A BRENTWOOD jazz fan has penned a book on the genre, covering a period of enormous political and cultural change in Britain and Essex.
"The 1960s lives on as a series of images – miniskirts and mop-tops, flower power and demonstrations, destruction and repression in Vietnam and Czechoslovakia," Duncan Heining from Ingrave writes.
"For some, it was a time of sexual and personal liberation. For others, it was the devil's decade. One thing's certain, it was a time of major social and cultural change, in particular, in music."
Duncan has been writing about jazz, improvised music and 20th century composition since 1996.
Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers And Free Fusioneers covers some of the core issues in the period from 1960 to 1975, including class, race, politics and education.
The author said: "Briefly, traditional jazz was the pop music of the day. It was exotic and you could dance to it. Its younger sibling, modern jazz, was cerebral and hipper, a soundtrack to urban and urbane lifestyles."
Then came the Beatles and Stones and swept it all away.
Duncan continued: "The links between jazz and rock, notably rhythm and blues, were very strong. The beat scene grew out of skiffle music, whilst many musicians who played R&B started as jazzers.
"Think of Graham Bond, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, Charlie Watts, and Manfred Mann. The line-ups of Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated through the 60s read like a Who's Who of British jazz.
"Those links stayed strong, even though rock and R&B edged jazz out of the clubs that jazz fans and musicians had started.
"In Brentwood, trad jazz was heard at the White Hart but by spring '64, it had switched to Sunday nights.
"Saturdays now hosted the likes of John Mayall, Chris Farlowe and Zoot Money at the venue. The same pattern was seen in Southend, where the Studio Jazz Club saw acts like the Yardbirds and Georgie Fame taking over.
"In many ways, the jazz scene saw many of the decade's themes play out before they were echoed in pop and rock or wider society.
"Jazz was an early meeting ground that crossed class and racial boundaries and, as for drugs, jazz musicians were snorting powders and sticking syringes in their arms years ahead of John Lennon going cold turkey.
"It wasn't clever in 1959 – much less so ten years later. The story of jazz back then is like the history of the period in microcosm."
Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers And Free Fusioneers is available in hardback for £29.99
