Monday 10 November 2014

More Moyake mined from the Huntley Archive (1965)


Left to right: Peter Jackson Jjnr (drums), Nikele Moyake (tenor), Tete Mbambisa (obscured on Piano), Dennis Mpale (trumpet) Duku Makasi (tenor). Salt River Town Hall, Cape Town, 1965. (pic Ian Bruce Huntley)
One more contribution to the small handful of recordings of Blue Notes saxophonist Nikele Moyake in the year or so between his return home from Europe and his death. While this recording is also very much about Bucs Chonco (piano), Dennis Mpale (trumpet), Psych Big T Ntsele (bass), Peter Jackson Jnr (drums), Robert Sithole (flute), the more senior Moyake leads from the front, soloing often.

Tape 44 of Ian Bruce Huntley's archive slipped between the cracks in my first round of digitising and tagging close on sixty hours of music in the audio archive. Thanks Rose for picking this up.
Nikele Moyake (pic Ian Bruce Huntley)

First, an apology to regular  Huntley Archive on Electric Jive visitors for not yet being able to tweak those fixes and track title updates that you so kindly pointed out. I will get there.

This recording is probably the clearest made by Ian at the Ambassador's School of Dance in Woodstock, a venue with challenging acoustics in which to play and record with a few static microphones.

The five tracks spanning forty five minutes showcase an integration of Moyake's significant European experiences with an evolving jazz scene in Cape Town.

Besides the unusual choice of Jimmy Web's  "By the Time I get to Phoenix",  we have not been able to name the other four tracks. All help and suggestions are most welcome.

If you have not yet explored the Huntley Archive on Electric Jive, do yourself a favour and click on the image of the book cover in the right-hand column of this blog. Close on 58 hours of recordings are available for you to download and listen to. You can also download a free copy of the book. Hard copies of the book are still available, and you can order it from this site as well.

If you are interested in other posts in which Nikele Moyake features, have a look here and here and here.
Mediafire download of the recording here

4 comments:

  1. Another amazing post! I’ve just spent the last couple of months going back over all the posts on ElectricJive. I know I’ve recently thanked you guys privately for what you’re doing here, but having read back over all the blogs and the comments it strikes me that as someone who has followed this blog since 2009 I should say a thank you *on the blog*. The medium is the message right?

    Except that it turns out not to be... Apparently what I had in mind is too long winded a praise poem for the comments section on Blogger - hence the open letter to you guys over at HB&Co

    http://thelookofthething.tumblr.com/post/102388790021/open-letter-to-ca-sa-nl-and-mt

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  2. Thank you Jonathan - oxygen indeed, if not helium. EJ is always open to the idea of occasional guest posts too :-)

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  3. Many thanks Jonathan, for the kind words and your amazing open letter! This is what keeps us going! Also... we have more Woody Woodpeckers, if you like? :>

    Chris, thanks as always for bringing the invaluable Huntley Archive to light! This history was simply undocumented on vinyl and it blows my mind to think that it only survives through single reel-to-reel magnetic recordings!
    I hope more reels fall through the cracks!

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  4. Another really excellent post, as with everything in the Ian Huntley archive. Thank you so much. Sorry I can't offer any suggestions for the unnamed tracks.

    And may I second Jonathan Eato's tribute to your efforts, above: "a profound intervention" indeed.

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