Date/Time
Thursday 14 November 2024
7:30 pm - 10:00 pm
Categories Jazz
Book here now: £15 full price • £10 or £7 if you prefer – please pay what you can*
Zoê Francis, vocals
Jim Mullen, guitar
Tom Ball, Hammond organ
Tristan Mailliot, drums
Zoe Francis is a true proponent of the Great American songbook popularised by Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O’Day and so many other great singers. She was trained in New York with the great bebop pianist and jazz educator, Barry Harris. Zoe’s flawless delivery tells the story of the song and at home in London she mixes with the best musicians (Jim, Tristan, Ross Stanley, Gareth Williams) as attested by her three albums.
Jim Mullen has been around as long as anyone in jazz can remember, and can be said to be a UK legend of jazz guitar.
Aged 8, Jim started out playing a home made tub bass in a skiffle group in Glasgow. He bought his first arch top guitar aged 14 and learned everything he could from other local musicians and the American West Coast records that some of them owned, copying Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery early on. As a young man he formed a jazz group with sax player, Malcolm Duncan and keyboardist Roger Ball, who went on to join the Average White Band. (He later toured and recorded as a guest with the group.)
Mullen moved to London in the late 1960s. His first professional job was as a jazz musician for the poet Pete Brown, today remembered as the lyricist on several songs that comprised the legendary Wheels of Fire album by Cream. After recording two albums with Pete Brown’s band, Mullen moved on to Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express. After appearing on the band’s first three albums he joined the band Kokomo and in the mid-1970s he joined forces with tenor saxophonist Dick Morrissey to form the Morrissey-Mullen Band, a tremendously popular jazz-funk outfit where they both carved out a niche in UK jazz history.
Following 15 years and 6 albums with that genre-busting group, Jim formed various groups playing with some of London’s top musicians including Mornington Lockett, Dave O’Higgins, Gary Husband, Mick Hutton, Gareth Williams, Stan Sulzmann, Gareth Lockrane, Mike Gorman, Matt Skelton and Tristan Mailliot. He’s been featured on the Paul McCartney-produced All About the Music and more recently on the Citrus Sun album, People of Tomorrow, produced by Incognito co-founder, Jean-Paul ‘Bluey’ Maunick. In the last few years he recorded two organ trio albums and Volunteers (for a large ensemble arranged by Lockrane) and Bumpin’, a tribute to Wes Montgomery’s music with singer Claire Martin. Other ‘names’ in Jim’s CV include the great blues pianist Gene Harris, with whom he toured extensively, Mose Allison, Teddy Edwards, Plas Johnson (it’s his sax you hear on the Pink Panther theme), Jimmy Smith and Georgie Fame.
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