Keeping Time: 1964 - 1974 The Photographs and Cape Town Jazz Recordings of Ian Bruce Huntley

This book celebrates the public emergence of an extraordinary visual and audio archive that was initiated by Ian Bruce Huntley in Cape Town fifty years ago. Electric Jive is very happy to announce that a limited edition print run of 500 copies is now at the printers. The book is expected to be available towards the end of November.

Covering the period 1964 - 1974, the Ian Bruce Huntley archive opens a window to a little known era of South African music history, documenting an ‘underground’ jazz scene that persisted in creative defiance of all that grand apartheid threw at it. In addition to 120 historical images, 56 hours of live recordings from many of the photographed performances are indexed in this book and will become available for free download through Electric Jive.

This previously hidden archive documents accomplished South African jazz musicians pushing the creative envelope and entertaining appreciative audiences. In his accompanying essay Jonathan Eato argues that Ian Bruce Huntley’s photos and recordings document an extension of the Drum decade lineage right through to the 1970s.

Many of the musicians Huntley worked with have passed on, and a large number were never afforded the opportunity to record (whilst others remain woefully under-documented). Combined with the loss to exile of yet more key people in the history of jazz in South Africa and the general inaccessibility of records that do exist, this conflation of events and circumstances has left a big dent in our historical understanding and resources. For those students, musicians, scholars, and devotees of South African music who wish to engage with the achievements of a generation of South African jazz musicians the newly found accessibility of the Ian Huntley archive goes a small but invaluable way towards maintaining memory and articulating lost stories

Published by Chris Albertyn and Associates in partnership with Electric Jive, the book is edited by Chris Albertyn. In addition to a biographical sketch of Ian Huntley, the book offers a substantial essay by Jonathan Eato, a full discography of all the recordings, and an index. Electric Jive's Siemon Allen is responsible for the design and layout, while Cedric Nunn has painstakingly spent many many hours restoring the  professionally scanned digitized images. More details will be made available in the coming months.

The front cover image is of Psych Big T Ntsele playing at a 1971 open-air concert in New Brighton Township.

So - in celebration herewith a very rare recording. As regular Electric Jive visitors will know, one of the bands that Ian recorded in Cape Town was "The Jazz Disciples" - which included Tete Mbambisa (piano), Barney Rachabane and Ronnie Beer (saxophones), Dennis Mpale, Trumpet, Max Dayimani (drums) and either Sammy Maritz or Martin Mgijima on bass. You can read more about them and hear their music here, here, and here,

It is known that the Jazz Disciples did record for the SABC in 1964. What is less known is that there was at least one commercial release of a 45rpm on His Master's Voice, featuring the historic Tete Mbambisa compositions, Umsenge (his first) and Tete's Jump. While the labels do not indicate a date or release, it is estimated that this would be either 1964 or 1965. 

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The Jazz Disciples - Cape Town 1964

 

Dennis Mpale, Barney Rachabane (18yrs) Ronnie Beer. Pic: Ian Bruce Huntley

In May 1964 "The Jazz Disciples" went into Cape Town's SABC studios to record for Radio Bantu, without Ronnie Beer. In "Black Composers of Southern Africa", Yvonne Huskisson documents the SABC recording as being made by Tete Mbambisa (piano), Sammy Maritz (bass), Max 'Diamond' Dayimani (drums), Dennis Mpale (trumpet) and "Bunny" (Barney) Rachabane (sax). Ronnie Beer was also considered a member of the Jazz Disciples. We can only speculate as to why he was not included in that particular Radio Bantu recording session. Perhaps it was to do with the SABC's own racial policies at the time?

Max 'Diamond' Dayimani 'getting a light' from
Sammy Maritz. Pic: Ian Bruce Huntley

Shortly thereafter, Ronnie Beer rented the Thibault Square recording studio in Cape Town for an hour and he and the Jazz Disciples laid down four tight tracks - one of which we need some help in identifying. Ian Huntley happened to tag along and plugged his reel-to-reel into the sound desk, and here, nearly fifty years later the recording comes to light. We do not know what Ronnie Beer did with the recording he made of that session. Maybe he wanted to press an LP - four songs, thirty minutes - but it just never worked out?

 

Of all Ian's recordings, this is the only one capturing Sammy Maritz on bass. Maritz played in the Dollar Brand trio in the early 1960s, and then in early incarnations of Chris McGregor and the Blue Notes. He subsequently played most frequently with Tete Mbambisa and Max 'Diamond' Dayimani. Ronnie Beer and Sammy Maritz played in Chris McGregor's band at the 1962 Moroka-Jabavu Jazz Festival in Soweto, while Dennis Mpale and a seventeen-year-old Barney Rachabane joined them all on the legendary 1963 recording, Jazz: The African Sound.



Ian made five different recordings of what could be considered the core of the Jazz Disciples playing together, Mbambisa (leader), Beer, Mpale and Rachabane. One recording at the Room At The Top during 1964 has Martin Mgijima on bass. On another recording of this group at the Zambezi Restaurant in District Six, Ian's notes uncharacteristically do not list who the bass player was. Among Tete Mbambisa's own compositions, Mr Mecca features in two sessions.



Beer, Mpale, Rachabane at Thibault Square 1964
Pic: Ian Bruce Huntley

While Mr Mecca does not feature on Ian's Thibault Square tape, you can hear the version recorded by the Jazz Disciples at the 1964 SABC recording session here. Big thanks to Struan Douglas of www.afribeat.com for his now out of print Archive Africa CD. See here for the story and tracklisting of important recordings on that CD.The Soul Jazzmen's rendition of Mr Mecca can be found here. In the next few months I will share another 1964 recording of pianist Bucs Gcongo (Chonco) and others rendering Mr Mecca at the Zambezi Restaurant.

Turning to today's offering: The first track is a tight uptempo rendition of Charlie Parker's 'Billie's Bounce'. I think the second is the Ronnie Beer composition "Immediately". The fourth track is a lovely rendition of "Green Dolphin Street". All help apreciated in identifying the third track in this recording, it is naggingly familiar.

The Jazz Disciples: Thibault Square Recording Studio, Cape Town - 1964

Ronnie Beer and Tete Mbambisa at Thibault Square 1964
Pic by Ian Bruce Huntley

Ronnie Beer (saxophone); Barney Rachabane (saxophone - age 18); Dennis Mpale (trumpet); Tete Mbambisa (piano); Max 'Diamond' Dayimani (drums); Sammy Maritz (bass).

1. Billie's Bounce - (Charlie Parker) (7:11)
2. Immediately (I think) (Ronnie Beer) (8:13)
3. Unidentified (7:55)
4. Green Dolphin Street (7:20)

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