COLIN HODGKINSON
''THE BOTTOM LINE: BASS SOLOS AND TRIOS''
1998
45:29
1 32-20 Blues (Robert Johnson) 03:42
2 Blues for Jimmy Yancey 02:23
3 The Black Mirror 02:48
4 The San Francisco Bay Blues (Jesse Fuller) 04:28
5 Southpaw Delta 02:21
6 The Sliding Delta (John Hurt)05:02
7 Jenny's Rag 02:46
8 Sons and Brothers 04:38
9 Thight Lines and Screaming Reels 06:01
10 All Blues (Miles Davis) 08:36
11 Are Your Sure 02:36
Tracks By Hodgkinson, Except As Indicated
Franz Diez - Guitar On 3
Wolfgang Haffner - Drums On 8, 9, 10
Wolfgang Norman Dalheimer - Keyboards On 9; Grand Piano On 10
Colin Hodgkinson - Bass Guitar
REVIEW / AMG
by Paul Collins
Colin Hodgkinson's extraordinary talents on the bass guitar are still woefully underpublicized; his groundbreaking albums from the 1970s with Back Door, where the bass was played like a lead guitar (and was indeed the actual lead instrument), have always been difficult to find. On other albums with collaborators like Brian Auger and Spencer Davis, listeners have been teased with the occasional bass-only song. What a treat, then, to find a release that is in effect an entire album of bass solos. On songs like "32-20 Blues," "San Francisco Bay Blues," and "Sliding Delta" he chops his way through old blues numbers with nothing but a bass and his own voice, and the effect is startling. A few other songs, such as "Sons and Brothers and "All Blues," are played as a trio. But, as the title indicates, it all comes down to his righteous bass riffs. This is, quite simply, an album that every bass guitarist should own.
BIOGRAPHY
BY OFFICIAL WEBSITE
Born; October 14th 1945 Peterborough, England.
The first band I was in was the Dynatones from 1959 to 1964; we were on the same bill as the Beatles at the Embassy Cinema, Peterborough on the 17th March 1963!
I turned professional in 1966, with the resident band at the Stilton Country club.
In 1968 after working in the house band in Monrovia, Liberia for 6 months I moved to Redcar to work at the Starlite club. Here I met Ronnie Aspery and he got me into the Eric Delaney band. I stayed there for 10 months. During a long summer season with the band I became bored with the music and started to write original material with Aspery in the afternoons. We recorded this on a little Grundig tape machine and this later became Backdoor with bass, saxophones and drums.
After leaving the Eric Delaney band we moved to London. Ron picked up a lot of session work and I got a call from Alexis Korner. We decided that although things were looking up for us, we wanted to give Backdoor a chance. So it was back to Redcar, writing originals during the day and playing the nightclub every night from 9pm until 2am.
A former bass player, Brian Jones used to come and listen to us and liked the band. He’d just taken a pub in the remotest part of the North Yorkshire moors, the Lion Inn, Blakey Ridge. He said we could do a residency on Tuesday nights, and play our own music.
From hardly anyone, we built up an incredible following. After being turned down for a record deal by all the major labels, Brian financed an album that was recorded in 8 hours and mixed in 4 in a little 4 track studio in Denmark Street in London’s Tin Pan Alley. A copy found its way to the NME and we got an amazing review, another copy was given to Pete King who managed Ronnie Scott’s club and he invited us to open for Chick Corea for 2 weeks. It was fairy-tale stuff, to actually play in the club where I’d watched all my heroes! It was so successful that we played for 3 weeks and signed a deal with Warner Bros.
During the next few years we toured all over the USA and Europe but despite great reviews, we didn’t sell enough albums so in 1975 we called it a day. When Backdoor finished I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a while. I had remained in contact with Alexis and had toured and recorded with him. In 1976 I got married, one of the best moves I’ve ever made!
