CADILLAC IS 50! John Jack & Mike Westbrook founded Cadillac Records in 1973 to independently release Westbrook’s music when major labels turned their back on jazz. One of the UK’s first DIY labels, Cadillac went on to build a catalogue with albums by Ken Colyer, Joe Harriott, Stan Tracey & Mike Osborne, Dave Holdsworth, Liane Carroll Quartet, Bobby Wellins Quartet, David Murray & Dudu Pukwana among others.
Latest Release
Mike Westbrook Orchestra – The Cortège Live At The BBC 1980
Mike Westbrook Orchestra – The Cortège Live at the BBC 1980 – previously unissued and now available on a beautiful double CD and download etc. Mike has updated the booklet that came out with the long-deleted Studio version of this on Original Records – The Cortège story of a composition – and this is available to DL with the album when you buy on Bandcamp (if you buy elsewhere you can message me and I’ll send you a copy, alongside the lyric booklet…)
From the booklet: “The theme of The Cortège is a procession, a funeral procession. Towards the end of the piece the Orchestra plays the old New Orleans hymn, ‘Free As A Bird’ – one of the tunes that would traditionally be played by a marching band at a funeral, on the way to the cemetery. The pattern of the New Orleans jazz funeral, with its slow procession to the graveyard, the funeral service, and the exuberant parade back to the town, became a central image for The Cortège. I got hold of an old `78 record of Louis Armstrong’s recording of ‘Free As A Bird’ . This acquired significance for me as a powerful metaphor for the cycle Life / Death / Life.”
Cadillac Records 