I love Jack Bruce. I love his music and I especially love his voice. He is my very favorite rock singer, ever. His voice is strong and powerful. It can also get quiet and delicate. The voice can slide, reach and hit some pretty challenging notes. It can also layer thick gorgeous clouds of harmonies.
Most folks know of Jack as the fiery Scotsman that played bass, wrote songs and sang with Cream. That's were I discovered him upon the release of Cream's "Sunshine Of Your Love" back in 1967. Been in love ever since!
He was classically trained as a cellist and had roots in jazz and blues. His bass playing is like his voice - very powerful, very loud and always challenging. I love his playing. It was the perfect bottom for Cream, though that band had one of the most contentious histories (musically and personality-wise) of any band I have ever read about! I just read that back in the Cream days, Ginger Baker once tried to shove a fire extinguisher up Jack's bum. Don't know if that's true or not, but ill feelings still exist between those two, even rearing it's ugly head during the 2005 Cream reunion.
I have the reunion concert dvd, and while I was a bit shaken with Jack's frail looks (he was still recovering from a liver transplant), I was amazed at how great his voice still is. I actually thought it sounded better than most of the recordings I had heard of Jack from the 80's and the 90's.
Most all of the songs I'm presenting here were co-written with Pete Brown, whose specialty was very trippy lyrics that helped define Cream. Hell....helped define me.
1. "As You Said" (1968, from Cream's Wheels Of Fire LP) - A weird and beautiful song that really shows Jack's classical background. Lovely cello and a great arrangement. I'm guessing that some would be surprised that this was a Cream song.
2. "Doing That Scrapyard Thing" (1969, from Cream's Goodbye Cream LP) - A very playful tune that always makes me smile. This sounds very Beatle influenced, probably due to George Harrison hanging around the studio to play on Clapton's fantastic "Badge".
3. "Theme From An Imaginary Western" (1969, from Jack's first solo LP - Songs For A Tailor) - this is an amazing LP! This tune is very Procul Harum sounding to me, and Jack plays everything except for guitar (Chris Spedding) and drums (Jon Hiseman). Could be my favorite vocal performance of all time. It's such a great song! Mountain covered it on their debut album. (Mountain featured the late Felix Pappalardi who was Cream's primary producer)
4. "Tickets To Waterfalls" (1969, same as above) - Another great vocal performance on a song that had to be a bitch to sing! Check out the melody....his jazz roots really taking hold here.
5. "Boston Ball Game 1967" (1969, same as above) - Speaking of jazz roots...not only do you get one great vocal performance, howzabout 2 Jacks at once! According to the book I'm reading, Jack wrote this in response to a very unpleasant time Cream had in Boston on one of their tours.
6. "Folk Song" (1971, from Jack's second solo LP - Harmony Row) - Jack gets down with his falsetto in this pretty strange tune. When Stacey heard this album, she noted that she couldn't remember ever hearing music like this. For some reason, I think my ex-Loud Family mate - Alison Faith Levy might enjoy this particular style of writing.
7. "A Letter Of Thanks" (1971, same as above) - a powerhouse jazz fusion thing that works for me. Jazz timing linked with primordial rock riffage.
8. "Pollution Woman" (1972, from West, Bruce & Laing's Why Dontcha LP) - This is one of the strangest songs I've ever heard. I immediately recognize Leslie West's guitar sound, but the production and song are both out of left field. A great sampling of Jack's vocal harmony weirdness.
9. "Peaces Of Mind" (1974, from Jack's third solo album - Out Of The Storm) - disjointed but marvellous. Steve Hunter on guitar and Jim Gordon on drums. Great bass playing and of course, a great vocal track.
10. "Into The Storm" (1974, same as above) - wonderful harmonies and a difficult piece.
Here's the link to all of this. I admit that it may be a lot of Jack to take in at one sitting, so if you find yourself getting a bit worn out, please..just listen to a few at time. I hope you are rewarded as much as I have been, putting this together!
The voice of Jack muxtape
Thanks for the voice and the music, Jack. You lift my heart.
2 comments:
Thanks. I thought Bruce's voice was fading at one point - getting a bit too nasal and losing that rich, brown character it had in Cream days - so it's heartening to hear that in recent years it's come back. I really need to check out those solo albums: way back in the wayback, I had that two-LP set with the white cover and the fat letters (there was a Clapton one and a Baker one too), which I'd picked up after having heard "As You Said" on late-night FM radio. (For those those who think the early to mid-70s were nothing but the Osmonds, you just do not know...and that's from my perspective then as a young teen. Woulda had a lot more fun if I were a few years older then!)
Yep..that nasal thing seemed to have started sometime between Out Of The Storm ('74) and How's Tricks?(77)...I was very apprehinsive about the Cream reunions but he sounded so much better! Maybe getting a new liver also did good things to his voice.
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