Nothing much was happening musically, but then I got a call from Jan Hammer. Jan is an incredible keyboard player. I first heard him around the same time that Backdoor got started in a wonderful group formed by guitarist John McLaughlin called the Mahavishnu Orchestra. They were all great players but Jan really shone. He did for the synthesiser what Hendrix had done for the guitar and took it in a totally new direction. Rick Laird, the bassist, had played some of Backdoor’s music to them and they all liked us. I met Jan briefly in 1975 at the Berlin jazz festival and we talked about playing together and then he called me in 1978 and asked me to join him, to play something much more in the rock mould. I was up for it; I needed a change from the music I’d been playing as well. So in October 1978 I flew out to New York and spent most of the next 3 years playing with arguably the best musician I’ve ever worked with. I learned such a lot from him and we had such a great time together, it was one of the very happiest times of my life. In 1981 we recorded an album with Neal Schon, a great guitarist (Santana, Journey) but as with Backdoor, we had no real commercial success. In 1982 he was asked to write the music for “Miami Vice” which became a huge hit worldwide, so I was very happy for him.
Between 1979 and 1982 I’d been in a duo with Alexis Korner, another really good period, mostly working in Germany, but Alexis had a weekly radio show on the BBC loved by musicians everywhere and he wanted to devote more time to this and stop touring so much. So I went out in an all-star R&B band in 1982 and met Deep Purple’s keyboard player Jon Lord for the first time.
To cut a long story short, through Jon I joined Whitesnake. I had known David Coverdale and Micky Moody in the Redcar days back in the late 1960’s and I was keen to play with the band but it didn’t really work out so in 1983, I’m out of a job. Then on New Year’s Day 1984, Alexis died aged 55. He’d gone into hospital while we were recording a new album and died very soon afterwards, I was really upset, he meant a lot to me, that was a sad time altogether.
Then Pete York (drummer with the original Spencer Davis group) called me asking if I’d do a tour with Spencer Davis. That was 1984 and until Spencer was taken ill last year (2010) I’ve worked with him on and off ever since.
In 1984 I got a call to fly out to Compass Point in Nassau to play on Mick Jagger’s first solo album. I was re-united with Jan Hammer and also played for the first time with Jeff Beck, what a band!
Throughout the 80’s and 90’s I did a lot of the R&B Allstars type tours with amongst others Chris Farlowe, Miller Anderson, Brian Auger, Tony Ashton, Jon Lord, Pete York, Spencer Davis, Zoot Money etc.
On a session in Munich in 1986 I met a Berlin guitarist called Frank Diez and we had an instant rapport musically so I got him to play some duo dates with me and it was great, we’re still doing it and have just released our fifth CD.
Frank, when I first met him, was a member of Peter Maffay’s band. Peter is a hugely Popular German singer, with a great voice who is equally at home with rock songs or Ballads. He’s been likened to Bruce Springsteen and he certainly has both tremendous energy and is very charismatic.
In 1990, his band had a project of their own and wanted to take a year out, so I was invited to his studio along with a couple of other new musicians to see if we could play together. It worked out really well and I joined the band. So here I am, back playing huge arenas all over Germany, it was a fun time and I stayed with him for over 3 years.
I left in 1994 and for the next few years it was more Duo, Spencer Davis etc. At the end of the ‘90’s I got a call from Bill Wyman, we’d first met in 1984 at the Montreux jazz Festival. He’d formed a band called ‘The Rhythm Kings‘ and asked me to open for them with a 30 minute solo bass set. I wasn’t sure it would work and was pretty nervous about it, but it worked really well and then I had a call from Gary Moore’s manager asking me to do the same thing. It was a strange feeling to play absolutely flat out for 30 minutes and be standing there in puddles of Adrenalin, thinking ‘it’s only 8.30 pm and I’m done for the night!’ It did me a lot of good though and really boosted my confidence.
