Jazz music can be a lifelong calling. Once a musician turns professional, a long career often ensues, sometimes well into their 80s. However, there are a few musicians who buck the trend, and step away from the scene completely. Whatever the reason might be; health issues, burnout or personal choice, let’s look at some artists who left the jazz scene before time.
Horace Silver
Horace Silver is one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. A pianist, composer and band leader from a young age, Silver helped to define the genres or hard bop and soul jazz. Music not just to sit and listen to in an auditorium but also to get people on the dancefloor. Silver had a gift for making music which would be remembered for decades.
In the 1950s Silver formed the Jazz Messengers, which Art Blakey eventually took over after Silver and Blakey fell out, split and went their separate ways. Silver also played with the likes of Miles Davis before setting up his own groups in the early 1960s and recorded for the Blue Note label right up until the early 1980s. Classic tracks include Song For My Father, The Cape Verdean Blues & Filthy McNasty.
Horace Silver intentionally or unintentionally used his groups as a vehicle for young musicians to make a name for themselves and become global stars. In the 1960s trumpeters Woody Shaw and Randy Brecker, saxophonist Bennie Maupin and drummer Billy Cobham were members of his quintet. As the 1970s rolled in, Silver released a trio of albums called the United States of Mind featuring vocalists including the great Andy Bey. Silver also showcased the capabilities of the very young Brecker Brothers on the excellent album In Pursuit of the 27th Man. Later that decade Silver made wonderful big band albums with musicians the calibre of bassist Ron Carter, trumpeter Tom Harrell and saxophonist Bob Berg.
By 1982, a chronic back issue and Silver’s association with Blue Note ending led to his withdrawal from touring. He produced a few albums on his Silveto label including Music to Ease Your Disease in 1988. However, Silver made a comeback in the mid 1990s on major labels Columbia, Impulse and Verve with a series of excellent albums including A Prescription For The Blues and The Hardbop GrandPop. His last CD was released in 1999 and called Jazz Has A Sense of Humour. I understand Silver did limited touring in the late 1990s but after 2000 was again fully retired.
Silver commissioned his autobiography which was released in 2007 entitled Let’s Get To The Nitty Gritty. Silver died in June 2014 age 84, and is rightly considered one of the greats of modern jazz music.
Bill Bruford
Bill Bruford is one of those rare musicians who performed in both the rock and jazz world in equal measure throughout his career.
Born in Sevenoaks in the South East of England in 1949, Bruford was a founding member of Supergroup Yes in the late 1960s. He didn’t stay very long with them, and joined King Crimson in the early 1970s. During the 1970s Bruford would also tour with Genesis as the second drummer behind Phil Collins, and form another Supergroup called U.K. with Allan Holdsworth on guitar, John Wetton on bass / vocals plus Eddie Jobson on violin and keyboards. While all this was going on in Bruford’s career, he still had time to form his own band called Bruford and release a number of albums featuring Allan Holdsworth, Jeff Berlin on bass and Dave Stewart on keyboards.
Bruford’s albums were very much a mixture of progressive rock and jazz fusion, in the style of Brand X. I call it college music, as many gigs were often played in college / University halls and the music itself had an intellectual angle, even if it was full on music on a basic level.
In the 1980s, Bruford continued to innovate, being the first principal drummer to endorse and use the Simmons electronic drum pads in his music. Bruford also collaborated with improvisers such as Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz and American bassist Jamalaadeen Taccuma. It was inevitable that Bruford would start his own bonafide jazz band in 1987 calling it Earthworks. Featuring Django Bates, Ian Ballamy, and Mick Hutton. It was clever, as the music incorporated straight ahead jazz, electronic drumming and progressive elements, jazz at its innovative best. Earthworks continued this theme into the early 1990s but finally became a full on straight ahead acoustic band around 1999 with his album A Part and Yet Apart with a new band of young players. This version of Earthworks continued to produce great albums until the late 2000s.
One constant with Bruford was his continuance of performing with King Crimson from the 1980s right up to the 2000s. Bruford also helped form Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe in 1989, who were some of the original members of Yes. However, in 2009 at the age of 60, Bruford announced his retirement from performing and recording all music. It took me by surprise as you always expect musicians to go on and on.
Like many people in retirement, Bruford has been very busy. He’s written an autobiography, worked on and received a PHD in music from the University of Surrey, and more recently started up an excellent YouTube channel, showcasing many archive videos of live performances and interviews going back to the 1970s.
Even if Bruford no longer performs in public, there is plenty of music for his fans to enjoy.
Janet Lawson
Janet Lawson was an incredibly talented singer who is probably not well known outside of hardcore jazz circles. Mainly due to the fact that Lawson made two albums in the early 1980s then more or less disappeared from the scene.
In fact, Lawson was already in her early forties when her albums came out, despite that her voice sounded incredibly fresh. One of the very best scat vocalists in the business, Lawson made a reputation for herself in the 1960s and 1970s working with a variety of top quality musicians. Including Art Framer, Ron Carter, Duke Ellington, Barry Harris and Dave Liebman. Other than her recording of Dindi in 1970 on the United Artists label, there is not much footage or recordings of Lawson’s work with these great artists, which is a pity.
In the early 1980s Lawson sang on two tracks on pianist and lyricist David Lahm’s album entitled Real Jazz For The Folks That Feel Jazz. This included a remake of Chick Corea’s Captain Marvel with Lahm providing the lyrics (the original was instrumental with vocal harmonies by Flora Purim). Lawson’s two albums were called The Janet Lawson Quintet released in 1981 and Dreams Can Be released in 1984. Her first album included an amazing cover version of Nothing Like You by Miles Davis. Dreams Can Be included the incredible title track and a great ballad called Break Free. However, by the mid 1980s Lawson disappeared from the scene altogether, reported to look after ill parents. This was a great loss to jazz music and music in general.
Lawson never made records again but in the early 2000s “resurfaced” to get involved in a variety of jazz education projects in central Europe and teaching jazz vocal courses at New York University.
Lawson died in 2021 age 81 but her music certainly lives on.
Eric Gravatt
Highly skilled and acclaimed drummer, who made his name as Weather Report’s drummer from 1972 to 1974. Gravatt also performed on drummer and percussionist Dom Um Romao’s excellent album in 1974. Joe Zawinul often called Gravatt “the world’s greatest drummer”. However, Gravatt was reportedly disillusioned with the type of music Weather Report were outputting at that time (very abstract) and the music business in general and left altogether to become a Prison Guard for well over twenty years. Gravatt started to perform again in the 2010s, performing live with the likes of McCoy Tyner and is held in high regard by fellow Weather Report drummers such as Peter Erskine.
[Laurie Burnette]
Owner and Programme Director for Jazz London Radio.
Tennis fan and writer https://burnstennis.blogspot.
