Talking Jazz

There is a curious and not always very welcome difference in the listening habits of the fan and the critic. The latter always hopes to remain the former, but, in terms of disc-buying at least, the luxury of being able to concentrate solely on rooting out rare Dexter Gordon albums, say, or spending weeks listening only to recordings made between 1955 and 1965, is denied the critic. New CDs arrive daily, and though only some of them are of real interest, as many of them as possible must be given a spin. One sometimes ends up looking longingly at an old Ellington or Bellson album, and passing on. There's no time to renew the acquaintance with old friends, even though they may have been responsible for arousing the passion for jazz in the first place.

An Ellington or a Basie can just about withstand such neglect. Like the moon and the stars, they will always be with us. Worse, however, is when the search for the new means that outstanding players are forgotten, which is what almost happened to Harry Beckett. A Barbados-born British trumpeter, Beckett has a truly distinctive sound that you would be lucky to hear, and lucky because it's an all too rare pleasure.

A mainstay of the British jazz scene of the Sixties, Beckett was also one of the featured names, alongside Courtney Pine and Cleveland Watkiss, in the Jazz Warriors of the Eighties, but for no good reason - perhaps a lack of pushiness on his part - he drifted to the sidelines. So his championing by Gilles Peterson, with whom he'll be appearing at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival at the end of this month, is very welcome indeed.

Peterson has delved into the vaults of the Sixties scene to produce his Impressed! compilation (I gather another one is on the way), and Beckett will be representing that extraordinarily fertile era of which so many younger musicians are sadly ignorant. His performance should be a revelation to those who haven't heard him. As I sit here, looking at a 1969 photo of Beckett, Graham Collier, Karl Jenkins and others standing shivering in the wind, all anoraks and thick glasses, like extras from Get Carter!, let me try to explain just what it is that this avuncular, gently spoken Barbadian has.

Beckett's sound is characterised by his remarkable powers of elision. Notes, individually full, sometimes just a smudge or released at the touch of a feather brush, seem bound by elastic. Tentative flurries, or semi-stratospheric tracings like firework trails, all are underpinned by a seamless motion. Beckett never goes for the obvious phrase, which lends a searching quality to his solos. The closest comparison one can make is with Kenny Wheeler, but whereas he is blustery and watery, Beckett is concentrated, and deeply warm. Others may have more spectacular and showy techniques, but Beckett has something more important - his own voice. It has stuck in my mind from the moment I first heard it, and I hope his Cheltenham appearance will open the ears of a new generation to his unjustly overlooked music.