Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Gordon James Beck was born on September 16, 1935 in Brixton, London, England where he attended Pinner County Grammar School. He studied piano in his youth, but decided to pursue a career as an engineering technical draughtsman and moved to Canada in 1957 for this reason.

Largely self-taught, he returned to music after returning home from Canada in 1958, where he had been exposed to the works of George Shearing and Dave Brubeck. He became a professional musician in 1960 and played with saxophonist Don Byas in Monte Carlo. Beck joined the Tubby Hayes group in 1962, then led his own bands from 1965, including Gyroscope, from 1968, a trio with bassist Jeff Clyne and drummer Tony Oxley.

1967 saw the Gordon Beck Quartet record the album Experiments with Pops released on Major Minor MMLP 21 in 1968. That same year they recorded with Joy Marshall and released as When Sunny Gets Blue decades later.

Beck first played with vocalist Helen Merrill in 1969 and continued the relationship into the 1990s when she toured Europe. From 1969 to 1972 he toured with saxophonist Phil Woods’s European Rhythm Machine.

In the Sixties and Seventies he was a house pianist at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. Beck played experimental funk with George Gruntz from1973-75), and free jazz with improv drummer John Stevens and  was a member of Nucleus between 1973 and 1974.

From middle age, Beck played predominantly in mainland Europe, recorded albums with Allan Holdsworth, Henri Texier, Didier Lockwood and others. He often played solo from the 1980s and started teaching music at the same poin and toured Japan with Holdsworth in 1985.

Pianist Gordon Beck stopped performing around 2005 because of poor health and died in Ely, Cambridgeshire, England on November 6, 2011.

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