Introduction

By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: The Legendary Sixties Supergroup
Amended Friday, 08 April 2005

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The Formation

By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: Strange Brew
Amended Friday, 08 April 2005

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The Farewell

By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: The Legendary Sixties Supergroup
Amended Friday, 08 April 2005

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Jack Bruce

By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: Strange Brew
Amended Friday, 08 April 2005

Jack and Ginger had first got together way back in 1961 when Baker was playing with trumpeter Bert Courtley's band. During a gig in Cambridge, Bruce had asked to sit in. Ginger had been against the idea until he heard how well Jack coped with the changes on a difficult ballad and then tore into a fast 12-bar blues. Although a clash of Scots and Irish temperaments would mar their relationship for years to come, nevertheless, they formed a mutual respect on a night which saw their musical destinies inextricably linked.

Jack Bruce was much more than a virtuoso bass player. He was a great singer, with a powerful, soulful style, and blew a mean harmonica. The first time I saw him singing with the Graham Bond Organisation at a loud, poorly attended gig at London's 100 Club, I wondered why he wasn't the lead vocalist. Graham, whose idea of singing was to bawl himself hoarse, tended to hog the vocal chores, but when ever Jack was allowed to sing, the effect was mesmerising.

He was born John Simon Asher Bruce, on May 14, 1943 in Bishopbriggs,, Lanarkshire, Scotland.

He had wanted to be a musician from childhood and his parents bought him a piano to encourage him to study music while at school. He left at 16 and at 17 won a scholarship to study 'cello at the Royal Scottish Academy Of Music in Glasgow.

Recalls Jack: "When I was a young school boy I always wanted to play the bass, but was put on the 'cello because I just wasn't big enough to handle the monster. At 15 having grown, I realised my first ambition and played bass in the school orchestra. I then went to music college but I didn't stay very long. They didn't dig what I was doing and I didn't particularly think what they were teaching me was going to help me very much. I got quite frustrated at the college, because it was very old fashioned. I was very interested in modern composers like Stravinsky and the teachers were very old—almost Victorians! A lot of them thought music had died with Richard Strauss. I was also getting into modern jazz and trying to get them to take it seriously was very hard. I liked the MJQ and I thought it was great that they were using classical forms. I'd bring in their records like 'The Golden Striker' and they would just pooh-pooh it."

Jack's mother was the main driving force in encouraging her son to study music. He had started off as a singer in choirs before becoming a boy soprano soloist. He would enter Scottish music festivals and won a few competitions.

"I used to get incredibly nervous though and almost throw up before hand. I still do get stage fright, but as I kid I couldn't handle it. It would be just me and a pianist, and they'd be marking me while singing Schubert. It was very competitive because the same half a dozen kids entered. My mother ensured that I had vocal training, which has stood me in good stead over the years. I learnt how to project like opera singers. I knew how to project from the abdomen as opposed to most pop singers who sing from the throat, which is why a lot of them have vocal problems."

This ensured Jack's vocal style would be imbued with unusual depth and power.

"It was something people either liked—or didn't like," recalls Bruce. "Frank Zappa liked it very much. But I don't think Eric was much in love with it. He thought in Cream it was the wrong kind of singing for that kind of music, but it's just the way I happen to sing! My feeling is you bring yourself to the music. You don't have to be anything. There are no rules. The kind of music we became involved in starts with self-expression, so I don't agree with him on that."

When Cream hit the road Jack was certainly equipped to take on the chores of singing lead, night after night, without fear of losing his voice, but says: "We did suffer, like most bands in those days, from the lack of a decent PA."

After quitting college, Jack went off to Italy to play double bass with a jazz band. He'd already had some experience playing in pit orchestras and his reading ability meant that despite his youth, he could get a gig with virtually any band he liked.

"I used to work in Glasgow in the Palais bands when I was still at college. In fact that's partly why I left because you weren't allowed to make a living from playing, while you were studying. They had a rule that you weren't allowed to do that. I didn't agree with that because I also liked the money! It was a question of either staying at college or gigging. I was getting great experience playing in jazz clubs as well and learning Thelonious Monk tunes, which for me was just as important as studying classical harmony. The college didn't agree, so I left."

In 1961 Bruce saw an advert in the Melody Maker placed by the Murray Campbell Big Band in Coventry. He traveled down for an audition at the Mecca Ballroom and played a difficult piece called 'One Bass Hit' recorded by celebrated bassist Ray Brown with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra.

"I was fresh from college and sight-read that—immediately. They were blown away and I got the gig. I went to Italy with that band but it became a small band in the style of Louis Prima, playing a shuffle type of rhythm & blues. It was very strange because we were playing variety theatres and the whole band were wearing kilts. Then somebody ran away with all the money and we got stranded in Milan and had to be repatriated. We spent six weeks in Milan with no money and lived on carrot stew!"

Jack returned to Glasgow then finally went to London for the first time. He went to straight to Archer Street. "I went down The Street, and got a gig at an American base—in Italy." Jack was just 17 and the deal was he had to go to France then drive the band to a town near Venice. "I had a driving license—but only just. I'd lied about my age. And I had to drive this 1940s Mercedes with a trailer on the back carrying a Lowry organ—over the Alps! I'd never really driven before. Anyway, we made it and stayed quite a while on this base."

On his return to the U.K. he joined Jim McHarg's Scotsville Jazz Band. "Jim McHarg was the bass player, but he got fired by his own band and I got the band leader's gig! We came in at the tail end of the trad boom. I was never a trad fan, and wanted to get into modern jazz. At least we didn't have to wear kilts."