Horace Tapscott 101
5th October 2012
Around 1994 I was at a record fair can't remember where when I come across this guy who was flogging a job lot of Flying Dutchman LPs for £50. I didn't really know a lot about Flying Dutchman other than a few Gil Scott Heron, Oliver Nelson and Leon Thomas LPs but what I did know about the Mayor Carl B and I wanted that and it was in the pile along with some other talky LPs by Peter Hamill, John Carter and Bobby Bradford and a record by Horace Tapscott 'The Giant Awakened'.
As I said I only really wanted the Carl B one and offered him 30 shooters for it, he said ok and as it was the end of the day he chucked the rest in too, kind gent… Anyway, got home and the Carl B LP exceeded all expectations — Serious Jazz and Spoken word score.
Then I checked out the Tapscott LP Liners by Stanley Crouch, Black Arthur Blythe and of course it was produced by Bob Thiele. Wacked it on the deck and boom Jesus christ the opening track was serious, all 17 mins serious… her have a listen:
Amazing right? Anyway that was my first introduction to Tapscott. Since then as most collectors do I sourced all his output since that day — What you have to remember too is this is before ebay or the internet or the blogs so it took a great deal of time to get them. That was when crate digging actually meant digging in masses of milk-crates in seedy parts of US towns — it's so much easier now anyone starting out today don't know they are born…
So onto Tapscott then and Nimbus. Tapscott was from LA and as a lot of readers of this blog are Hip Hop orientated there was a divide much like the east coast west coast thing. The east had the big labels in the 60's and 70's, blue note, impulse whose rosters had the cream of the crop when it came to Jazz musicians Coltrane, Davis, Blakey, Morgan, Hubbard, Dolphy, Monk, Mingus et all were mopping up the royalties, the west coast at that time was very psychedelic with the whole middle-class-drop-out-hippy-thing emulating mainly from the Bay Area.
Jazz was predominately underground and self contained to largely black areas Watts and Compton etc. There was also a high degree of racial tension and civil unrest with the whole Dr. King/Malcolm X too which played a heavy part interns of the black musicians expressing themselves through their music. (The subject of many of my my old podcasts). The Giant Awakened is a testimony to that underground sound; Aggressive, Sharp, Angular.
In 1961 as a reaction to the crime and racial tension going on in LA at the time, Tapscott helped found a collective The Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension. A community self-help based collective put together to further the interests of creative young black jazz musicians, this would eventually not be limited to music but cover all aspects of creative disciplines to help the neighbourhoods channel their energies into something other than crime. At the time this was quite revolutionary and this type of thinking became more prevalent in the 70's with the African philosophies of Kawaida.
So Tapscott was ahead of his time in terms of Social Thinking and Creativity which ultimately transcended through his music. Tapscott spent much of the 60's in the Jazz wilderness barley surviving playing gigs a plight many a creative artist has had to endure — You could draw parallels here to Vincent van-Gogh. His big break came in 1968 when he was given the opportunity to compose and arrange music for an acclaimed LP by the saxophonist Sonny Criss entitled The Birth of the New Cool which was swiftly followed by the Dutchman Lp mentioned above.
Still with me? Good. Well Done! Lets fast forward a bit to 1979. Tom Albach was setting up a little private label called Nimbus West. He had recently purchased some Tapscott tapes and so enamoured by Tapscott's talent considered him as the America's Prokofiev he began to record him over a period of three years these would later be released as the Tapscott sessions, 13 sessions and 25 hours of music was produced to which there have only ever been six issued — Come on son get a move on, the world is waiting…
Nimbus then went on to release numerous LPs by Tapscott and his Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra which was the new name for the UGMAA (see discography below) and various artists from the group such as Nate Morgan, Ricky Kelly, Adele Sebastian, Roberto Miranda (see NimbusWest for more info). Nimbus West is without doubt my favourite indie Jazz label, the sheer breadth and quality of the output IMHO has never been surpassed, there have been a few close, Strata, Impulse, BYG but Nimbus still for me is king.
Right enough jabber as I've said before I'm crap at writing stuff so if you have made it this far, god bless you…
01. Now: Creative Arts Ensemble
02. Prayer # 1: Roberto Miranda
03. St Michael: Horace Tapscott
04. Lino's Pad: Horace Tapscott
05. Encouragement: Creative Arts Ensemble
06. Uhuru: Creative Arts Ensemble
07. Niger's Theme: Horace Tapscott / Sessions
08. Niger's Theme: Horace Tapscott
09. Prayer Of Happiness: Billie Harris
01. Tell God all of my Toubles: Dwight Tribble and Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra
02. Eternal Egypt: The Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension
03. The Pharaoh: The Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension
04. Flight 17: Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra
05. Village Dance: Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra
06. John Coltrane: Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra
07. Prayer for the People: Adele Sebastian
08. Desert Fairy Princess: Adele Sebastian
09. Afrikan Village: Ricky Kelly
Download the two podcasts
Tapscott sadly died of Lung Cancer in 1999 leaving behind a true legacy of great work for people to discover. Perhaps this post will go some way to enlighten the rest of the world as to the strong talents of the great veteran Horace Tapscott and finally like Van Gogh did — receive the attention it truly deserves.
Horace Tapscott (Author), Steven Louis Isoardi
Songs of the Unsung: The Musical and Social Journey of Horace Tapscott
Duke University Press (1 April 2001)
Steve Isoardi
The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles (George Gund Foundation Book in African American Studies)
Daniel Widener
Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in Postwar Los Angeles
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