Graham Reid | | 3 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes as a double with an extra record of previously unreleased material, in a gatefold sleeve with important liner notes and credits.
Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . .
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Given the resurgence of jazz in the Seventies after pop and rock had dominated the previous decade, it's surprising not more jazz albums were recorded in New Zealand at the time.
But market economics rule and jazz was never a big seller, even when it was considered popular.
In the Eighties when Miles Davis' Tutu – a breakthrough return to (different) form – was getting considerable publicity and the striking cover was visible in record stores the head of his NZ record company told me how many it had sold. It was depressingly few.
The jazz resurgence a decade previous had been largely due to Davis' post-Hendrix albums like Bitches Brew. In the early Seventies when jazz and rock began to cross over there was considerable resistance from established jazz critics about this new, often loud and fast, form called jazz-rock or fusion.
But it made stars of groups like Return to Forever and Weather Report, and of jazz guitarists John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola. Bassist Jaco Pastorius with long locks looked every inch the rock god.
In this country a generation of experienced jazz musicians were still young enough to be excited by the possibilities of this challenging new style.
Drummer Frank Gibson Jnr and keyboard player Murray McNabb were longtime friends and fellow travellers who met at Mt Albert Grammar in the early Sixties when Gibson saw “Monk” written on a wall and traced its perpetrator down to Thelonious Monk-enthusiast McNabb.
They gleefully embraced fusion and their band Dr Tree brought in guitarist Martin Winch, trumpeter Kim Paterson, electric bassist Bob Jackson and percussion player John Banks, with guest saxophonist Colin Hemmingsen.
They recorded one self-titled album in 1976 which ran to only a few hundred copies but was reissued on CD in 2007.
Neither version sold much or are easy to find today.
Now Dr Tree returns as a limited edition double vinyl, restored and remastered at Abbey Road.
It arrives in a gatefold sleeve with alternate takes and additional recordings from the period, some of which Paterson admits he's never heard.
I wrote the CD reissue's liner notes saying “today we hear more jazz than rock in this music” and that's reinforced by the excellent unreleased material in this new edition which includes Gibson's Mood Waltz and McNabb's Fourth World, the latter bringing in senior saxophonist Jimmy Sloggett, guitarist Tuhi Timoti and acoustic bassist Andy Brown.
They undertook Stanley Clarke's Vulcan Worlds and, significantly perhaps, the next Gibson-McNabb group was named Space Case.
For the CD reissue I wrote: “Listen here to Martin Winch peel off an astral-flight solo in Transition or jigsaw’n’spiral his way through Affirmation; enjoy Kim Paterson’s taut trumpet on his own composition Eugino D; be impressed by Frank Gibson’s deft and driving drumming everywhere, but particularly on his own One For Dianne; smile to yourself at the hard-won musical intuition Murray McNabb brings to this set . . .”
Heard almost 50 years on, Dr Tree may seem from another time but it remains singular, fascinating and well worth discovering, especially for Paterson's pure tone, McNabb's exploratory synthed-up space-rock, and the driving energy of Gibson, Winch and busy bassist Jackson.
It was also one of the few local jazz albums released in Seventies.
Dr Tree won three music awards: for best group, breakthrough artist and, ironically, best rock album.
In his last interview before his death in 2013, McNabb joked about those awards and the ceremony: “There wasn’t much happening in the rock business. I was sitting at the table with my hair down to here and there’s all these people coming round I didn’t know and saying, ‘We'll be in touch.’
“And I never heard anything from anybody.”
Dr Tree didn't make another album.
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Dr Tree is currently available on limited edition double vinyl.
From November 1 the complete remastered album with the additional, unreleased material will be available digitally. But the double vinyl is the one you need.
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