Tributes to Jim Beard

Tributes to Jim Beard, the US jazz-rock fusion keyboardist and composer who has died at the age of 63, a player best known for his work with Steely Dan from 2008, include this from James Taylor keyboardist Larry Goldings: ''Rest in Peace, Jim …

Published: 6 Mar 2024. Updated: 55 days.

Tributes to Jim Beard, the US jazz-rock fusion keyboardist and composer who has died at the age of 63, a player best known for his work with Steely Dan from 2008, include this from James Taylor keyboardist Larry Goldings: ''Rest in Peace, Jim Beard I wish I had known him better. I feel very connected to him musically. He wrote, recorded, arranged and produced some absolutely stunning music, in its sophistication and beauty. The world has lost a real heavyweight. My thoughts go out to his family and loved ones.''

Drummer Paul Wertico of Pat Metheny Group renown writes, also on social media: ''I'm speechless about the passing of Jim Beard, so for now I'll just have to remember the good times we had and great music we made together on the Pat Metheny Secret Story tours. Rest In Peace Jim.''

The Ridley Park, Pennsylvania - not far from Philadelphia - hailing Beard in 2007 won a Grammy as a featured performer on the Randy and Michael Brecker/WDR Big Band live in Leverkusen recording, Some Skunk Funk.

Jaco Pastorius biographer Bill Milkowski and author of Ode to a Tenor Titan writes: ''I still have my VHS copy of this Creed Taylor produced video from Jim's 1991 debut album, Song of the Sun. He was an eccentric, brilliant visionary with a quick, acerbic wit, wildly creative spirit and slightly subversive mind. A classically trained pianist, Beard studied arranging with Don Sebesky and studied piano with Sir Roland Hanna and George Shearing. As a keyboardist, he made key contributions to albums by Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Michael and Randy Brecker, Eliane Elias, Peter Erskine, Victor Bailey, Wayne Krantz, Chuck Loeb, Dennis Chambers, Oz Noy and Steely Dan. He also produced 12 albums for Mike Stern and others for Bob Berg, Bill Evans and Didier Lockwood.''

John McLaughlin recorded Beard composition 'The Wait' which was a track on the guitar icon's 1987 album with Mahavishnu Adventures in Radioland.

Trumpeter Linley Hamilton also commented on social media: ''Maggie [Doyle, Linley's wife] and I are very sad to hear that the great jazz and fusion pianist Jim Beard has passed away. We had a great time with him and Jon Herrington in March 2020 when they stayed and played at Magy’s Farm. A beautiful musician and person.''

Author of the definitive biography on Wayne Shorter, Footprints, Michelle Mercer writes also on Facebook: ''We’re mourning Jim Beard, a brilliant, funny musician who wore his heart on his sleeve.'' Beard's albums as a leader included Song of the Sun (CTI, 1990) Truly (Escapade, 1997) and more recently Revolutions with Vince Mendoza and Metropole Orkest from the Netherlands in 2008.

Tags:

Ian Shaw & Tony Kofi play Ellington and Strayhorn on a new spring scheduled Duke & Sweet Pea-themed live quartet album

Next from the great jazz singer Ian Shaw following swiftly on from Greek Street Friday is a co-led album with saxophonist Tony Kofi themed around the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. The upcoming release entitled An Adventurous Dream …

Published: 5 Mar 2024. Updated: 55 days.

Next post

Next from the great jazz singer Ian Shaw following swiftly on from Greek Street Friday is a co-led album with saxophonist Tony Kofi themed around the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. The upcoming release entitled An Adventurous Dream concentrates on some of the crown jewels of a century-plus of jazz in terms of composition, repertoire and the art of the song. To be issued by the Ross Dines helmed PX Records next month it is a live album that was recorded at the Dean Street Soho mothership - given issuing label PX is the house label of the Pizza Express Jazz Club and its sibling live music venues in Holborn, Covent Garden and Chelsea - in June last year.

The title borrows from the lyric to Ellington and Strayhorn song 'Something To Live For' introduced to the canon by Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra in 1939 and covered by many down the years including notably by Carmen McRae on a 1956 release, Nina Simone and Ella in the 1960s, the great Nat King Cole influenced easy listening singer Johnny Mathis in 1990 and Jane Monheit in the early 21st century on Come Dream With Me.

'Something to Live For' is also a song title that became the title of a book by the distinguished jazz scholar Walter van de Leur whose work on Strayhorn in 2002 followed on from David Hajdu's revisionist 1990s award winning classic Lush Life about Strayhorn's life as an openly gay man and how his contribution to Ellingtonia was often overlooked given the prejudices of the day. It is easy to forget but it was only in 1962 that Illinois became the first US state to decriminalise homosexuality. Strayhorn, known to fans affectionately as ''Sweet Pea'' or ''Strays,'' died in 1967. For the majority of his life he lived under punitive, unfair, laws, both in terms of his sexuality and, as an African-American, his race - note during a period of seismic societal change that the Civil Rights Act signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on 2 July 1964 prohibited discrimination in public places and provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities and made employment discrimination illegal thus closing down pernicious Jim Crow laws.

A BODY OF WORK THAT CONTINUES TO RESONATE

Why can't I have love like that brought to me?

My eye is watching the noon crowd

Searching each promenade, scanning the shore

For the one who will someday be my

Something to live for

Something to make my life an adventurous dream

The arrangement on Mabel Mercer and Bobby Short At Town Hall of the song from the late-1960s is one of our favourites, the lyrics subtly condensed rising to the great drama of its interior monologue.

BARRY AND DAVE GREEN COMPLETE THE QUARTET

In recent years the Welshman Shaw who turned 60 in 2022 - read a contemporaneous interview published on marlbank ahead of his birthday concert - has covered Strayhorn/Ellington/La Touche's 'Day Dream' with his simpatico Italian Quartet on 2020's Integrity.

We haven't got the full track listing of An Adventurous Dream so far so don't know whether that classic in a new arrangement has made the cut. Let's hope. We reckoned the Mark Murphy influenced Shaw's Greek Street Friday mentioned earlier in this piece was the best vocals album of 2023 - see our full list of choices published in the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll. Kofi was also on fire with Sharp Little Bones on Volumes I and II last year.

The Greens, long time Shavian pianist Barry and Dave (no relation) - the veteran double bassist who was on the first ever PX release as a member of the Scott Hamilton Quartet - join Shaw and Kofi on the recording. Hailing from Nottingham and touring widely, the ex-Nu Troop saxist teamed up with Sharp Little Bones last year and resumes a playing acquaintance with SLB touring to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk on the 23rd - they are the trio who work a lot at Nottingham venue Peggy's Skylight. Kofi has also been playing with classic street funk Afrojazz band Cymande recently.

An Adventurous Dream dates coming up are Warwickshire's Guildhall, Henley-in-Arden on 7 April and Pizza Express Jazz Club, London on 24 April for the official launch. Updated at 4.59pm with track listing now confirmed: 1 'Mood Indigo'; 2 'I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart' / 'Don't Get Around Much Anymore'; 3 'Isfahan'; 4 'My Little Brown Book'; 5 'Day Dream'; 6 'Satin Doll'; 7 'A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing'; 8 'Something To Live For'; 9 'Passion Flower'; 10 'Blood Count'; 11 'Raincheck'; 12 'Lush Life.'