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Jack Bruce

#22
Jack Bruce is the reason I picked up the bass. I love a pretty decent amount of his work. None more-so than Cream though. Everything he did in that band was incredible. His playing on Crossroad's is phenomenal. I give Clapton a bad rap quite a bit of the time, but I also think his playing on Crossroad's is the last good thing he did. Well, an exception here and there, but nothing has been THAT good. It's not just blues licks like he vomited since then, it's original playing.
 
#24
Big Bruce fan from way back...so I agree with everyone responses.

Not mentioned yet is Things We Like.
It borders on being a Free Jazz album...released right after Cream blew up.
I just bought this album in the past year (after another TB-er mentioned the Jack Bruce bio, Composing Himself.
Another one I added after reading the bio was Spirit: Live @The BBC 1971-1978.
I was interested in hearing Bruce with the Carla Bley/David Sancious bands. FWIW, this one did not blow me away.

Bruce is also playing with some avant Funk-Jazz-Rock guys...like Bernie Worrell & Vernon Reid & Latin-Jazz guys...like El Negro & Robbie Ammeen. I need to hear this. Any recommendations?

...and I still need to pick up Songs For A Tailor & Harmony Row!
This thread reminds me of that!
 
#26
If all you know is Cream, or even if you think that the Cream stuff is the epitome of his work, you ain't been listening... He's a prolific writer with a very wide tastes and it shows in his solo work so very well. So, if you want to know more about Jack then dig into:

A. "Wheels of Fire" by Cream because it covers both a good representation of their studio work (with a sympathetic producer, Felix Pappilardi) and the spectacle of their live work. And when listening to the live work you HAVE to pay attention to the interplay between them. This is so NOT a turgid R'n'R rhythm section providing steady backing for a guitarist to wank. No, it's three musicians who are actively LISTENING to each other and tossing ideas back and forth. This is, as Jack and Ginger have said many times, a jazz band with a blues guitarist.

B. "Harmony Row" Because it has some of Jack's most beautiful songs, singing, and arrangement. "Hey, Can You Follow", "The Consul At Sunset", "Post War", "Letter Of Thanks"...

C. "Shadows In The Air" for it's Afro-Cuban reinterpretation of older songs (including "Sunshine Of Your Love", "White Room" and "Out Into The Fields") as well as new material.

D. The 50th Birthday concert recordings. There's a double CD set and an smaller single CD issue titled "Sitting On Top Of The World". It gathered people from all eras of Jack's music to that point. Just about everyone EXCEPT Clapton- it's got Ginger Baker, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Bernie Worrell, Simon Phillips, Maggie Reilly, Clem Clempson, Gary Moore, and his sons Malcom and Jonas. They revisit classic Jack material from "Hey, Can You Follow" with just Jack and a piano to the free form jazz of "Over The Cliff", to a heart-breaking version of "Theme For An Imaginary Western", and a killer version of "Politician".

E. The Royal Albert Hall Cream Reunion concerts. This is vital. Why? Because it shows three old friends who respect each others' musicianship playing music with each other because they want to. And it shows who they were forty years later, not a pathetic attempt to pretend to still be 20-something pissed off kids any more.

The key in all of this is to hear how Jack constantly reinvents his lines. He NEVER plays anything the same way twice, but it's always "right" for the song. And also marvel in the way he totally separates his singing from his bass playing. While most singing bassists wind up sounding like either the vocals or (more commonly) the bass part is either simplified or mechanically memorized, Jack doesn't. It's as if he had two brains, one totally focused on the singing, the other totally focused on the bass playing. Wildly improvisational fills and embellishments to both the vocal and bass at the same time.

THAT'S the greatest lesson I learned from listening to Jack. That the music is of the moment and our job is to express the moment.

John
 
#29
Songs for a Tailor - The real version of Imaginary Western (always on my pod).

BLT - Bruce, Lordan and Trower - Not great but 'Into Money" is a great song where both Trower and Bruce compliement each other's styles. "No Island Lost" is almost homage to Hendrix Voodoo Chile... "Life on Earth" has some great bass on it as well.

Lots of good Jack Bruce archive to harvest - go nuts!
 
#32
TheCush said:
I didn't see it mentioned (might have missed it) but does anyone remember Jack's big solo playing on Frank Zappa's Apostrophe (title song from that album)? I remember being blown away by that as a kid.
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking reading this thread. Ironically, Zappa didn't like playing with Jack, said he was "too busy". I'd love to hear the rest of that jam. Apparently, it was just a jam in the studio, and Zappa edited it down to the part he liked best. One of my favorite Zappa "songs"! Any Zappa mix I make kicks off with Apostrophe. :D
 
#33
AlvarHanso said:
That's what I was thinking reading this thread. Ironically, Zappa didn't like playing with Jack, said he was "too busy". I'd love to hear the rest of that jam. Apparently, it was just a jam in the studio, and Zappa edited it down to the part he liked best. One of my favorite Zappa "songs"! Any Zappa mix I make kicks off with Apostrophe. :D
Click to expand...

