Stan Tracey's Spectrum

Limited edition CD & download album produced from a previously vinyl-only release, so available digitally here for the first time, with added live recordings from the same band. The album marks the first collaboration between Jazz In Britain and ReSteamed Records and is dedicated to Stan Tracey to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Thelonius Monk died on 17 February 1982. In early April, Stan Tracey recorded a tribute album to Monk, with a group he called Spectrum. This idea was dreamt up by Adrian Kerridge, Stan's former engineer at Lansdowne Studios, who owned the facility. It was a limited-edition, one-off release on Adrian's own label, Switch, and featured Kenny Wheeler, Bobby Wellins, Art Themen, Peter King and Stan's trio with Roy Babbington and Stan’s son Clark. Later that year, in the October, the group debuted the release at the 100 Club in a Monk tribute concert with Henry Lowther laying in place of Kenny Wheeler. In the February of 1983, Stan’s Spectrum were one of the headlining bands at the first ever Ealing Jazz Festival. The line-up was as the previous Autumn but, this time, with Tony Coe replacing Bobby Wellins. The 100 Club and Ealing Jazz Festival performances were thankfully recorded and are included on this album.

Special thanks are owed to the musicians on the album, or their families, who consented to its release: Mark and Louanne Wheeler on behalf of their dad Kenny; Henry Lowther; Art Themen; Fiona Wellins on behalf of her dad Bobby; Peter Bainton on behalf of Peter King; Sue Stedman Jones on behalf of Tony Coe; Roy Babbington and, finally, Clark Tracey.