Harold Winston "Harry" Beckett (30 May 1935 – 22 July 2010) was a British trumpeter and flugelhorn player of
Barbadian origin.
Biography
Born in
Bridgetown
Bridgetown (UN/LOCODE: BB BGI) is the capital and largest city of Barbados. Formerly The Town of Saint Michael, the Greater Bridgetown area is located within the parish of Saint Michael. Bridgetown is sometimes locally referred to as "The Ci ...
,
Saint Michael, Barbados, Harry Beckett learned to play music in a
Salvation Army band
A Salvation Army brass band is a brass band affiliated with a Corps, Division or Territory of the Salvation Army. In society, a Salvation Army band playing in public places during Christian events in the calendar such as Christmas has become ...
. A resident in the UK from 1954, he had an international reputation. He played with
Charles Mingus in the 1962 film ''
All Night Long''.
In the 1960s, he worked and recorded within the band of bass player and composer
Graham Collier
James Graham Collier (21 February 1937 – 9 September 2011) was an English jazz bassist, bandleader and composer.
Life and career
Born in Tynemouth, Northumberland, England, on leaving school Collier joined the British Army as a musician, ...
,
retaining the connection over a 16-year period. Beginning in 1970, Beckett led groups of his own, recording for
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...
,
RCA
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
and
Ogun Records
Ogun Records is a jazz record label created in London in 1973 by South African expatriate bassist Harry Miller, his wife Hazel Miller, and sound engineer Keith Beal. They recorded British avant-garde jazz musicians Keith Tippett, Mike Osborn ...
among other labels.
Beckett was a key figure of important groups in the British free jazz/improvised music scene, including
Ian Carr
Ian Carr (21 April 1933 – 25 February 2009) was a Scottish jazz musician, composer, writer, and educator. Carr performed and recorded with the Rendell-Carr quintet and jazz-fusion band Nucleus, and was an associate professor at the Guildhall ...
's Nucleus, the
Brotherhood of Breath and
The Dedication Orchestra
The Dedication Orchestra is a jazz ensemble formed as a tribute to the exiled South African musicians who formed the core of The Blue Notes and the Brotherhood of Breath, it features Alan Skidmore, Radu Malfatti, Django Bates, Kenny Wheeler, Elto ...
,
London Jazz Composers Orchestra, London Improvisers Orchestra,
John Surman
John Douglas Surman (born 30 August 1944) is an English jazz saxophone, bass clarinet, and synthesizer player, and composer of free jazz and modal jazz, often using themes from folk music. He has composed and performed music for dance performanc ...
's Octet,
Django Bates
Django Bates (born Leon Bates, 2 October 1960) is a British jazz musician, composer, multi-instrumentalist, band leader and educator. He plays the piano, keyboards and the tenor horn. Bates has been described as "one of the most talented music ...
,
Ronnie Scott
Ronnie may refer to:
* Ronnie (name), a unisex pet name and given name
* "Ronnie" (Four Seasons song), a song by Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe
*"Ronnie," a song from the Metallica album '' Load''
*Ronnie Brunswijkstadion, an association football stadiu ...
's Quintet,
Kathy Stobart
Florence Kathleen "Kathy" Stobart (1 April 1925 – 6 July 2014) was an English jazz saxophonist primarily known for playing the tenor sax. She was a well-respected figure in the history of jazz in Britain and became an inspiration, through her ...
,
Charlie Watts,
Stan Tracey
Stanley William Tracey (30 December 1926 – 6 December 2013) was a British jazz pianist and composer, whose most important influences were Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. Tracey's best known recording is the 1965 album '' Jazz Suite Inspi ...
's Big Band and Octet;
Elton Dean
Elton Dean (28 October 1945 – 8 February 2006) was an English jazz musician who performed on alto saxophone, saxello (a variant of the soprano saxophone) and occasionally keyboards. Part of the Canterbury scene, he featured in, among ot ...
's ''Ninesense''.
He also recorded with
Keef Hartley
Keith "Keef" Hartley (8 April 1944 – 26 November 2011)
was an English drummer and bandleader. He fronted his own band ...
