Jack Bruce

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Jack Bruce 1972 in Hamburg

John Symon Asher "Jack" Bruce (born May 14, 1943 in Bishopbriggs , Scotland , † October 25, 2014 in Suffolk ) was a British rock , blues and jazz musician . He mainly played the electric bass , but also cello , double bass , piano and harmonica , sang and wrote songs. He became known as a founding member of Cream .

Life

youth

Bruce received a scholarship for cello and composition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music at the age of 17. His early interests were in Scottish folklore, jazz and Bach . Because there is less demand as a cellist in a jazz band, he switched to the double bass. He played this instrument in the Jimmy McHargs Scotsville Jazz Band and then toured Italy with the Murray Campbell Big Band. His way of playing bass benefited from his discontinued classical training on the cello.

Bruce said that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the best bass runs of all time.

Career

Bruce sought contact with the British blues scene in the early 1960s . He played with Mike Taylor , in Alexis Korners Blues Incorporated , the Graham Bond Organization , to which he already contributed his own songs, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Manfred Mann , before forming in 1966 with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker Cream . In the then new trio line-up he played the central role of bassist and lead singer and also the composer of most of the songs. The English beat music poet and later rock musician Pete Brown contributed lyrics . It was the time with Cream that established Jack Bruce's reputation as an exceptional musician. Similar to his colleagues John Entwistle ( The Who ) and Andy Fraser ( Free ), he worked towards giving the bass an independent role in the band structure. The Jack Bruce sound is grumpy and aggressive. His trademark were long improvisations performed on his Gibson EB-3 bass in interaction with the other musicians, where it was sometimes hard to tell which parts were from Bruce and which from guitarist Clapton. Bruce later jokingly claimed that they had improvised for so long that at the end of the solo he had trouble remembering which song they were playing (“… we'd get to the end of a long improv and I'd be wracking my brain to remember what the song was! ") .

After Cream broke up in late 1968, Bruce worked with the New Jazz Orchestra , Tony Williams ' Lifetime , Mike Gibbs , Dick Heckstall-Smith , Larry Coryell and other jazz colleagues , including Carla Bley as singer and bassist in the jazz oratorio Escalator over the Hill and for some concerts with Ian Carrs Nucleus . From 1972 to 1973 he played with ex- Mountain musicians Leslie West (guitar) and "Corky" Laurence Gordon Laing (drums) in the hard rock group West, Bruce & Laing , which released three albums. He has released several solo albums, including Songs For A Tailor (starring Chris Spedding , Jon Hiseman , Dick Heckstall-Smith, Harry Beckett and George Harrison ), Harmony Row and Out of the Storm .

In early 1977 he put together the Jack Bruce Band with Tony Hymas , Simon Phillips and Hughie Burnd and brought out the album How's Tricks with this formation . He had already performed under the same name in 1975 with Bruce Gary, Carla Bley, Ronnie Leahy and Mick Taylor .

In 1980 the newly founded formation Jack Bruce & Friends ( Clem Clempson , Billy Cobham and David Sancious ) performed at the 7th Rockpalast Night in Essen, among others .

For the two albums BLT and Truce Bruce played with Robin Trower in 1981 . In 1982 and 1983 the Jan Hammer Band toured the USA and Europe with Carsten Bohn , Jack Bruce and Colin Hodgkinson .

He celebrated his 50th birthday belatedly in November 1993 with many of his colleagues in Cologne's E-Werk. He appeared in the so-called Cream formation with the line-up of Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Gary Moore, which then resulted in BBM. The concert was recorded by the WDR in the series "Rockpalast" and subsequently broadcast. The concert was released immediately afterwards as a double CD entitled 'Cities of the Heart'. In 2014 it was subsequently released on DVD under the title 'The 50th Birthday Concerts'.

In 1994 the album Around The Next Dream was released under the band name BBM , which he had recorded with Ginger Baker and Gary Moore . Later he was involved in various projects by Kip Hanrahan and also played in the Charlie Watts Big Band and in Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band .

Jack Bruce 2006 in Frankfurt / Main

In the summer of 2003 Bruce was diagnosed with liver cancer. In September he nearly died of a liver transplant after contracting pneumonia while exhausted. In October he got better and in 2005 the health of the musician was so stable that in May he was able to take part in several Reunion Concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall and in New York's Madison Square Garden , where he together with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker played the classics of the trio, which was celebrated as the first rock supergroup at the time, in the original line-up of Cream . In 2006 he sang his songs with the Frankfurt Radio Bigband at the Jazz Festival in Frankfurt am Main . He toured with Vernon Reid , John Medeski and Cindy Blackman in 2008 and 2011 to reinterpret pieces by Tony Williams ; In 2012 the album Spectrum Road followed with this “supergroup” .

