Pete Brown - poet, lyricist (Cream etc...), record producer - discusses early influences with Dick Heckstall Smith.

What made you start playing the Saxophone

"It was desire! I'd become interested by first the Clarinet at Gordonstoun. I was 13 when I went there - my father pulled me out when I was 15, mainly due to a bitter philosophical feud with the headmaster. In summer 1948 I managed to get hold of an old Alto Sax because I was fascinated with the sound.

Leaving Gordonstoun for Devon was a milestone in my young life. My parents enrolled me at Dartington Hall and it was like going from Darkness to Light - it was unbelievable, unfettered music making was encouraged at Dartington. It was there that I first heard Sidney Bechet, and I still remember ordering my first 4 Bechet records from London - I waited a dream-like detached week for them to arrive - would they arrive? when they arrived they were the revelation I had hoped for. Instantly I became Sidney Bechet and, as Sidney Bechet, I led the Dartington School Jazz band and then, when I went up to Cambridge, the Cambridge University Jazz Band.

A high point at University came in 1955 when I won the silver cup, believe it or not for playing a good solo in the Cambridge University Jazz Band Competition. Success in the competition secured me more than a trophy for the mantelpiece. Sandy Brown, already a hero with-in the jazz fraternity, was judging the Cambridge Competition. Sandy, a Jazz musician, was also one of the early great musical experimenters. In fact his band was the first UK band to embrace the music of Africa, not just Jazz but African tribal music. Sandy also gave me my first professional job. I remember his call, I had just clambered out of the bath and was struggling to understand his broad Scottish accent. "You know I don't have a Tenor!" I said when I realised that he was offering me a job with his band. "Dinna wirrie 'boot that!!" he shouted comfortingly down the line, and with in 3 weeks I was in the band playing Tenor Sax and remained with him from December 1957 to May 1958.

That's interesting. But you played the Tenor before joining Sandy, so when did you take it up?

I didn't actually own a Tenor until a year after leaving Cambridge in 1956. I borrowed one for a while at Cambridge. By this time my influences, beside Bechet, were Lester Young and above all Wardell Gray. It was Bechet's sound that mattered most though. It never failed to amaze me. He was twice as strong as any trumpet player I knew, with the exception of Louis Armstrong. Having said that, it was Wardell Gray's playing that persuaded me to take the tenor Sax seriously. I suppose, since we are talking about musical influences, that if mothers come first, then Sidney Bechet was my mother and Wardell Gray was my father!

After my introduction to professional music making with the Sandy Brown band it was "Hit the Road Jack" and time for my true musical apprenticeship. Just as for many of my colleagues, the holiday camps provided invaluable experience, in particular the Filey Butlins Camp! I remember going there as a member of the Ronnie Smith Quintet. We were booked to play in the Rock and Roll ballroom, in fact we treated Butlins as an opportunity to experiment and push boundaries. Sure we featured standards but we also well and truly cut our teeth on new Jazz chord sequences. It was a great learning experience, we were on 8 times a week and It was with Ron that I first began to work on bebop chord changes.

From 1958 - 62 the most high profile work I did was working with the Bert Courtley Sextet - which started off my life long association with Germany. After leaving Bert I freelanced as a modern jazz Saxophone player, I have happy memories of leading the band at the Café Des Artistes - "a great way for a jobbing freelancer in the 1950's to escape playing 'Valleta' and 'Always'"!!

So when did you form the contacts that have been so important in your mature career, i.e. with Graham Bond and Colosseum?

It started with Ginger Baker. I first met Ginger in 1957 when he was 18 and was the drummer in the Bob Wallis Band - I was asked to be a guest on the new Bob Wallace LP on the strength of playing like Sidney Bechet - difficult, because my style of playing had moved on by then. But, professional to the core, I went along to Bob's session and played, as requested, like Bechet - and that was the first time I met and worked with Ginger.

When did you really feel that you had found your voice a Jazz musician?

My first really individual Jazz statement however came in 1962, the year I felt confident enough to raise the proverbial two fingers at the somewhat precious and conservative British Jazz Scenes, and dive heart and soul in to the Blues. I went to join Alexis Korner Blues Incorporated - as they say not for money but for love. At that time Muddy Waters was the greatest Blues influence. But from the first moment I heard the Blues, way back in the 40s at Dartington, it felt like musical home. It wasn't a mystery to me. So joining Alexis was an easy and natural progression.

Blues Incorporated is now such a legendary outfit that it's difficult to give a clear idea of what it felt like at the time, but one thing I can assure you of was that it wasn't one of those bands that achieved its reputation posthumously. When we played we drew serious crowds. I joined in Summer 1963 and soon suggested to Alexis that we bring Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker into the band, which as it turned out was an important step for them in the eventual emergence of Cream as the pre-eminent British Blues/Rock band.

From then onwards my life took the course that most people interested in British Jazz know about. I left Alexis in summer 1963 to form the Graham Bond Organisation - I know Pete considers the Graham Bond Organisation to be one of the four greatest bands ever, just another thing that bonds me to Pete - no pun intended! From then on, as I describe in my Autobiography "The Safest Place in the World" (published 1989 by Quartet Books), it was John Mayall, Colosseum and then my solo and composing career.

PB So, as we Record Producers Like to Say "thats a wrap". Thanks Dick, and I look forward to our productive next 20 years.

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