Returning to Backdoor, at the end of the 90’s we decided as all the albums we’d made were out of print that we’d like to make a new CD with the best of the old tunes plus some brand new ones. Apart from a brief re-union tour in 1986, we hadn’t played together since the band broke up. It was brilliant to play with my old pals again, it just felt like an old shoe, like the old days and the music turned out really well, and it was a laugh a minute. Just like the old days we couldn’t get a release but we did eventually on the Blakey Cult label entitled ‘Askin’ the way’ This came out in 2003 and we played a couple of memorable gigs up at Blakey Ridge, where I saw a lot of the old crowd for the first time in 30 years!
Ron’s health was not good and sadly, he died in September that year. I thought that was the end of the band but Tony had played with a saxophonist from the North-east who was a fan of the band and said he knew all the tunes! I didn’t believe it but he came to my house and he did know all the tunes, Rod Mason, a really big guy nicknamed ‘The Room Darkener’ We played some shows and then Tony had to return to Australia, his home for quite a few years. He intended to go back for a few months, but it was not to be, not long afterwards he died too after a short illness.
After a while I spoke to Rod and we decided that as we’d both written new tunes for the band that we’d like to record them. I called an old friend of mine, Paul Robinson who’d spent the past fifteen years playing with Nina Simone and he was really keen to get involved. We exchanged CD’s , discussed the music over the phone and I booked some studio time for two days. It was a crazy situation, two people who’d never met, about to make a CD together! I needn’t have worried, they were great and just about every tune was a first take. This came out the following year entitled ‘Colin Hodgkinson’s Back Door Too’ We played a few shows together and it was a great feeling, keeping that music and spirit going. Gigs are hard to get right now but hopefully things will pick up and we can play some more.
In 2003 I went out on tour with another of my favourite singers, Long John Baldry, with another great band, Zoot Money, Colin Allen, Ronnie Johnson and Gary Foot, lots of laughs! In 2006 I got involved with a new project, BBQ (the British Blues Quintet). This was fronted by the wonderful Maggie Bell who after quite a long time away from the business wanted to come back. She , Colin and Zoot went back to the 60’s and it was fun right from the start. We had 3 really good singers, Maggie, Zoot and Miller and for me it was great to play again with Colin Allen on drums, the ‘Time lord’ as we call him!
In 2006, I went up to Middlesbrough for the memorial service of my old pal Tony Hicks. Like Ron Aspery he’d died tragically young, only 57 and I’d been devastated to lose two people who I’d shared some of the best times of my life, musically and personally. At the service I met Mark Rea, Chris’s brother who told me Chris wanted me to get in touch. I’d known him since the early Backdoor days when he used to watch the band at Blakey Ridge, even then he’d written some great songs and we thought with a bit of luck he’d do well!
I went down to his studio for a play and it sounded good, he wanted to make a CD of 50’s and 60’s style instrumentals. I ended up making 3 CD’s with him in 2007 and was then offered a tour in 2008. Maggie and the band very kindly let me put a replacement Bass-player in for the 7 or 8 shows I’d miss so I went out at the end of January on a tour that would take me to places I’d never been before like Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Baltic states, all over eastern Europe plus the west and the UK.
So now I’m back with BBQ, having fun again. In 2010, Dave Kelly joined us. I’ve always been a fan of his, great slide guitarist and great singer. Miller had been playing a lot of gigs with his own band and decided to leave BBQ to concentrate on that, so this year Frank Diez joined us and has had some rave reviews for his playing.
Last autumn, I played at the Lahnstein Blues Festival in Germany, a really famous one that’s been running for around 30 years. This was an all-stars band that featured Jon Lord, Pete York, Miller Anderson, Maggie Bell, and Zoot Money. We had a great reaction from a sell-out audience, and Jon asked us all if we’d like to be involved in a blues project that he’d been thinking about. Everyone was very enthusiastic about the idea so we played the first show last month in Germany in April, another sell-out, and we have a lot of shows coming up in the autumn.