,
Jah Wobble
John Joseph Wardle (born 11 August 1958), known by the stage name Jah Wobble, is an English bass guitarist and singer. He became known to a wider audience as the original bass player in Public Image Ltd (PiL) in the late 1970s and early 1980s; ...
,
David Sylvian
David Sylvian (born David Alan Batt, 23 February 1958) is an English musician, singer and songwriter who came to prominence in the late 1970s as frontman and principal songwriter of the band Japan. The band's androgynous look and increasingly ...
and worked with
David Murray. He toured abroad with
Johnny Dyani
Johnny Mbizo Dyani (30 November 1945 – 24 October 1986) was a South African jazz double bassist, vocalist and pianist, who, in addition to being a key member of The Blue Notes, played with such international musicians as Don Cherry, Steve L ...
,
Chris McGregor,
Keith Tippett
Keith Graham Tippetts (25 August 1947 – 14 June 2020), known professionally as Keith Tippett, was a British jazz pianist and composer. According to AllMusic, Tippett's career "..spanned jazz-rock, progressive rock, improvised and contemporary ...
,
John Tchicai
John Martin Tchicai ( ; 28 April 1936 – 8 October 2012) was a Danish free jazz saxophonist and composer.
Biography
Tchicai was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, to a Danish mother and a Congolese father. The family moved to Aarhus, where he st ...
,
Joachim Kühn
Joachim Kurt Kühn (born 15 March 1944) is a German jazz pianist.
Biography
He was born in Leipzig, Germany. Kühn was a musical prodigy and made his debut as a concert pianist, having studied classical piano and composition, with Arthur Schmid ...
,
Dudu Pukwana
Mthutuzeli Dudu Pukwana (18 July 1938 – 30 June 1990) was a South African saxophonist, composer and pianist (although not known for his piano playing).
Early years in South Africa
Dudu Pukwana was born in Walmer Township, Port Elizabeth, ...
's ''Zila'',
George Gruntz
George Gruntz (24 June 1932 – 10 January 2013) was a Swiss jazz pianist, organist, harpsichordist, keyboardist, and composer known for the George Gruntz Concert Big Band and his work with Phil Woods, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Don Cherry, Chet Baker ...
's Bands, Belgian quintet
The Wrong Object,
Pierre Dørge's ''New Jungle Band'' and
Annie Whitehead
Lena Annie Whitehead (born 16 July 1955 in Oldham, Lancashire, England) is an English jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ...
's
Robert Wyatt project, ''Soupsongs'', which also featured
Phil Manzanera
Phillip Geoffrey Targett-Adams (born 31 January 1951), known professionally as Phil Manzanera, is an English guitarist, songwriter and record producer. He is the lead guitarist with Roxy Music, and was the lead guitarist with 801, and Quiet Su ...
and
Julie Tippetts, among other jazz and rock luminaries.
Beckett's dub-oriented album, ''The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett'', was produced by famed British producer
Adrian Sherwood
Adrian Maxwell Sherwood (born 20 January 1958, London, England) is an English record producer specialising in the genre of dub music. He has created a distinctive production style based on the application of dub effects and dub mixing techniques ...
and released on
On-U Sound in late 2008.
In 1972, Beckett won the ''
Melody Maker'' jazz Poll as "Top Trumpeter in Britain". He was a member of the
Orchestre National de Jazz
Orchestra National de Jazz is a French jazz ensemble originally created at the initiation of Jack Lang, at that time Minister of Culture. Its first leader was François Jeanneau.
Members ONJ François Jeanneau, 1986
* François Jeanneau : s ...
between 1997 and 2000.
Beckett died on 22 July 2010 after suffering a
stroke.
Discography
References
External links
Official site archived at Archive.orgAlbum review at ''The Guardian''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beckett, Harry
1935 births
2010 deaths
Barbadian expatriates in the United Kingdom
Barbadian jazz trumpeters
English jazz trumpeters
Male trumpeters
Jazz flugelhornists
Nucleus (band) members
British male jazz musicians
Jazz Warriors members
Brotherhood of Breath members
New Jazz Orchestra members
Black British musicians