Long out of print on vinyl, Stan Tracey's Jazz Suite Inspired by Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood" has just been gloriously remastered and reissued by the U.K.'s Resteamed label. Recorded in March 1965 in London, this album has been heralded as one of British jazz's finest LPs. All eight compositions were by pianist Stan Tracey, who was backed on by Bobby Wellins on tenor saxophone, Jeff Clyne on bass and Jackie Dougan on drums.
The album was inspired by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, a 1954 radio drama commissioned by the BBC. In the performance, a narrator invites the audience to listen to the dreams and innermost thoughts of the inhabitants of a fictional small Welsh fishing village. Thomas worked himself to death finishing Under Milk Wood, his only play, dying in November 1953. He never heard it performed on the BBC on January 25, 1954. [Photo above of Dylan Thomas]
From the opening:
Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.
What made Under Milk Wood so significant was its recognition of the goodness that people are capable of and the warmth of friendship, family and community so essential to the fabric of a town. In some respects, it's a more poetic post-war telling of Thornton Wilder's Our Town (1938). In 1950s England, as the misery of World War II shifted to the hardship of a tight economy, grueling work schedules and a lack of diversions, Thomas's play offered hope.
Tracey was inspired to compose the suite after listening to the original BBC broadcast on an LP his wife, Jackie, had acquired. Recorded in March 1965 for EMI's Columbia label in the U.K. and released that year, Tracey's album ambitiously united compelling themes with the conversational exchanges between Tracey's unusual piano style and Wellins' happy-go-lucky saxophone.
Tracey's piano had much in common with Thelonious Monk's lurching, jagged style. As a result, critics have likened the album's sound to Monk with tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse. I would disagree with that assessment. To me, Wellins sounds more like Stan Getz, which is quite fascinating. To the best of my knowledge, Monk and Getz never recorded together, which is a shame. [Photo above of Stan Tracey]
The closest you're going to come to hearing how that pairing might have sounded can be found on this album. The tracks are Cockle Row, Starless and Bible Black, Lost My Step in Nantucket, No Good Boyo, Penpals, Llareggub, Under Milk Wood and A.M. Mayhem.
Here's Starless and Bible Black, the high point, from the newly remastered LP version...
And here's Cockle Row, from the remastered LP...
JazzWax note: For my earlier posts on Stan Tracey, go here and here. Tracey died in December 2013. He was 86.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find the Stan Tracey Quartet's Under Milk Wood (Resteamed)—remastered for LP release by Clark Tracey, Stan's son, and Tristan Powell—here.