JACK BRUCE "Songs For A Tailor" 1969 UK 1st PRESSING NM

GREAT COPY, LIGHT PLAY, MacNeill GATEFOLD, FANTASTIC LP

JACK BRUCE
Songs For A Tailor

ORIGINAL UK POLYDOR (583 058) FIRST PRESSING (September 1969) OF JACK BRUCE'S OUTSTANDING SOLO DEBUT "Songs For A Tailor" IN BEAUTIFUL LIGHTLY PLAYED CONDITION AND DELIVERING PRACTICALLY FLAWLESS AUDIO (ON MY SYSTEM - AT A VERY LOUD VOLUME) - FANTASTIC COPY - MORE JAZZ/FUSION THAN CREAM'S HEAVY BLUES AND AN ABSOLUTELY STUNNING PIECE OF WORK - VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED INDEED

PRESSED ON QUALITY HEAVYWEIGHT VINYL (very thick and chunky for Polydor)
MATRIX: 583058 A//2 11 14 / 583058 B//2 13 12 9 (first pressing)
THE RECORD IS HOUSED IN THE ORIGINAL MATT, SINGLE THICKNESS FRONT LEAF GATEFOLD SLEEVE WITH INTERNALLY PRINTED LYRICS MADE BY “MacNeill Press Ltd., London, S.E.1”
COMPLETE WITH THE ORIGINAL POLYDOR POLY-LINED INNER SLEEVE

JACK BRUCE - vocals, bass, organ, piano, cello
JON HISEMAN - drums
CHRIS SPEDDING - guitar
HENRY LOWTHER - trumpet
HARRY BECKETT - trumpet
DICK HECKSTALL-SMITH - saxophone
ART THEMEN - saxophone
FELIX PAPPALARDI - vocals, percussion, guitar (and production)

With a live version of "Crossroads" going Top 30 for Cream, "Songs for a Tailor" was released in 1969, showing many more sides to Jack Bruce.
George Harrison (again using his L'Angelo Misterioso moniker) appears on the first track, "Never Tell Your Mother She's Out of Tune," though his guitar is not as prominent as the performance on "Badge." The song is bass heavy with Colosseum members Dick Heckstall-Smith and Jon Hiseman providing a different flavour to what Bruce fans had become accustomed to.
Hiseman drums on eight of the ten compositions, including "Theme From an Imaginary Western," the second track, and Jack Bruce's greatest hit that never charted. With "just" Chris Spedding on guitar and Jon Hiseman on drums, Bruce paints a masterpiece performing the bass, piano, organ, and vocals. The song is so significant it was covered by Mountain, Colosseum, and a Colosseum spin-off, Greenslade.
One has to keep in mind that the influential Blind Faith album was being recorded this same year (and according to the late Jimmy Miller, producer of that disc, Jack Bruce filled in for Rick Grech on some of the Blind Faith
material).
Bruce's omnipresence on the charts and in the studio gives the diversity on Songs for a Tailor that much more intrigue. "Tickets to Water Falls" and "Weird of Hermiston" feature the Hiseman/Spedding/Bruce trio, and though the wild abandon of Ginger Baker is replaced by Hiseman's jazz undercurrents, these are still basically two- to three-and-a-half-minute songs, not as extended as the material on Bruce's work on his John McLaughlin/Heckstall-Smith/Hiseman disc "Things We Like" recorded a year before this, but released two years after Songs for a Tailor in 1971.
The history is important because this album is one of the most unique fusions of jazz with pop and contains less emphasis on the blues, a genre so essential to Bruce's career. Indeed, "Theme From an Imaginary Western" is total pop. It is to Jack Bruce what "Midnight Rider" is to Greg Allman, a real defining moment.
"Rope Ladder to the Moon" has that refreshing sparkle found on "Tickets to Water Falls" and "Weird of Hermiston," but Bruce has only John Marshall on drums and producer Felix Pappalardi adding some vocals while he provides cellos, vocals, guitar, piano, and bass.
Side two goes back to the thick progressive sound of the first track on side one, and has a lot in common with another important album from this year, Janis Joplin's "I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!" Jack Bruce and Janis Joplin were two of the most familiar superstar voices on radio performing hard blues-pop. Joplin added horns to augment her expression the same time Jack Bruce was mixing saxes and trumpets to three tracks of this jazz/pop exploration.
"He the Richmond" deviates from that, throwing a curve with Bruce on acoustic guitar, Pappalardi on percussion, and Marshall slipping in again on drums. But the short one minute and 44 second "Boston Ball Game, 1967" proves the point about the pop/jazz fusion succinctly and is a nice little burst of creativity.
"To Isengard" has Chris Spedding, Felix Pappalardi, and Jack Bruce on acoustic guitars, a dreamy folk tune until Hiseman's drums kick in on some freeform journey, Spedding's guitar sounding more like the group Roxy Music, which he would eventually join as a sideman, over the total jazz of the bass and drums.
"The Clearout" has Spedding, Hiseman, and Bruce end the album with progressive pop slightly different from the other recordings here.
Peter Brown composed all the lyrics on Songs for a Tailor with Jack Bruce writing the music. The lyrics printed on the centre of the LP gatefold display the serious nature of this project. It is picture perfect in construction, performance, and presentation.
There is no title song, the album title is a dedication to clothing designer Jeannie Franklyn (Genie the Tailor), who used to make clothes for Cream and tragically died in May 1969 in the Fairport Convention van accident

Track Listing:
Side 1: NEVER TELL YOUR MOTHER SHE'S OUT OF TUNE / THEME FOR AN IMAGINARY WESTERN / TICKETS TO WATERFALLS / WEIRD OF HERMISTON / ROPE LADDER TO THE MOON
Side 2: THE MINISTRY OF BAG / HE THE RICHMOND / BOSTON BALL GAME 1967 / TO ISENGARD / THE CLEAROUT

LABELS: The labels are clean, fresh and unmarked with less than a handful of light spindle traces - this copy has seen little use - NEAR MINT
VINYL Visual: The vinyl surfaces retain their original deep, like-new glossy sheen and are practically unmarked - there is some 'misting' to the surfaces, probably a pressing issue, but this has no audio consequence whatsoever - the playback is superb - EXCELLENT++
VINYL Audio: Crystal clear, deep, rich and detailed sound - beautifully recorded and engineered and on playback at a loud volume (which is how I always listen to my records prior to listing and it's always a real pleasure to return to this one) the audio is clean and practically flawless. To be very picky there is a touch of surface noise between some (not all) of the tracks but otherwise, the playback is pristine. Critically graded NEAR MINT for audio this is a fantastic copy of a sensational piece of work - in my opinion, pretty unbeatable and one of the finest solo efforts of any Cream member
SLEEVE: The original MacNeill gatefold with a single thickness front leaf is also in beautifully preserved condition - crisp, clean and fresh with square, sharp edges and corners and a clean, clear spine - NEAR MINT

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  (GS 6.0.6 (418))