Courtney Pine - Bechet & Beyond
Friday, January 30, 2009
After putting together a new version of the Jazz Warriors last year Courtney Pine changes tack for his new project, an album made in homage to the early saxophone pioneer Sidney Bechet. Pine takes time in the album to also examine what traditions in jazz mean to him and makes the connection beyond Bechet to Joe Harriott in the 1960s. Selwyn Harris talks to Courtney, recently awarded with a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List, about the impact of Bechet’s playing on him and how we can all learn a thing of two from the master Courtney Pine and I are getting the bad news out of the way first.
While looking for a quiet spot to sit down in the Royal Festival Hall foyer, talk quickly turns to the economic downturn and the latest events to affect jazz. With the ongoing fall in CD sales, the recording industry finds itself particularly vulnerable; indeed Pine’s distributor Pinnacle is one of those that went bust late last year.
“My guy at New Note distribution, who’ve just moved in with Proper, says, ‘why don’t you open up a shop to sell records? There could be a market for a specialised jazzstore’,” says Pine. “I thought, ‘oh please! Not only do we have to create the music, piece it together, manufacture it, we have to sell it as well?” Infectiously upbeat by nature, one of our hardest working ambassadors for UK jazz suddenly hits reverse gear. “But if that’s what we have to do, then that’s what we have to do! We’ve had a history in British music of selling out of cars in Camden market.”
This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #127 – to read the full article Subscribe Here