Mike Taylor
Trio (LP)
Back in print by popular demand ! The expressive English pianist Mike Taylor recorded a couple of excellent albums in the mid-1960s, at the request of Denis Preston of Lansdowne Studios, before drug use got the better of him, resulting in a long period of homelessness and a tragically early death from drowning at the age of 30, in 1970. Trio, the only album Taylor cut with the jazz trio he fronted, has strikingly original renditions of jazz standards such as “Stella By Starlight” and “The End Of…
Mandala
** Strictly limited to 500 copies ** Jazz In Britain presents Mandala by The Mike Taylor Quartet with extensive liner notes by Duncan Heining. Recorded live by Jon Hiiseman on Friday, 8th January 1965 at the Studio Club, Westcliff-On-Sea, Southend. Previously unheard. These are the only known live recordings of the The Mike Taylor Quartet.
Mike Taylor – pianoDave Tomlin – soprano saxTony Reeves – bassJon Hiseman – drums
Trio, Quartet & Composer Revisited
Temporary Super Offer! When on January 20 1969 Mike Taylor was pulled from the River Thames – shoeless, alone, confused, ultimately drowned by his own hand – the young pianist and composer was only 31. A cynic might say that hindsight is a wonderful thing and that it was only years later, when fans began to speculate on the fatal glamour of an artist who died so young, that fellow musicians began to recollect him as a genius of modern music. At the time, they might well have thought of him – an…
Trio
Mike Taylor died, probably by his own hand, at age 31 in 1969, having realised a fraction of his potential as a composer and player, and written for the New Jazz Orchestra, singer Norma Winstone and the rock band Cream. Cream's singer and bassist Jack Bruce and Ron Rubin (occasionally) are on acoustic bass here, with Jon Hiseman on drums, a line-up that highlights the close links between 1960s Britain's creative rock and R&B scenes and the jazz of the time.
Taylor is a highly rhythmic pianist wh…