Saturday, July 27, 2019

Paraphernalia Down: Barbara Thompson 75

Let's begin to wrap up July with a milestone birthday for a severely underrated player.
Surely one of the top female reedmasters on the planet, she is 75 today.
She first became known in the band of her husband, who I covered here last year when he passed after a 50 year career as the leader of one of the original Progressive Rock bands, Colosseum.
She guested on a whole bunch of records in the 1970s before going out on her own in 1978, leading two groups at the same time whilst still finding time to play in Wolfgang Dauner's United Jazz & Rock Ensemble, another of Joshy's favorite Euro-fusion groups.
A passel of solo records and guest honkings followed in the 1980s, with several platters from her main band, Paraphernalia, hitting the shelves.
More followed as the 1980s became the Nineties, until a Parkinson's diagnosis took her off the stage into a temporary retirement.
She gave a series of farewell concerts, but somehow she came back from what seemed like a career-ending medical crisis just a few years later.
She's collaborated on a handful of musicals as well, with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber on worldwide favorites like Cats and Starlight Express.
Often found blowing multiple horns simultaneously, her late Seventies/early Eighties fusion records are never far from my personal playlistings.
It's one of these LPs -- most of them have never seen the light of day in the digital reissue era -- that we'll fire up today, fresh from a lovely vinyl transfer that I meticulously declicked the other day.
Barbara Thompson
Barbara Thompson's Jubiaba
1978

01 The Funky Flunky
02 Seega
03 Helena
04 Cuban Thing
05 Black Pearl
06 Touch Of Blue
07 Slum Goddess

Total time: 37:09

Barbara Thompson - saxophones & flutes
Roy Babbington - bass & guitar
Trevor Tomkins - drums
Peter Lerner - piano & synthesizeers
Glyn Thomas - percussion
Henry Lowther - trumpet
Ian Hamer - trumpet
Bill Le Sage - vibraphone & percussion
  
24/96 LP rip of the long OOP album
converted to 16/44 and declicked by EN, July 2019
I'll try to get one more missive for July up before August augurs in.
Do enjoy this very rare and long out-of-print platter though... Barbara Thompson -- born this day in 1944 -- is sounding the clarion call, on multiple horns, for your attention.--J.