He was married to his manager Margrit, who came from Swabia . The two had two daughters and a son and lived on La Palma and near London.

death

Bruce died of liver disease on October 25, 2014 in Suffolk, England, aged 71. His memorial service at Golders Green Crematorium was held in London on November 5, 2014 and was attended by Clapton, Baker, Phil Manzanera , Gary Brooker , Vernon Reid and Nitin Sawhney . Dozens paid tribute to the dead with “ Morning Has Broken ”, “ Strawberry Fields Forever ” and “Theme for an Imaginary Western”. Bruce's remains were later cremated and then buried in the crematorium garden at a private family ceremony on December 31, 2014.

Discography (selection)

Albums

  • Songs for a Tailor (1969)
  • Things We Like (1970)
  • Harmony Row (1971)
  • Out of the Storm (1974)
  • The Jack Bruce Band Live '75 (starring Carla Bley , Mick Taylor and others, released 2003)
  • How's Tricks (1977)
  • Jet Set Jewel (recorded 1978, released 2003)
  • I've Always Wanted to Do This (1980)
  • BLT (1981) - with Robin Trower
  • Truce (1982) - with Robin Trower
  • Automatic (1982)
  • Vertical's Currency (1986) - Kip Hanrahan , Jack Bruce, Ignacio Berroa , Milton Cardona , Arto Lindsay , David Murray , Puntilla Orlando Rios , Steve Swallow
  • Inazuma (1987)
  • Willpower (1989)
  • A Question of Time (1989)
  • Somethin Else (1992)
  • Live At Bottom Line, NYC March 19th, 1980 (1992)
  • Cities of the Heart (1993)
  • Around the Next Dream (1994) - with BBM
  • Monkjack (1995)
  • The Cream of Cream (1998) - VHS / DVD
  • Shadows in the Air (2001)
  • Rope Ladder to the Moon (2003) - sampler
  • More Jack Than God (2003)
  • Seven Moons (2008) - with Robin Trower
  • Spirit - Live at the BBC 1971–1978 [box set] (2008)
  • Can You Follow (2008) - Anthology [6-CD Box-Set]
  • Live 2012 (2012) - released under Jack Bruce & His Big Blues Band
  • Silver Rails (2014)

DVD

  • Cream - Farewell Concert (2001)
  • Jack Bruce & Friends - Live (2003)
  • Live at Canterbury Fayre (2003)
  • Cream - Strange Brew (2003)
  • Cream - The DVD (2005)
  • Cream - Inside 1966-1969 (2005)
  • Cream - Royal Albert Hall (2005)
  • At Rockpalast (2005)
  • Rope Ladder To The Moon 1969 - Tony Palmer's film about Jack Bruce (2010)
  • The 50th Birthday Concerts (2014)

See also

literature

  • Brigitte Tast, Hans-Jürgen Tast: be bop - Wilhelmshöhe rocks. Disco and concerts in hell. Verlag Gebrüder Gerstenberg GmbH & Co. KG, Hildesheim, ISBN 978-3-8067-8589-0 .
  • Christian Graf: Rock Music Lexicon Europe. Taurus Press, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-922542-22-0 .
  • Dick Heckstall-Smith: The Safest Place In The World. With a Preface by Jack Bruce. Quartet Books, London 1989.
  • Steven Myatt: Jack: The Biography Of Jack Bruce. Aureus Publishing, 2005.
  • Harry Shapiro: Jack Bruce. Composing Himself. The Authorized Biography. Backbeat Books, London 2010.
  • Peter Brkusic & Friedrich-Wilhelm Meyer, Jack Bruce! (with photographs by Hyou Vielz ), Jazzwerkstatt 2015, ISBN 978-3-9814852-7-1

Web links

Commons : Jack Bruce  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Obituary (Herald Scotland)
  2. ↑ Interview 1968
  3. ↑ Pete Brown wrote the lyrics for the Jack Bruce songs I Feel Free , Sunshine of Your Love , White Room , Politician and others. a. Frank King, Pete Brown . In: Rock Session , No. 3, Rowohlt, Reinbek, 1979, p. 400ff.
  4. ↑ Jack Bruce Band at imagebam.com, accessed March 18, 2018
  5. ↑ Jackbruce.com: Jack Bruce & Friends, Past Tours 1980-1983, accessed October 26, 2014
  6. ↑ Stern.de: Cream bassist Jack Bruce is dead on October 25, 2014, retrieved on October 26, 2014
  7. ↑ Rockpalastarchiv.de accessed on October 26, 2014
  8. ↑ Now jazz rock also has its supergroup
  9. ↑ a b Cream bassist Jack Bruce has died. In: Die Zeit from October 25, 2014 (accessed October 25, 2014).
  10. ↑ Reviews of The Jack Bruce Band Live '75 on the Babyblauen Seiten
personal data
SURNAME Bruce, Jack
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bruce, John Symon Asher
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British rock and fusion musician
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Bishopbriggs , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 2014
Place of death Suffolk