OFFICIAL SITE
TO THE TOP
''THE BOTTOM LINE: BASS SOLOS AND TRIOS''
1998
45:29
1 32-20 Blues (Robert Johnson) 03:42
2 Blues for Jimmy Yancey 02:23
3 The Black Mirror 02:48
4 The San Francisco Bay Blues (Jesse Fuller) 04:28
5 Southpaw Delta 02:21
6 The Sliding Delta (John Hurt)05:02
7 Jenny's Rag 02:46
8 Sons and Brothers 04:38
9 Thight Lines and Screaming Reels 06:01
10 All Blues (Miles Davis) 08:36
11 Are Your Sure 02:36
Tracks By Hodgkinson, Except As Indicated
Franz Diez - Guitar On 3
Wolfgang Haffner - Drums On 8, 9, 10
Wolfgang Norman Dalheimer - Keyboards On 9; Grand Piano On 10
Colin Hodgkinson - Bass Guitar
REVIEW / AMG
by Paul Collins
Colin Hodgkinson's extraordinary talents on the bass guitar are still woefully underpublicized; his groundbreaking albums from the 1970s with Back Door, where the bass was played like a lead guitar (and was indeed the actual lead instrument), have always been difficult to find. On other albums with collaborators like Brian Auger and Spencer Davis, listeners have been teased with the occasional bass-only song. What a treat, then, to find a release that is in effect an entire album of bass solos. On songs like "32-20 Blues," "San Francisco Bay Blues," and "Sliding Delta" he chops his way through old blues numbers with nothing but a bass and his own voice, and the effect is startling. A few other songs, such as "Sons and Brothers and "All Blues," are played as a trio. But, as the title indicates, it all comes down to his righteous bass riffs. This is, quite simply, an album that every bass guitarist should own.
BIOGRAPHY
BY OFFICIAL WEBSITE
Born; October 14th 1945 Peterborough, England.
The first band I was in was the Dynatones from 1959 to 1964; we were on the same bill as the Beatles at the Embassy Cinema, Peterborough on the 17th March 1963!
I turned professional in 1966, with the resident band at the Stilton Country club.
In 1968 after working in the house band in Monrovia, Liberia for 6 months I moved to Redcar to work at the Starlite club. Here I met Ronnie Aspery and he got me into the Eric Delaney band. I stayed there for 10 months. During a long summer season with the band I became bored with the music and started to write original material with Aspery in the afternoons. We recorded this on a little Grundig tape machine and this later became Backdoor with bass, saxophones and drums.
After leaving the Eric Delaney band we moved to London. Ron picked up a lot of session work and I got a call from Alexis Korner. We decided that although things were looking up for us, we wanted to give Backdoor a chance. So it was back to Redcar, writing originals during the day and playing the nightclub every night from 9pm until 2am.
A former bass player, Brian Jones used to come and listen to us and liked the band. He’d just taken a pub in the remotest part of the North Yorkshire moors, the Lion Inn, Blakey Ridge. He said we could do a residency on Tuesday nights, and play our own music.
From hardly anyone, we built up an incredible following. After being turned down for a record deal by all the major labels, Brian financed an album that was recorded in 8 hours and mixed in 4 in a little 4 track studio in Denmark Street in London’s Tin Pan Alley. A copy found its way to the NME and we got an amazing review, another copy was given to Pete King who managed Ronnie Scott’s club and he invited us to open for Chick Corea for 2 weeks. It was fairy-tale stuff, to actually play in the club where I’d watched all my heroes! It was so successful that we played for 3 weeks and signed a deal with Warner Bros.
During the next few years we toured all over the USA and Europe but despite great reviews, we didn’t sell enough albums so in 1975 we called it a day. When Backdoor finished I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a while. I had remained in contact with Alexis and had toured and recorded with him. In 1976 I got married, one of the best moves I’ve ever made!
