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Jazz 20/12/2004

Saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith dies at 70

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NEW YORK (Top40 Charts) - Legendary saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith has died of cancer yesterday.
"He died yesterday in hospital after a long battle with cancer. He was a giant of the music industry," musician and long-time friend Roger Bunn said.

Heckstall-Smith was born Richard Malden in September 1934 at Ludlow, England. Initially inspired by Sidney Bechet, then moving even further out under the influence of bebopper Wardell Gray, Dick's award-winning performances at Cambridge University (a silver cup!) before the astute judge Sandy Brown eventually led to membership in Sandy's highly adventurous group in late 1957.

Always in love with the blues, Dick was the first jazz musician to join Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated in 1962, thus forging a new and distinctly British line of blues/jazz/rock/R&B fusion.
The talent that Blues Inc. sported was indeed remarkable - at one time or another Ron Wood, Art Wood, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, Charlie Watts, Long John Baldry, Paul Jones, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones and Keith Richards all trod the stage under the aegis of Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies.
During this time, Dick began composing while simultaneously experimenting with free-form playing alongside such musical paint-the-town-red players as organist Graham Bond and poets Pete Brown and Mike Horovitz in a band called, fittingly, New Departures.

As with all truly creative entities, Blues Inc. eventually came to the end of its collective path, dividing into a two-headed blues monster with the creation of The All-Stars. However the nucleus of Blues Inc. (Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Dick Heckstall-Smith) linked up with the aforementioned organic gadabout Graham Bond to form The Graham Bond Organization in September 1963.
One of the first truly great British bands, the GNO meant to musicians what The Beatles meant to the public - although the mental image of the likes of John Mayall or Mick Taylor squealing at the antics of Mr. Heckstall-Smith ("the reedy one") on stage is truly frightening. The band was once highly praised by Marvin Gaye after they had backed him on a British TV program. vTrue genius, it is said, is very often manifested in bizarre behavior and excessive living, qualities Graham Bond displayed to such a degree that one could easily believe that he had invented the terms. While such an approach can spawn brilliant music, it can also destroy its creators; this sadly was the case with the GBO. By the summer of 1967, Graham Bond was doing a thorough job of following the philosophy that "to be a 'ruined man' is itself a vocation". Recognizing the imminent destruction, Heckstall-Smith, the last of Graham Bond's original trio of musical musketeers, left to do...well, actually he hadn't decided what to do. And that's when the phone rang and Dick Heckstall-Smith became a member of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers.

If being a member of the Graham Bond Organization was pinball anarchy, then being a member of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers was more akin to corporate rigidity - less day- to-day drama, but accordingly less gunpowder-in-the-nostrils excitement that can push the creative envelope. With John Mayall, Keef Hartley (drums), Keith Tillman then Paul Williams on bass and Mick Taylor, Dick Heckstall-Smith found an island of tranquility that both sustained and recharged his batteries - and also provided his first trip to America. As time went on, Paul Williams left to be replaced by Andy Fraser (soon to form Free) and Jon Hiseman (soon to be a founding member of Colosseum) replaced Keef Hartley.
The seminal record Bare Wires came out of this time but by July 1968, the wheel of fortune was about to spin once again for Dick Heckstall-Smith. Having decided to do away with the three-piece brass section that had distinguished The Bluesbreakers, John Mayall unknowingly gave Dick Heckstall-Smith the opportunity to become a founding member of the band that would provide his largest dose of aesthetic satisfaction and financial reward - Colosseum.

The musical collective that was Colosseum was a five-headed Hydra composed of drummer Jon Hiseman, guitarist James Litherland, replaced after a year by Dave 'Clem' Clempson, keyboardist Dave Greenslade, bass player Tony Reeves (replaced eventually by Mark Clarke) and Dick Heckstall-Smith (later expanded to a six-piece with the addition of vocalist Chris Farlowe). Together they set the tone for intelligent, emotive music that would influence bands as diverse as Chicago and Led Zeppelin.
But by November 1971, after a trio of superbly executed and critically-acclaimed releases (Those About To Die Salute You, Live, and Daughter Of Time), the creative well began to run dry and alternative offers were being made to individual members of the band. So having stood as an entity for a slightly shorter time than its cousin the Roman Colosseum, the band folded.

The demise of the first Colosseum was followed by a solo record A Story Ended, marking Dick's first writing collaboration with Cream lyricist Pete Brown. Manchild, the band Dick formed to play this material, was well on course (including a third visit to the U.S. supporting Fleetwood Mac and Deep Purple) when a severe back injury forced him to shelve the entire project and give up music for a time.

Having regained his health, Dick was once more seduced by the blues and returned to recording in 1981 with a band called Mainsqueeze, backing Bo Diddley several times. A new direction occurred for a while when 3-Space, a folk-based trio with John James, was launched in 1984. After that, there was African-style jazz with Julian Bahula, blues with Matt Black, the seminal jazz-funk group DHS$ and an autobiography of Dick's life, musical and otherwise, called "The Safest Place In The World".

In early 1992, Dick had another long illness before starting to work regularly with The Hamburg Blues Band, then re-forming Colosseum for a 50-day reunion tour and also appearing in concert with Jack Bruce. He had been supplied by friends John Mayall, Jack Bruce, Peter Green, Clem Clempson, Mick Taylor, Jon Hiseman and Paul Williams.






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