Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers : British Jazz, 1960-75 (Popular Music History)

Nominated for the 2012 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research. A musical companion CD, Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers: British Jazz 1961-1975 (RR026), including ten rare recordings, is available from independent Canadian record label Reel Recordings. Proceeds to the Musicians Benevolent Fund UK. The 1960s was a decade of major transformation in British jazz and in British popular music in general. The British jazz scene had been, arguably, the first outside America to assert its independence. At first slowly but with gathering speed, it began to define an identity that drew increasingly on sources from within its own culture, as well as those from African-American jazz, and from its shared European cultural heritage. This process would in itself prove highly influential, as French, Italian, German and Scandinavian scenes began to follow suit. The nature of jazz, its scope and potential were re-examined and reformulated in this period with important implications for its musicians and its audience. The external forces acting upon the British jazz scene were both global and local in origin. Jazz was not immune from the economic, social and cultural changes that occurred following the Second World War and which continued apace in the 1960s. Its development was both affected by and reflected those changes and the new ways of thinking and acting that arose from them. And yet wider global economic and political changes, in particular in America, would continue to have a major impact on British jazz. For these reasons, any history of British jazz in the 1960s must explain these trends and describe which were global and which were local in origin. It must show how forces outside the music acted upon it and both created and limited its potential for development. But it must also define the personalities, as well as the context in which they functioned. Jazz is made by its musicians and is ultimately