progressive rock
Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. In ...
and
jazz rock
Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyb ...
band formed in 1969. In the period spanning 1970–75, they released eight studio-recorded albums and undertook 17 tours of Europe, the US and Canada.
Dick Morrissey
Richard Edwin Morrissey (9 May 1940 – 8 November 2000) was a British jazz musician and composer. He played the tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone and flute.
Biography Background
He was born in Horley, Surrey, England. Dick Morrissey emerg ...
, and Terry Smith. They were managed by Lew Futterman, who was also the band's album producer. Signed by Chris Blackwell to Island Records in the UK and to Capitol Records in the US, their debut album, '' If'' (1970), entered the charts in both the States ('' Billboard'') and the UK. The second album, '' If 2'', was released the same year. They toured in Europe and the United States during the early 1970s, with two US tours during their first year, performing at
Newport Jazz Festival
The Newport Jazz Festival is an annual American multi-day jazz music festival held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island. Elaine Lorillard established the festival in 1954, and she and husband Louis Lorillard financed it for many years. They hir ...
,
Reading Festival
The Reading and Leeds Festivals are a pair of annual music festivals that take place in Reading and Leeds in England. The events take place simultaneously on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the August bank holiday weekend. The Reading Festiv ...
, and the
Fillmore East
The Fillmore East was rock promoter Bill Graham's rock venue on Second Avenue near East 6th Street in the (at the time) Lower East Side neighborhood, now called the East Village neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan of New York City. I ...
(10 November 1970). They also shared billing with acts such as Rory Gallagher, Rush, Kiss, The Eagles, Bo Diddley, Strawbs, REO Speedwagon, Electric Light Orchestra, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Uriah Heep, Grand Funk Railroad,
Rod Stewart, The Faces, Black Sabbath, Taste, Brinsley Schwarz, Atomic Rooster, Traffic, Mott the Hoople and many more.
The albums '' If 3'' (1971), and ''
If 4
''If 4'' is the fourth album released by the English jazz rock band If. It was first issued in 1972 and the last album to feature the original recording line-up. Capitol Records, the band's U.S. label, declined to issue this fourth album. Most ...
'' (titled ''Waterfall'' in US with one different track) (1972) were accompanied by heavy touring schedules in the States and Europe, especially in Britain and Germany, where the band appeared on TV (BBC's ''
Top of the Pops
''Top of the Pops'' (''TOTP'') is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. The programme was the world's longest-running weekly music show. For most o ...
''/''
Old Grey Whistle Test
''The Old Grey Whistle Test'' (sometimes abbreviated to ''Whistle Test'' or ''OGWT'') is a British television music show. The show was devised by BBC producer Rowan Ayers, commissioned by David Attenborough and aired on BBC2 from 1971 to 1988. ...
'' in the UK and one of their tracks was used as a signature tune for the news in Germany, as well as performing live (September 1971) on Bremen TV's ''
Beat-Club
''Beat-Club'' is a West German music programme that ran from September 1965 to December 1972. It was broadcast from Bremen, West Germany on ''Erstes Deutsches Fernsehen'', the national public TV channel of the ARD, and produced by one of its ...
''. In the summer of 1972, the band cancelled the remainder of a US tour when Dick Morrissey was admitted to hospital for surgery. During this period, the band members worked on other projects.
Consisting of essentially two clearly defined line-ups, as well as an intermediate, transitional one, the original band had a heavier leaning towards jazz, and was formed by
Dick Morrissey
Richard Edwin Morrissey (9 May 1940 – 8 November 2000) was a British jazz musician and composer. He played the tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone and flute.
Biography Background
He was born in Horley, Surrey, England. Dick Morrissey emerg ...