Didn't know that - thanks for more background. I remember as a kid how I thought he kept it feeling like a bass groove while soloing, not like playing bass like it was a guitar. I spent a lot of hours hunched over that LP working out what I could (I think I can still play some of it - might have to break that out for another listen).
 
#34
JTE said:
If all you know is Cream, or even if you think that the Cream stuff is the epitome of his work, you ain't been listening... He's a prolific writer with a very wide tastes and it shows in his solo work so very well. So, if you want to know more about Jack then dig into:

A. "Wheels of Fire" by Cream because it covers both a good representation of their studio work (with a sympathetic producer, Felix Pappilardi) and the spectacle of their live work. And when listening to the live work you HAVE to pay attention to the interplay between them. This is so NOT a turgid R'n'R rhythm section providing steady backing for a guitarist to wank. No, it's three musicians who are actively LISTENING to each other and tossing ideas back and forth. This is, as Jack and Ginger have said many times, a jazz band with a blues guitarist.

B. "Harmony Row" Because it has some of Jack's most beautiful songs, singing, and arrangement. "Hey, Can You Follow", "The Consul At Sunset", "Post War", "Letter Of Thanks"...

C. "Shadows In The Air" for it's Afro-Cuban reinterpretation of older songs (including "Sunshine Of Your Love", "White Room" and "Out Into The Fields") as well as new material.

D. The 50th Birthday concert recordings. There's a double CD set and an smaller single CD issue titled "Sitting On Top Of The World". It gathered people from all eras of Jack's music to that point. Just about everyone EXCEPT Clapton- it's got Ginger Baker, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Bernie Worrell, Simon Phillips, Maggie Reilly, Clem Clempson, Gary Moore, and his sons Malcom and Jonas. They revisit classic Jack material from "Hey, Can You Follow" with just Jack and a piano to the free form jazz of "Over The Cliff", to a heart-breaking version of "Theme For An Imaginary Western", and a killer version of "Politician".

E. The Royal Albert Hall Cream Reunion concerts. This is vital. Why? Because it shows three old friends who respect each others' musicianship playing music with each other because they want to. And it shows who they were forty years later, not a pathetic attempt to pretend to still be 20-something pissed off kids any more.

The key in all of this is to hear how Jack constantly reinvents his lines. He NEVER plays anything the same way twice, but it's always "right" for the song. And also marvel in the way he totally separates his singing from his bass playing. While most singing bassists wind up sounding like either the vocals or (more commonly) the bass part is either simplified or mechanically memorized, Jack doesn't. It's as if he had two brains, one totally focused on the singing, the other totally focused on the bass playing. Wildly improvisational fills and embellishments to both the vocal and bass at the same time.

THAT'S the greatest lesson I learned from listening to Jack. That the music is of the moment and our job is to express the moment.

John
Click to expand...

Great job, John.
To me, Jack's bass playing is just the tip of the iceberg. He's a certified musical genius (wrote a string quartet when he was 11) who sings, composes and plays piano, organ, cello, double bass, harmonica and even acoustic guitar (Richie Havens (!) taught him the open tuning that Jack used in "As You Said" and "Rope Ladder to the Moon") who happens to be phenomenal electric bassist, as well.
I love everything he's done, but "Harmony Row" really kills me.
 
#35
Any live Cream recordings do it for me, the studio stuff is good but live is better.

To be honest I haven't listened to much of his later stuff but I am sure it is just as good.

Jack was probably the biggest influence on me when I started playing back in the 60s. Politician, Born Under a Bad Sign, I'm so glad, etc are still as good today as the first time I heard them.

Check out Train Times on Wheels of Fire disk2, the man can play a mean blues harp as well.
 
#36
About "Crossroads":
It's always fascinated me because of its "bi-level" nature...
Jack and Ginger are churning like demons on one "plane", while Eric simply soars on another, playing those two poised, perfectly structured, wailing solos.
IMO, anyone who slams Clapton just isn't comprehending what makes those solos so incredible.
(The amusing thing is that Eric, himself, doesn't like his performance because he says that he got lost and turned the beat around... but I've never been able to hear it.)
 
#38
Jack was my first bass hero and the first song I ever learned on bass was "Tales of Brave Ulysses." He's still one of my icons and he probably influenced my playing more than anyone else. I imprinted on his signature long chromatic runs and scales very early and that has never left me.

But for sheer tearing the roof off the joint and then blowing down what's left of the house, "Pollution Woman" from the first West/Bruce/Laing album is my top choice. :eek:
 
#39
As you can see from the posts, Jack Bruce inspired many of us. I am one of them.
JackBruce, Tommy Shannon and the bassist for The Butterfield Blues Band (his name escapes me) were my early on hero's.

I saw Cream live in '68 (?) and I bought my first bass that year. The guy knocked my socks off. In fact, as has already been described, he totally upstaged Clapton. I have a lasting impression of him singing "train time" without a PA (lost power) to an audience of thousands and he was still hugely audible. Immensely powerful voice.
 

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