller’s thick, rubber-band like sound. Osborne and Moholo drop out for the bass solo, but the metrical foundation is never abandoned. The last nine minutes or so are given over to “Scotch Pearl,” Miller a flamenco dancer over Moholo’s press rolls and industrial hi-hat. He turns his walk almost into a churn and Osborne is at his most feverish. By the close, the proceedings feel even more unhinged – an “All Night Long” quote thrown in – than how they started but then you realize your foot never stopped tapping. It slows and steadies over Miller’s double stops and Osborne’s snake-charming, fading out (the 2008 CD reissue finishes the section with Osborne’s “Waltz,” true to its title). By 2024, Osborne has become a figure mostly lost to history, especially by young modern alto players. This is a perfect introduction to spark his renaissance. The Brötzmann piece starts with Miller and Moholo. The strength of the former’s fingers and his stretchy feel is still present, if a bit more spacious. Brötzmann on tenor enters after two minutes for a segment of prototypical, semi-languid European improv. All three are generating their own rhythms, a triple helix with loose atomistic bonds, getting denser and more clattery. There is urgency but not nearly as much tension as with the Osborne performance. Miller’s arco has the same strained violence of Brötzmann’s saxophone. Another segment of just bass and drums refreshes more than it resets, Miller especially active across the neck in rasgueado flourishes, then pushing his bow against the strings like he is trying to cut through them. Brötzmann returns in his particular morose type of balladeering, long lamentory tones consoled by Miller’s light pizzicato waltz. This section recalls to a degree Osborne’s “‘Round Midnight” but from the other direction. With the lack of melodic signposts, Miller and Moholo can become implicatory, punctuating rather than propelling. If Osborne’s tone was citron, Brötzmann’s is chewier like a plantain. After 17 minutes, Miller slows to low bowed saws and Brötzmann switches to E-flat clarinet while Moholo echoes with lightly dancing tom and cymbal splashes, a honky-tonk at the end of a long night and too much bourbon. The trio has coalesced into something unique to themselves and almost lovely. What Brötzmann heard in the possibilities of these bandmates has flowered, closing with final individual exhalations. Neither trio was overly documented, two full albums apiece. Miller working with Brötzmann came after a 1977 move to Netherlands, which, though he kept playing with his old English pals, dropped him into a very different scene where, according to Hazel Miller, “he was getting more work and forming new directions in his music.” 1977 was also the last document of Miller with Osborne, the May 31st quintet hit released on Ogun as Marcel’s Muse. There was a June 29th, 1980 Brötzmann/Miller performance released by Corbett Vs. Dempsey in 2007, but no duo encounter with Osborne exists, no surprise as the only time the saxophonist worked sans drums was in his duo with pianist Stan Tracey and the saxophone trio S.O.S. with Surman and Skidmore. The magical realist discographer in me wishes for a recording with Osborne, Brötzmann, Miller, and Moholo to surface, just to see how the two horns might interact and where Miller and Moholo would drive them or be driven by them.
© 2024 Andrey Henkin
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