, on tenor sax and flute, and Terry Smith on guitars, both '' Melody Maker'' award-winning British jazz musicians who had played together in US soul singer J.J. Jackson's band with Dave Quincy on alto and tenor saxes, together with Spike Wells on drums,
Lionel Grigson
Lionel Grigson (12 February 1942 – 14 June 1994) was an English jazz pianist, cornettist, trumpeter, composer, writer and teacher, who in the 1980s started the jazz course at the Guildhall School of Music. As Simon Purcell wrote in ''The Ind ...
on keyboards and
Daryl Runswick
Daryl Runswick (born 12 October 1946) is a classically trained English composer, arranger, jazz musician, producer and educationalist.
Career
Runswick was born in Leicester, and educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys and Corpus Christi Co ...
on bass, although these last three musicians did not record with the band, with Wells going off to join
Tubby Hayes
Edward Brian "Tubby" Hayes (30 January 1935 – 8 June 1973) was an English jazz multi-instrumentalist, best known for his tenor saxophone playing in groups with fellow sax player Ronnie Scott and with trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar.
Early life
...
.
The definitive seven-piece line-up for the first incarnation of the band, with a more jazz-rock-oriented style, and which appears on the first four studio albums, as well as a live recording, was J. W. Hodkinson on lead vocals,
John Mealing
John Mealing (born 5 April 1942 in Yeovil, Somerset) is a British keyboardist, composer and arranger.
After leaving the Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet in the late sixties,Jim Richardson on electric bass, Dennis Eliott on drums, with Dave Quincy on alto and tenor saxes, Terry Smith on guitars, and Dick Morrissey on tenor and soprano saxes and flute.
The above line-up is possibly the band's best known, but the band was subject to other personnel changes.Logan, Nick &Woffinden, Bob (eds.) ''The New Musical Express Book of Rock'', W.H. Allen & Co. Ltd (Star), 1973, p. 257. . With If coming off the road when Dick Morrissey was admitted to hospital, J. W. Hodkinson joined
Darryl Way
Richard Darryl Way (born 17 December 1948 in Taunton, Somerset, England) is an English rock and classical musician who was a founding member of Curved Air and co-writer of their Progressive Rock seminal albums from 1970 to 1976. He is best kno ...
's Wolf, Terry Smith and Dave Quincy went off to form ZZebra, John Mealing joined
Klaus Doldinger
Klaus Doldinger (born 12 May 1936) is a German saxophonist known for his work in jazz and as a film music composer. He was the recipient of 1997's Bavarian Film Awards.
Life and work
Doldinger was born in Berlin, Germany, and entered a Düsse ...
's Passport before going on to Strawbs, Jim Richardson went on to do studio session work, and Dennis Elliott joined the hugely successful group Foreigner.
A new line-up had Fi Trench and Dave Greenslade (ex-
Colosseum
The Colosseum ( ; it, Colosseo ) is an oval amphitheatre in the centre of the city of Rome, Italy, just east of the Roman Forum. It is the largest ancient amphitheatre ever built, and is still the largest standing amphitheatre in the world t ...
) on keyboards, and Dave Wintour replacing Richardson on bass. Wintour left shortly afterwards to join
Roger Daltrey
Roger Harry Daltrey (born 1 March 1944) is an English singer, musician and actor. He is a co-founder and the lead singer of the rock band The Who.
Daltrey's hit songs with The Who include " My Generation", " Pinball Wizard", " Won't Get Fooled ...
, appearing on his first two solo albums.
A sixth studio album, '' Double Diamond'' (1973), with only Dick Morrissey left from the original line-up, featured Fi Trench (keyboards) and Pete Arnesen (keyboards), Steve Rosenthal (guitar/lead vocals), Kurt Palomacki (bass) and Cliff Davies (drums). It was recorded at The Manor recording studios shortly after
Mike Oldfield
Mike may refer to:
Animals
* Mike (cat), cat and guardian of the British Museum
* Mike the Headless Chicken, chicken that lived for 18 months after his head had been cut off
* Mike (chimpanzee), a chimpanzee featured in several books and document ...
