![]() ![]() Jack Bruce stood at the nexus of these developments. In the UK, when rock met jazz, they called it progressive rock-and rock traditionalists hated it, too. In the US, when rock met jazz, they called it fusion jazz traditionalists hated it. I’d never heard anything like it, and neither had most of the world. The breakneck tempo, the pulsing, virtuosic bass lines, the soaring, hornlike solo guitar, the polyrhythmic drumming that was simultaneously a blues shuffle and a ferocious straight eight, and, riding above it all, slow-moving, unearthly close harmonies surrounding the full-voiced and dead-on accurate lead vocal. I put the single on my turntable and was first greeted by a few seconds of a cappella, “Bomp-bomp-bomp-ba-bomp-bomp…I feel free” then, all hell broke loose. Inside the well-padded envelope were 45s that included a song that thoroughly rattled my musical world (and my poor folks’ eardrums) by a group called simply Cream. Aside from a single by a long-forgotten hometown band, I have no recollection what my contributions were, but to this day I vividly recall the impact of the British vinyl that arrived one day in our mailbox. After the session was over, I continued to be in touch for a while with the British member of the contingent, and at one point we sent one another 45s we thought the other wouldn’t have heard yet. ![]() In the summer of 1966 I spent six weeks with a genial assemblage of fellow nerds doing thin-layer chromatography, learning to play bridge, sampling my first beer, and comparing cultural notes on our various points of origin. “With Cream I and Ginger could play free jazz as a rhythm section, while Eric played the Ornette Coleman role. ![]()
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