CALVIN PEETE: THE TELEGRAPH OBITUARY

My obit of Calvin Peete is in the Daily Telegraph today, you can link to it here. It's a bit different to the way I wrote it. Usually, when dealing with sports, desks are worried their audience won't understand what's being talked about, but golf, particularly for Telegraph readers, was something I'd thought immune to that. So there was a bit of the technical stuff about golf, and even about the Ryder Cup, which was lost. And interestingly, the idea of a high school equivalency diploma was something of which they'd never conceived.

What was lost was my second paragraph, going into more detail about how Peete was the final bit of the bridge of the post-war struggle for black golfers to compete with whites on the PGA tour. It was lost for space reasons, and here is what I wrote:

Peete also stands as the final link uniting Woods, who joined the PGA tour in 1996, and the half-century of struggle for racial equality in the sport. Competitors in PGA events were, by rule, exclusively Caucasian. When Bill Spiller was barred from an event in California, he and Ted Rhodes, the 1948 US Open winner generally regarded as the first full-time black professional, sued the Association, arguing the denial of work on racial grounds violated the US constitution. The golfers settled out of court, but a verbal promise from PGA president Horton Smith to lift the colour bar was ignored. Not until 1961, under threat from California and other state governments to bar the PGA from public courses, did Charlie Sifford became the first black player on the tour; it was Sifford who taught Tiger Woods' father Earl to play. Pete Brown was the first black man to win a tournament in 1964 but not until 1975 would Lee Elder break the segregation of the Masters; Elder actually played in apartheid South Africa's PGA Championship, invited by Gary Player, four years before he stepped on the course at Augusta.

Peete grew up unaware of this history.

Peete didn't encounter the blatant discrimination even his immediate forebears like Elder did (having to change in car parks rather than clubhouses at some tournaments) but that didn't mean he was fully accepted the way Woods was. But the concentration on Augusta and the Masters was indeed the Telegraph's preference, and part of the description is theirs (the 'genteel racism' is mine).

But Peete's story is really two parallel arcs: the personal struggle and the golfing struggle. There's a movie in that, which might encapsulate some of the changes in American society. And one thing I wanted to mention, but couldn't think of a serious way to do it, was just how perfectly 70s Calvin Peete, and his kangols, always looked on the course. 

JACK BRUCE'S IMAGINARY WESTERN: AN APPRECIATION

Jack Bruce was actually the most interesting one in Cream, though it was Eric Clapton who was God and Ginger Baker who any number of people used to tell me had only months (or perhaps the length of one more drum solo) left to live. Clapton became more fascinating as he aged, Ginger Baker survived easily to become a crotchety old man making occasional interesting jazz albums, but Jack Bruce seemed never to be able to transfer the buzz of Cream into something more substantial. It may be the classic story of a tremendous sideman who wasn't geared to be a superstar leader. He was Cream's lead singer, and a great one. He and Pete Brown were the primary song-writers. But my guess is that Bruce, to himself, was always a bass player.

And a bass player whose exceptional instincts were actually well off the mainstream that Cream mined so effectively. Clapton and Baker went on to Blind Faith, with Steve Winwood and Ric Grech, then Clapton left and BF somehow became Ginger Baker's Air Force.

But Bruce made two exceptional solo albums after Cream broke up: Songs For A Tailor and Things We Like. They were released in that order but apparently Things was recorded first, while Bruce was actually still a part of Cream. It's all instrumental, with John McLaughlin on guitar, Dick Heckstall -Smith on saxes (sometimes two at once a la Roland Kirk) and Jon Hiseman on drums. Bruce had played with the first two in the Graham Bond Organisation (that's Bruce, Heckstall-Smith, Baker, and Bond in the photo left); Hiseman had also played with Bond, John Mayall, and was starting Colosseum. It's really a proto-fusion jazz album, with an experimental undertone; fine if you were listening to Coltrane's Impressions or Miles Davis at the time.

Songs For A Tailor came out in 1969. It features Hextall-Smith and Hiseman, along with drummer John Marshall, British sax man Art Themen, guest spots by George Harrison and Chris Spedding, and producer Felix Pappalardi. It's a challenging record; a couple of the cuts were intended for Cream's Disraeli Gears but turned down because they weren't commercial enough. But Bruce's vocals and sometimes Brown's lyrics keep them approachable. I'd listen to 'Never Tell Your Mother She's Out Of Tune' or 'Boston Ball Game 1967' (the latter perhaps inspired by Earth Opera's 'The Red Sox Are Winning') and feel a sort of intellectual frisson you didn't get with Cream. It lacked the hooks, though, which is why it wasn't a huge success.

It probably would have done better had it followed Things, instead of come first. Bruce went back to power trios first with Leslie West in West Bruce and Laing, and then the group that recorded Out Of The Storm, guitarist Steve Hunter and either Jim Gordon or Jim Keltner on drums. In 1975 he toured with a group including Carla Bley and Mick Taylor; a live recording of them turned up a few years ago. But his drug problems helped derail all three groups. Bruce continued to make loads of music, and much of it was very good. I have a bootleg disc called Jack Bruce & Friends, Live at the Bottom Line in New York in March 1980. The friends are Billy Cobham on drums (Bruce always attracted great drummers, which I think was an acknowledgement of his bass playing), ex-E Streeter David Sancious on keyboards, and Clemp Clempson from Colosseum and Humble Pie on guitar.

It was odd seeing Cream's reunion concert; Bruce looked like a wee Scottish pensioner, looking older now than Baker. Clapton (like Steve Winwood) seems to have aged remarkably well. But his playing was certainly still there. I watched it, but really didn't want the shadows of memory. Even then I went back to
the originals. And to his own stuff.

Including my favourite Bruce/Brown song, 'Theme For An Imaginary Western'. There's a power version on the Friends bootleg. It was a hit for Leslie West and Mountain, but the best version remains Bruce's on Songs For A Tailor, and it's a truly beautiful song. Listen to it here....RIP Jack Bruce