Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & the Trinity – ‘Live at Montreux 1968’

Strange, sometimes, to be a musician these days. Live long enough, and you may get a call asking you to relate how it felt to play a concert whose recorded ghost is about to emerge from the archives fifty years or more after the live show.

In this case, it’s not one they were likely to forget. The singer we now know as Julie Tippetts enjoyed fleeting stardom as Julie Driscoll when she sang with keyboard artist Brian Auger in the 1960s. Their group, at home on Top of the Pops as well as jazz stages, was featured at the Montreux Jazz Festival, in only its second year and already looking for bands with a broader appeal than the jazz tag might imply.

So the Trinity joined Bill Evans and Nina Simone on the three day programme, and now we can hear a cleaned-up mono version of their Friday night show in the Montreux Casino.

And an excellent night it was. It’s a show of two halves. Driscoll takes the lead for half a dozen songs, including her take on Donovan’s Season of the Witch as well as titles associated with Richie Havens, Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone (yes, they met her: no, she wasn’t chatty). Her strong soul-soaked vocals don’t have quite the impact they must have made in 1968 but still dig into the essence of the songs.

The second half focusses on Auger, his hammond organ rich and fluently idiomatic. It’s customary to dust off the word “psychedelic” when recalling this band, but there’s nothing especially psychedelic going on here. Instead we have an excellent trio – Auger supported ably by David Ambrose on bass and Clive Thacker at the drums – mixing up R&B and jazz numbers with jazz treatments of A Day in the Life and a couple of Auger originals.

All are groovily listenable, vindicating Auger’s conviction – rarer then than now – that boundaries were there to be ignored. That extends to the pleasant surprise of the leader’s own vocal channeling the composer surprisingly effectively on Mose Allison’s If You Live.

Two years after this show Auger was back at Montreux with the long-lived Oblivion Express, while Driscoll had moved on to sing with Keith Tippett’s epoch-making Centipede. That marked a move into freely improvised music that took her out of the pop arena. She could still produce world-class soul singing, as a brilliant one-off studio reunion with Auger on 1978’s Encore attested, but by and large she had other artistic priorities.

So it’s good to have another little time capsule from their first round of collaboration. At this distance it’s perhaps not earth shattering musically, but captures a moment beautifully.

1. Soft And Furry
2. Inside Of Him
3. Season Of The Witch
4. Take Me To The Water
5. I’m Going Back Home
6. Save Me
7. Red Beans And Rice
8. A Day In The Life
9. If You Live
10. Along Came Zizi
11. Bumpin’ On Sunset
12. Goodbye Jungle Telegraph

Brian Auger, organ; David Ambrose, bass; Clive Thacker, drums; Julie Driscoll, vocals.
14 June 1968, Casino Kursaal, Montreux Jazz Festival.

from https://ukjazznews.com