Don Rendell & Ian Carr Quintet - 1969 - Change Is

Don Rendell & Ian Carr Quintet

1969

Change Is

01. Elastic Dream

02. One Green Eye

03. Boy, Dog And Carrot

04. Cold Mountain

05. Black Hair

06. Mirage

Bass – Dave Green, Jeff Clyne (tracks: A1)

Drums – Trevor Tomkins

Piano – Mike Pyne (tracks: A2)

Piano, Harpsichord – Michael Garrick

Talking Drum, Maracas – Guy Warren (tracks: A1, A3)

Tenor Saxophone, Clarinet – Stan Robinson (tracks: A1, A2)

Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone, Flute – Don Rendell

Trumpet, Flugelhorn – Ian Carr

Recorded: London, March 20 & April 16, 1969.

After being out of catalogue for many years, over twenty of the finest '60s/'70s albums by British jazz masters Don Rendell and Ian Carr are now available again. The duo are key collaborators on the crucially important Integration and Greek Variations albums reissued by Universal/Impressed, while the wonderfully eclectic web-based reissue label BGO has released five of the Rendell/Carr Quintet's albums and all of Carr's albums with Nucleus. There's a rare feast of Prime Cut Grade A Meat (sorry, they showed The Wedding Singer on British TV again last night) out there right now.

Change Is is the latest in BGO's Rendell/Carr Quintet strand. Recorded in '69, it is the last album recorded by the Quintet before the two leaders went their mostly separate ways, Carr to form Nucleus and Rendell to lead his own, less feted but equally exciting, two saxophones/pianoless Quartet. It showcases all the adventurous and idiosyncratic composing and performing qualities that made the Quintet one of the most distinctive post-hard bop groups of the '60s, and also signposts some of the new directions Carr would take with Nucleus.

The opening "Elastic Dream" introduces several of the ideas Carr would develop with Nucleus: an imaginatively constructed, serpentine theme, performed by an expanded line-up featuring two basses, and linked to the following track by a free-improvised passage; the only important Nucleus ingredient it lacks is guitarist Chris Spedding. It's a brilliant piece, full of fresh instrumental textures and quirky solos and almost orchestral in its arrangement.

Intimations of Nucleus aside, one of the other big excitements of Change Is is the debut recorded appearance of tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Stan Robinson—soon to be a founder member, with drummer Trevor Tomkins, of the Rendell Quartet—who guests on two tracks. Robinson, who stands thrillingly shoulder to shoulder with Rendell in the section work, gives a truly bad ass, booting tenor solo on Mike Pyne's funked up "One Green Eye."

Other highlights include Michael Garrick's raga based "Cold Mountain," building up from a slow burn start into a wild dervish dance foregrounding Rendell's skirling, snake charmer soprano and Garrick's hammered, rapid fire chord clusters, the icing on the cake being the pleasingly bizarre traces of Kurt Weill in the theme statements; Garrick's use of harpsichord on the Horace Silverish "Boy, Dog And Carrot;" and on the closing "Mirage," Rendell's and Carr's muscular, in a Kind Of Blue groove solos, among both men's most memorable.

Given its position in the end-of-one-era/start-of-another development of Rendell's and Carr's music, Change Is is a remarkably cohesive work, wholly enduring and richly enjoyable, and it's a joy to have it back.

Note for further investigation : Despite very clearly growing out of the American jazz tradition—and despite also a sustained enthusiasm for Balkan, Indian, African and Middle Eastern musics—there is something unmistakably but somehow indefinably British about Rendell's and Carr's music. It's nothing as obvious as, say, the use of English folk songs, Welsh harps or Northumbrian pipes, it's a lot more "other" than that, more to do with emotional atmosphere and maybe the approach to collective music making, and would probably require a few thousand words to nail down satisfactorily. But someone ought to try.

By all accounts this is the last LP in the Rendell/Carr partnership which has produced much good music and several durable al­bums. Change Is constitutes a fond farewell by the quintet, augmented on various tracks by Stan Robinson, Jeff Clyne, Guy Warren and Mike Pyne.

If the set is perhaps uneven, this was because the group were reaching out for new things, especially on Elastic Dream and Cold Moun­tain. Some of the playing on the opening track is a trifle vapid but on One Green Eye, a pleasant Pyne composition with the composer sitting in at the keyboard to good effect and Stan Robinson making his record debut blowing beautiful tenor, and Boy, a lilting chart by the co-leaders featuring excellent Garrick harpsichord, things really jell. Both tracks would need to be included in a Best of Rendell/Carr LP (not such a bad idea at that).

Cold Mountain is a very down theme which, like Black Hair, was written by Michael Gar­rick and inspired by raga scales. Don em­ploys his pensive soprano on the former and uses flute on the latter. Carr plays interesting flugelhorn on Mountain, switches to trumpet for Hair and returns to the larger horn for Mirage, which sports his finest solo of the date. Bassist Dave Green is impressive on Mountain.

One of the best British groups of the 1960s bows out extremely gracefully with the aptly titled Rendell piece Mirage. Rendell’s solo is a peach. In the 70s, one hopes that Rendell and Carr apart will be as artistically produc­tive as Rendell and Carr together were.