Don Rendell Quintet - 1972 - Space Walk

Don Rendell Quintet

1972

Space Walk

01. On The Way

02. Antibes

03. Summer Song

04. The Street Called Straight

05. Euroaquilo

06. Space Walk

07. A Matter Of Time

Bass – Jack Thorncroft

Drums – Trevor Tomkins

Tenor Saxophone, Clarinet, Flute – Stan Robinson

Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone, Flute, Alto Flute – Don Rendell

Vibraphone, Flute – Peter Shade

Rendell was born around a year before fellow tenor player and British modern jazz trailblazer Ronnie Scott and the two musicians paid their dues from the late 1940s on the same circuit of clubs, bars and rehearsal rooms clustered in London's Soho. Rendell played a Lester Young-inspired brand of bop before beginning to experiment with modal structures at the turn of the 1960s. He did this first with the quintet which recorded Roarin' (Jazzland) in summer 1961. The band's lineup included Cannonball Adderley-inspired alto saxophonist Graham Bond and, at various times, future Cream bassist and drummer Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. Three months after making Roarin', Rendell caught John Coltrane on his only British tour and was so fired up by what he heard that he doorstepped the American at his hotel after the concert. Rendell later described encountering Coltrane, and his effect on jazz, as a "golden earthquake." He continued to explore modal jazz with a quintet he co-led with trumpeter Ian Carr through the second half of the 1960s.

At the turn of the 1970s, Carr left the Rendell-Carr Quintet to form the pioneering jazz-rock ensemble Nucleus. Rendell was out of sympathy with jazz rock, just as he was with the free-jazz movement which was developing in London around the same time. He continued to pursue an idiosyncratic scalar-based direction with a succession of lineups, among the first of which was the quintet heard on Space Walk. The second horn is fellow tenor saxophonist Stan Robinson. Between them, Rendell, Robinson and vibraphonist Peter Shade doubled on soprano saxophone, clarinet, flute and alto flute, extending the group's palette. The only holdover from the Rendell-Carr Quintet was drummer Trevor Tomkins. With Shade's vibraphone taking the place of a piano, the music's harmonic framework was further loosened. Half the material on the album was written by Rendell, the other half by Robinson, Tomkins and Shade. Space Walk is a vigorous and adventurous album but with it Rendell's music fell outside the prevailing currents of jazz rock and free jazz. Despite a lower profile, he maintained his artistic integrity: the first side of his self-produced 1988 album Time Presence was the 20+ minute workout "Trane Set." One of Rendell's last appearances was at a memorial concert for Ian Carr in 2009. He passed away in 2015, aged a respectable 89 years.

The three giant figures of British Jazz in the late ’60s, Michael Garrick (piano), Ian Carr (trumpet) and Don Rendell (saxophone, clarinet and flute) were pulling in separate directions, and forming their own line-ups. The original Rendell Carr Quintet fragmented into the Don Rendell Quintet, the Michael Garrick Sextet (feat. Norma Winstone), and Nucleus (feat. Ian Carr). It’s complicated, but stay with me.

In Don Rendell’s discography, the Space Walk recording was sandwiched between two Michael Garrick Sextet albums, Heart is a Lotus (1970) feat Norma Winstone, vocals, and Home Stretch Blues (1972) feat. Norma Winstone, cunningly renamed “Michael Garrick Band” but still feat. our Norma.

When Ian Carr decided to split and form the jazz-rock band Nucleus, Don Rendell decided not to replace Carr’s searing trumpet presence with another trumpet. Instead Rendell brought in tenor saxophonist Stan Robinson, who had been recording with Don on the 1969 Rendell Car Quintet album Change Is (which likewise did not feat. Norma Winstone, vocals). Robinson, a veteran of the Tubby Hayes Big Band and the Ronnie Ross sextet, was a versatile clarinet, flute and saxophone player, as was Rendell himself. If two flautists was not enough, vibist Peter Shade also played flute. The ingredients had been assembled for Space Walk. Time to cook.

Multiple flutes, clarinets, soprano saxes, a battery of upper register instruments soaring over the lush ringing tones of the vibraphone and sonorus deep bass defines a different sound direction from Rendell’s earlier Lansdowne titles. The three front-line instrumentalists weave layers of serpentine complexity, and it can be difficult to be certain who is playing what, but it is a magic carpet ride, tethered to a tight rhythm section. Bassist Jack Thorncroft is often left in sole custody of the foundations, chord-changes and even melody, striding confidently while everyone else is busy weaving.

These musician’s challenge your natural artist/instrument tracking sense, by swapping instruments on different songs. Rendell may take clarinet or flute or saxophone on one, Stan may move from tenor to clarinet, Shade may take the third flute solo. Despite changing instruments, each player carries over their own vocabulary. Rendell on flute is still Rendell on soprano or clarinet. The whole album positively demands active-listening to catch all the nuances.

It can take a little while for ears schooled on small combo Blue Note to adjust. No rhythmic piano, no excitable trumpet, few if any swaggering tenor solos, and divorced from AABA 32 bar formats, moving from common time to fluid time. It is modal, except when it isn’t. It swings, but not in the conventional groove of spiritual/soul jazz , more an ethereal aesthetic force, and a defiant War of Independence from the hegemony of American Jazz.