Ronnie Ross LP cleopatra's needle RARE UK ACID JAZZ GEM

$

590

Original stereo LP on the Fontana label from 1968 (SFJL 915). Record and flipback sleeve are in near mint condition. This is a very rare Jazz LP, in the Record collector's price guide books it for 80 UK pounds, but I've seen it offered for at least the double.

This album chalks up a number of what the more journalistically inclined like to call 'fists'. To begin with, it's the first time a valuable jazz musician has been required to risk life, limb and instrument by climbing half way up an ancient Egyptian monument (and that was just for the sleeve). Next, it includes possibly the only tune ever dedicated to a microphone - Les Condon's U69; shame on you if you thought different. Finally, and most amazing of all, although he's shared the billing often enough, it seems that Ronnie Ross is appearing on LP as sole leader for the first time.
It's not exactly premature. For those who get excited at the drop of a ballot form, he's been figuring in British jazz polls since before the baritone saxophone stopped being a miscellaneous instrument (in some hands it's still pretty miscellaneous even now). He first made a name for himself in local jazz circles as a sort of 'discovery' of Don Rendell, who used him on tenor apparently - the switch to baritone came shortly after - in a sextet he formed in 1954. Subsequent associations were with Allan Ganley, Ken Moule, and Tony Kinsey. It was while he was with Tony Kinsey, in fact, that he formed long and congenial partnership with pianist Bill le Sage. It began in the mid-fifties in a Kinsey group that went to Cyprus to entertain the forces, and it continues to this day.
He's played in America a number of times; the first was in 1958, when he was a member of the International Band that went to Newport, and the second time was in the next year with Allan Ganley's Jazzmakers. Another occasion was in 1963 when he, Ronnie Scott and Jimmy Deuchar did a season at the Half Note in New York, after which Ronnie Scott made minor history by having a little grumble about an American rhythm section. Soon - mid-1968 - Ronnie Ross will be heard in a BBC television production of Gunther Schuller's opera 'The Visitation', in which a jazz group joins forces with the BBC Symphony Orchestra to play the rather complex 12-tone score. ('We all stick to the tone-row fairly well', says Ronnie, 'though a few hot licks manage to get in here and there').
On this record he's with a conventional jazz line-up of his own choosing. Two sessions were involved: one with a sextet consisting of himself, Les Condon on trumpet, Art Elefsen on tenor, Bill le Sage on piano and vibes, Spike Heatley on bass, and Ronnie Stephenson on drums. The other was by a quintet with the same personnel minus Les Condon and with Tony Carr on drums instead of Ronnie Stephenson.
The whole album marks something of a return to jazz for Ronnie Ross, because, like so many fine musicians of his generation, he finds there simply isn't enough jazz work to keep body, soul and mortgage together. The bulk of his living, therefore comes from using his considerable technique on more or less commercial dates.
'Although I welcomed thechance, I was a bit apprehensive about these sessions,' said Ronnie, 'because I'm not so steeped in jazz these days. But the playback sounded pretty good and I feel much happier about the whole thing. In fact, nothing was as petrifying as having to perch on that ledge on Cleopatra's Needle for the cover picture.'
The playback, in our submission, sounds more than 'pretty good'. Ronnie, on baritone throughout, sounds confident and relaxed, and his roomy tone is well preserved by the recording. The hard, chisel-edge of Art's tenor has seldom been heard better, either, while Les Condon's fleet, darting attack will be a revelation to many listeners. Bill le Sage, on piano except for one track, seems to be in a more rumbustious mood than usual. The eight compositions are all originals. Ronnie Ross wrote three of them: DOLPHIN SQUARE, dedicated to a party at which Zoot Sims was present, once held in a flat there ('It must have been a good one, because I don't remember it'); CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE, which he describes as 'an old fashioned 20-bar blues'; and the quintet number SMILING JACK, which he reluctantly confessed is a nickname for Zoot Sims ? reluctantly, I suspect, because Zoot himself doesn't like being called by it.
Bill le Sage contributed two titles, STAND BY and BREWER'S CASTLE. TIBUFA, intricately derived by assembling syllables taken from certain parts of the human anatomy (jazz musicians' handling of the language can be unbelievably obtuse) is by Art Elefsen. Spike Heatley wrote the very intriguing EUCALYPTUS KID, while LES CONDON provided U69.
The approach is straightforward without being offhand. No extremes, either of hysteria or doom, are involved. No attempt is made to prove anything - except, maybe, what a good idea it was to make the record.

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