Mary Had A Little Lamb / Chi Chi Boom / Too Much (Isn’t Good For You) / Noisy Springs / Water Melon // Don’t Touch My Nylons / Sixty Minute Man / Suede Shoes Calypso / Tomato / Little Boy. Melodisc really did have a wonderfully bewildering roster of releases, featuring everything from Bill Haley to Laurel Aitken to Joe Harriott. One of Harriott’s earliest solo outings was an extended play on Melodisc in 1954, featuring Cherokee / Out of Nowhere / Summertime / April in Paris. Among the other labels Harriott recorded for early in his career was Polygon, where there was a date with arranger Laurie Johnson, who was the label’s bright young star and whose orchestra had success there with among other things theme music from Wolf Mankowitz’s A Kid For Two Farthings.
broadcasting. He still is; but this descendant of Wieniawski has always cherished a dream, which after years of recording various manifestations of popular music, has now come true. This is based on a firm conviction that the string quartet is not only a perfectly valid medium for music but that, given time, money—and thought, it can capture the imagination of a mass public. Sitting behind the clean desk that is the hallmark of the efficient administrator, Mr Preston, who master-minds a number of recordings for EMI, told me of how he was determined to create an ensemble of outstanding excellence. More than this, it would play a repertory not confined to the Viennese classics but drawn from a wide range of music in performances that must compel attention. Money from jazz and ‘folk’ and goodness knows what else has now produced the Lansdowne Quartet.”
Dennis Preston would recall the Harriott/ Johnson sessions in his liner notes for Joe’s later release, Personal Portrait: “I first made records with Joe Harriott in 1954. At that time Joe was a fairly recent arrival from his native Jamaica, and a relative freshman on the British jazz scene. Yet he had already established an enviable reputation - amongst musicians rather than critics - as an outstanding disciple of the Charlie Parker school of alto playing. And, indeed, many idiosyncratic Parkerisms are still apparent in his work today. These first recordings were in the familiar ‘jazz quartet’ idiom - solo instrument (in this case alto saxophone) and three rhythm. But in 1955 we embarked upon what I believe to have been the first jazz recordings of its type in this country - JOE HARRIOTT WITH STRINGS. (The arranger and musical director for this ‘extended play’ experiment was the redoubtable Laurie Johnson, and the titles, which I well recall, were I’ll Remember April and Easy To Love).”
Laurie Johnson would work again with Joe Harriott in an orchestral setting on his Synthesis symphony which featured The London Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Jazz Orchestra. On its release in 1969 it got an enthusiastic response from Gramophone magazine: “Nowadays, with pop groups appearing in concert with symphony orchestras, the presence of the LPO and LJO on one LP excites less comment than it would have done even five years ago. There have been attempts in the past to wed jazz and concert music but I think that Laurie Johnson’s Synthesis is far and away the best of these experiments. Perhaps the main reason is that Johnson has deliberately used the established classic symphony form and, moreover, made use of the vocabulary employed by such composers as Gustav Hoist and Vaughan Williams. In other words he has not tried too much at once. Neither has he simply grafted jazz soloists on to the symphony orchestra; the London Jazz Orchestra is very much a part of the complete concept and the solos arise naturally from within the context of the music. Prelude establishes the individual identity of the two orchestras, LPO first (under the leadership of Rodney Friend) then the LJO with Kenny Wheeler stating the first theme on flugel horn.
Personal Portrait itself returned to the ‘With Strings’ theme, and featured the Lansdowne String Quartet, a pet project of Preston’s in the late ‘60s. As Gramophone magazine reported: “For a long time now Mr Denis Preston has been engaged in the business of recording and
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