Harry Miller: Different Times, Different Places
Author: Marcus O'Dair
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Malcolm Griffiths (tb) |
Label: |
Ogun |
Magazine Review Date: |
March/2014 |
Catalogue Number: |
OGCD041 |
RecordDate: |
date not stated |
The contribution of South African exiles to UK jazz in the 1960s and 1970s was monumental, and Harry Miller was a key part of that scene. The bassist played with the likes of John Surman, Mike Osborne, Mike Westbrook, Elton Dean and Alan Skidmore, as well as compatriots such as Louis Moholo-Moholo and Chris McGregor. Several of those musicians can be heard on these two sessions, recorded in the 1970s but now released for the first time – 30 years after Miller's premature death in a car crash – on a label co-founded by Miller himself. Tippett and McGregor, each of whom plays piano on one of the two sessions, are superb, as is an impassioned Mike Osborne on the opening track, ‘Bloomfield’. Yet it is the rhythm section of Miller and Moholo-Moholo, heard on both sessions, that perhaps best demonstrates the exuberant mix of driving swing, free jazz and African township influences that characterised 1970s Anglo-South African jazz. Altogether, a worthy celebration of a singular talent lost far too young.

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