Harry Beckett's Joy Unlimited - Not for Tomorrow, for to Now
To make the most posts in a single month since February of 2021 -- and to share yet more improved versions of essential, underloved ROIO joy -- I am closing out May with a trumpet hero as undersung as yesterday's voyage of 1983 Miles was household in its name.
Today we have the 90th b'day of one of the leading figures of the Golden Age of Britjazz, whose music remains an indelible insignia on the whole of Jazz in general and not just wot from the UK.
Originally from Barbados, when he emigrated to England in 1954 and hooked up with British Jazz icon Graham Collier, he began an ascent that would, by the dawn of the 1970s, make him among the leading lights on his instrument(s) worldwide.
Probably one of the three most distinctive instrumental voices in Jazz from Britain, Harry Beckett's insanely-understated, impeccably tasteful playing is beyond verbal description, I'd say at his peak he's like Chet Baker buzzed on Bitches' Brew, or maybe an English Eddie Henderson -- how the hell have never covered him? I'm so stoopid, I sit on the TV and watch the couch, I swear! -- if you're in need of a Doctor.
The available selection of ROIOs on a figure such as he is obviously not akin to the amount of Bob Dylan boots that are out there, and we pray to the god we don't believe in that someday there will be a giant boxset of HB's millions of BBC sessions.
At least if my plan to parachute into their London HQ, wearing nothing but a diaper sewn from the British flag and an accompanying Tubby Hayes bowtie, to demand immediate access to the vaults goes according to how I've got it drawn up on this Jamba Juice napkin, anyway.
There are, however, these three random ones that circulate for many years, in addition to this (too bad it's only 28 minutes long) 1974 one that was released officially some time back.
After a few little remasterizzational techniques were applied, these now sound even more delicious than the original tapes were, so until that dreambox happens with all ten trillion hours of Beckett BBC, we have this CD's worth of sumptuousness to digest.
Watch out along the way for Harry's cohorts on this stuff, which include superstar guitar slinger Ray Russell, maverick Maestro Michael Garrick and Soft Machinist Elton Dean, whom you May remember from my Mike Ratledge tape that began the month.
Harry Beckett
BBC sessions
1975-1982
I.
Harry Beckett's Joy Unlimited
BBC Jazz Club
broadcast 7.27.1975
01 Green Stripes On Red
02 Not for Tomorrow, for to Now
03 Rings Within Rings
Harry Beckett - trumpet & flugelhorn
Brian Miller - keyboards
Ray Russell - guitar
Steve Cook - bass
John Webb - drums
Robin Jones - percussion
II.
Harry Beckett Quintet
BBC Jazz Club
likely broadcast October 1981
04 Images of Clarity
05 Pictures of You
06 Time of Day
Harry Beckett - trumpet & flugelhorn
Elton Dean - saxello & alto saxophone
Martin Blackwell - keyboards
Paul Rogers - bass
Tony Marsh - drums
III.
Harry Beckett Quintet
Radio 1 Sounds of Jazz
broadcast 2.14.1982
07 Symbols
08 Chandeliers and Mirrors
09 Chase Me No More
Harry Beckett - trumpet & flugelhorn
Elton Dean - saxello & alto saxophone
Michael Garrick - keyboards
Paul Rogers - bass
Tony Marsh - drums
Total time: 1:18:50
three sets of off-air FM captures -- likely master cassettes or reels -- of indeterminate origin
retracked, repaired & remastered -- with announcer removed -- by EN, May 2025
508 MB FLAC/direct link
508 MB FLAC/direct link
That will do it for me for now, but fear not, O 12 readers that come to this page! For I already have a couple of things cooking for the Juneteenth BBQ season, including one so obsessively manic in its research needs, I will probably need to be massively medicated by the time the solstice syzygy's.
But what better way to bid farewell to the month than with this tribute to Harry Beckett -- born this very day in 1935 -- whose flugelhorn chops alone make lesser players sound like foghorns on fentanyl!--J.
5.30.1935 - 7.22.2010