's ''
Tubular Bells
Tubular bells (also known as chimes) are musical instruments in the percussion family. Their sound resembles that of church bells, carillon, or a bell tower; the original tubular bells were made to duplicate the sound of church bells within a ...
Geoff Whitehorn
Geoffrey Charles Whitehorn (born 29 August 1951, London, England) is a guitarist and singer-songwriter, who has played as a member of If, Crawler and Procol Harum.
History
In August 1973, Whitehorn joined the pioneering British jazz-rock ba ...
on guitars and vocals, Gabriel Magno on keyboards and Walt Monaghan on bass and vocals (replacing Mike Tomich, who had toured with the band prior to these last recordings), as well as Cliff Davies and Dick Morrissey.
Coinciding with their more rock-influenced style, they also changed their famous small-case logo "if" for the more solid-looking large-case "IF".
If finally broke up in 1975, Dick Morrissey going on to work with the
Average White Band
The Average White Band (also known as AWB) are a Scottish funk and R&B band that had a series of soul and disco hits between 1974 and 1980. They are best known for their million-selling instrumental track " Pick Up the Pieces", and their album ...
and
Herbie Mann
Herbert Jay Solomon (April 16, 1930 – July 1, 2003), known by his stage name Herbie Mann, was an American jazz flute player and important early practitioner of world music. Early in his career, he also played tenor saxophone and clarinet (inclu ...
, eventually forming
Morrissey–Mullen
Morrissey–Mullen were a British jazz-funk/fusion group of the 1970s and 1980s.
Considered one of the most popular jazz groups in London, the band was led by Dick Morrissey on tenor and soprano saxes and flute, and Jim Mullen on guitar, who joi ...
; Geoff Whitehorn to join Crawler and, subsequently,
Procol Harum
Procol Harum () were an English rock band formed in Southend-on-Sea, Essex in 1967. Their best-known recording is the 1967 hit single " A Whiter Shade of Pale", one of the few singles to have sold over 10 million copies. Although noted for ...
. Other members worked with
Ted Nugent
Theodore Anthony Nugent (; born December 13, 1948) is an American rock musician and activist. He initially gained fame as the lead guitarist and occasional lead vocalist of The Amboy Dukes, a band formed in 1963 that played psychedelic rock ...
, who was also produced by Lew Futterman: Gabriel Magno (1973-1974), Cliff Davies (1975-1980) and Walt Monaghan (1979).
Following the interest generated in the band with the re-release of ''If'', ''If 2'', ''If 3'', ''If 4'', Dave Quincy and Terry Smith announced the reformation of If in 2015 with a new line-up. A new album was released in 2016 and was titled ''If 5''.
The band were acclaimed by George Knemeyer in a '' Billboard'' concert review as "unquestionably the best of the so-called jazz-rock bands".
Allmusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...
* '' If 2'' (Island, 1970) US No. 203
* '' If 3'' (United Artists, 1971) US No. 171
* ''
If 4
''If 4'' is the fourth album released by the English jazz rock band If. It was first issued in 1972 and the last album to feature the original recording line-up. Capitol Records, the band's U.S. label, declined to issue this fourth album. Most ...
'' (United Artists, 1972)
* ''
Waterfall
A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf.
Waterfalls can be formed in severa ...
Europe '72
''Europe '72'' is a live triple album by the Grateful Dead, released in November 1972. It covers the band's tour of Western Europe in April and May that year, and showcases live favourites, extended improvisations and several new songs including ...
'' (Repertoire, 1997)
Live albums
* ''Fibonacci's Number: More Live'' (Repertoire, 2010)
References
External links
*
Allmusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...
Chris Welch
Chris Welch (born 12 November 1941) is an English music journalist, critic, and author who is best known for his work from the late 1960s as a reporter for ''Melody Maker'', ''Musicians Only'', and ''Kerrang!''. He is the author of over 40 mu ...