Jazz Bassoon — Graham Lyons

Delicious Digg Email Facebook Friendfeed Google Linkedin Newsvine Reddit Rss Stumbleupon Technorati Twitter Hide

My main area of research in the past few years has been the use of the bas­soon in jazz; in fact, I wrote my dis­ser­ta­tion on the sub­ject. But I’ve thus far neglect­ed writ­ing about it here, most­ly because there’s too much infor­ma­tion to con­dense into a sin­gle blog post! I’ll get around to writ­ing a his­tor­i­cal overview at some point, but for now, suf­fice it to say that there have been hun­dreds of jazz record­ings (close to a thou­sand, actu­al­ly) that include bas­soon­ists in var­i­ous roles, dat­ing back to at least the ear­ly 1920s.

Jazz Bassoon Cover

Today, as a start­ing point, I’m going to write about a recent addi­tion to my own record col­lec­tion: a 45rpm sin­gle enti­tled Jazz Bas­soon. The record was pressed in 1967, and fea­tures Gra­ham Lyons on bas­soon (also, as the cov­er points out, on clar­inet, sax, piano, and as arranger). I often hunt for par­tic­u­lar records; this was­n’t one of those. In fact, even though I’ve assem­bled an exten­sive discog­ra­phy of jazz record­ing ses­sions involv­ing bas­soon, I had exact­ly zero knowl­edge of this disc before it popped up on eBay.

I knew a bit about Gra­ham Lyons him­self, though. Among oth­er things, he record­ed a few tunes on bas­soon, clar­inet, and bari sax with the British trad jazz band The Tem­per­ance Sev­en in the ear­ly 60s. Lyons has led a var­ied career as a per­former, com­pos­er, and teacher of mul­ti­ple wood­wind instru­ments. One of his recent endeav­ors is the Clar­inéo, a sim­pli­fied plas­tic clar­inet for young play­ers. But this record­ing of his, released on a tiny label (that may in fact have been owned by Lyons him­self), had flown com­plete­ly under my radar.

Jazz Bassoon Record

The A side of this disc is a Lyons orig­i­nal enti­tled “Bas­soono­va.” This tune has been either re-released or re-record­ed on a CD col­lec­tion of Lyon­s’s works, so I won’t post it here. It is, as you’d expect, a bossa nova. Lyons takes a rel­a­tive­ly lengthy solo on bas­soon in addi­tion to play­ing all the parts in sec­tions of four-part bas­soon har­mo­ny and dual clar­inets. All of this is sup­port­ed by a rhythm sec­tion of Lyons again on piano, Rob Rubin on bass, and Bill Eyden on drums.

The B side, Cole Porter’s “I Love Paris,” has a mul­ti-part intro that starts off with two bas­soons over a piano/bass drone. Once the band hits the tune itself, Lyons plays just a bit of the melody on bas­soon before tak­ing a cho­rus and a half worth of solo. He fol­lows this with brief solos on bari sax, clar­inet, and piano. But here, lis­ten for yourself:

[haiku url=“Graham-Lyons-I-Love-Paris.mp3” title=“Graham Lyons — I Love Paris”]

The back side of the sleeve has actu­al notes — rare on 7″ sin­gles, at least in my expe­ri­ence. These con­firm what we might guess from the title, that Lyons is with this record try­ing to make the point that the bas­soon can be a viable jazz instru­ment. “I want­ed to show the bas­soon in all its reg­is­ters,” Lyons writes, “the dif­fer­ent ways it could be used, and how it would fit in a jazz set­ting.” He also touch­es on what he sees as the main rea­son the bas­soon has­n’t been used more in jazz: “A tricky phrase which might take fif­teen min­utes to prac­tice and get right on a clar­inet or sax­o­phone is sure to take an hour on the bas­soon.” This is a great addi­tion to my quotes file, and echoes pub­lished com­ments by oth­er jazz bas­soon play­ers like Illi­nois Jacquet and Paul Han­son (more on them anoth­er time).

  • Michael Rabinowitz

    January 12th, 2013

    Reply

    Dave,

    Thanks for telling about the recording.
    He has a nice sound and pret­ty flu­id in his
    improv. I like that his keep­ing the acoustic
    sound of the horn. A bit rem­i­nis­cent of Errol
    Bud­dle in the Aus­tralian Jazz Quintet.

    • David A. Wells

      January 15th, 2013

      Reply

      Sure thing! Yes, the whole arrange­ment sounds very AJQ-ish. The sleeve notes men­tion Bud­dle, so I’m bet­ting that his play­ing was a direct influ­ence here.

  • Graham Lyons

    January 31st, 2013

    Reply

    Yes, my label.
    25 years ago, I threw away all but a few of them. 

    I had­n’t heard Errol Bud­dle by then. I was­n’t influ­enced by any one musi­cian. I lis­tened to so much impro­vised jazz at the time—Clifford Brown, Getz, Stitt, Mob­ley, Tub­by Hayes, Peter­son, de Fran­co, Cannonball.

    • David A. Wells

      February 3rd, 2013

      Reply

      Aha, thanks Mr. Lyons! I’m very inter­est­ed in know­ing about influ­ences on peo­ple who’ve played jazz bas­soon — par­tic­u­lar­ly whether they’ve lis­tened to oth­er jazz bas­soon­ists or not. So, every bit of infor­ma­tion one way or the oth­er is helpful.

      And if you dis­posed of most of these records, I feel very lucky indeed to have come across one. I thor­ough­ly enjoy it!

  • Anita Scorer

    August 21st, 2021

    Reply

    Is Gra­ham Lyons still alive ? My father is the Jazz trom­bon­ist and a com­pos­er Tony Rus­sell. Gra­ham played in the band for the West End per­for­mance of a musi­cal my father com­posed ‘The Matchgirls’,
    I would like to speak to him. .

    • David A. Wells

      August 21st, 2021

      Reply

      Ani­ta, you might try con­tact­ing Mr. Lyons via the com­pa­ny he found­ed, Nuvo Instru­men­tal Ltd. https://www.nuvoinstrumental.com/about-nuvo/ It’s a lit­tle unclear from their site whether he’s still involved with the com­pa­ny or not, but they prob­a­bly know how to get in touch with him.

    • Graham Lyons

      August 21st, 2021

      Reply

      Ani­ta, I am alive — just.
      Do you live in Britain?
      I remem­ber play­ing in the pit for The Match Girls, and talk­ing to your Dad there.

      • Anita Scorer

        August 22nd, 2021

        Reply

        I am in Lon­don. This is what I want­ed to speak to you about. Please can you email me and I can say more. anitascorer@btopenworld.com.

  • Sam Lyons

    July 28th, 2024

    Reply

    Hi David

    Just want­ed to let you know that my father, Gra­ham Lyons, passed away on 13th June 2024. We held his funer­al recent­ly in York­shire where he lived. An arti­cle about him will be pub­lished by the Clar­inet and Sax­o­phone Soci­ety GB at some stage. Thanks for high­light­ing his unique record!

    • David A. Wells

      August 5th, 2024

      Reply

      Sam, my con­do­lences on the loss of your father, and thank you for post­ing that update here. I had seen the news via Face­book, I think from one of your father’s for­mer stu­dents, and that week devot­ed one of my semi-reg­u­lar record posts to him and this disc. I’ll look for­ward to read­ing the arti­cle about him when it’s published!

Leave a Comment

* are Required fields