Legendary British trumpet player and Jazz author Ian Carr passed away in London on Wednesday, February 25. He was 75.
As a young musician, Carr played with John McLaughlin, Eric Burdon and Alan Price. His albums with The New Jazz orchestra and Neil Ardley in the late 1960s are among the best jazz recordings ever produced in Britain. In the 1970s he led the seminal British Jazz band Nucleus (which is one of the first jazz fusion groups) which included John Marshall, Chris Spedding, Jack Bruce, Alan Holdsworth and Karl Jenkins, among others. His Nucleus records are highly sought after and are heavily sampled because of the tight bass lines that he incorporated into his music.
After he recovered form a cancer operation in the early 1980s, Carr worked extensively with Nucleus as well as the George Russell l Orchestra, Michael Gibbs and the United Jazz Rock Ensemble.
Furthermore, he was also a highly respected and accomplished author, he wrote about Jazz in the early 1970s and also authored the definitive musical biography of Miles Davis, which is widely regarded as among the finest jazz biographies ever written. He also made many BBC Radio programs as a musician and a critic.
Additionally, Carr was the co-author of the reference work “The Rough Guide to Jazz,” which has passed through four editions from 1994 (originally Jazz, The Essential Companion, 1988). He has also contributed sleeve notes for the albums of other musicians.
In 1987, he was appointed associate professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and taught composition and performance, especially improvisation and was founder of the jazz workshop at the Interchange arts scheme, where pianist Julian Joseph, amongst others, was one of his students.
He received Lifetime Achievement Awards from Parliament and the BBC. His biography, by Alyn Shipton Out of the Long Dark was published in 2006.
Carr had been suffering from a long illness, which left him unable to play or write. He died peacefully with his daughter Selina and his old friend the trumpeter Kenny Wheeler by his bedside.
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