Nothing much was happening musically, but then I got a call from Jan Hammer. Jan is an incredible keyboard player. I first heard him around the same time that Backdoor got started in a wonderful group formed by guitarist John McLaughlin called the Mahavishnu Orchestra. They were all great players but Jan really shone. He did for the synthesiser what Hendrix had done for the guitar and took it in a totally new direction. Rick Laird, the bassist, had played some of Backdoor’s music to them and they all liked us. I met Jan briefly in 1975 at the Berlin jazz festival and we talked about playing together and then he called me in 1978 and asked me to join him, to play something much more in the rock mould. I was up for it; I needed a change from the music I’d been playing as well. So in October 1978 I flew out to New York and spent most of the next 3 years playing with arguably the best musician I’ve ever worked with. I learned such a lot from him and we had such a great time together, it was one of the very happiest times of my life. In 1981 we recorded an album with Neal Schon, a great guitarist (Santana, Journey) but as with Backdoor, we had no real commercial success. In 1982 he was asked to write the music for “Miami Vice” which became a huge hit worldwide, so I was very happy for him.
Between 1979 and 1982 I’d been in a duo with Alexis Korner, another really good period, mostly working in Germany, but Alexis had a weekly radio show on the BBC loved by musicians everywhere and he wanted to devote more time to this and stop touring so much. So I went out in an all-star R&B band in 1982 and met Deep Purple’s keyboard player Jon Lord for the first time.
To cut a long story short, through Jon I joined Whitesnake. I had known David Coverdale and Micky Moody in the Redcar days back in the late 1960’s and I was keen to play with the band but it didn’t really work out so in 1983, I’m out of a job. Then on New Year’s Day 1984, Alexis died aged 55. He’d gone into hospital while we were recording a new album and died very soon afterwards, I was really upset, he meant a lot to me, that was a sad time altogether.
Then Pete York (drummer with the original Spencer Davis group) called me asking if I’d do a tour with Spencer Davis. That was 1984 and until Spencer was taken ill last year (2010) I’ve worked with him on and off ever since.
In 1984 I got a call to fly out to Compass Point in Nassau to play on Mick Jagger’s first solo album. I was re-united with Jan Hammer and also played for the first time with Jeff Beck, what a band!
Throughout the 80’s and 90’s I did a lot of the R&B Allstars type tours with amongst others Chris Farlowe, Miller Anderson, Brian Auger, Tony Ashton, Jon Lord, Pete York, Spencer Davis, Zoot Money etc.
On a session in Munich in 1986 I met a Berlin guitarist called Frank Diez and we had an instant rapport musically so I got him to play some duo dates with me and it was great, we’re still doing it and have just released our fifth CD.
Frank, when I first met him, was a member of Peter Maffay’s band. Peter is a hugely Popular German singer, with a great voice who is equally at home with rock songs or Ballads. He’s been likened to Bruce Springsteen and he certainly has both tremendous energy and is very charismatic.
In 1990, his band had a project of their own and wanted to take a year out, so I was invited to his studio along with a couple of other new musicians to see if we could play together. It worked out really well and I joined the band. So here I am, back playing huge arenas all over Germany, it was a fun time and I stayed with him for over 3 years.
I left in 1994 and for the next few years it was more Duo, Spencer Davis etc. At the end of the ‘90’s I got a call from Bill Wyman, we’d first met in 1984 at the Montreux jazz Festival. He’d formed a band called ‘The Rhythm Kings‘ and asked me to open for them with a 30 minute solo bass set. I wasn’t sure it would work and was pretty nervous about it, but it worked really well and then I had a call from Gary Moore’s manager asking me to do the same thing. It was a strange feeling to play absolutely flat out for 30 minutes and be standing there in puddles of Adrenalin, thinking ‘it’s only 8.30 pm and I’m done for the night!’ It did me a lot of good though and really boosted my confidence.
Returning to Backdoor, at the end of the 90’s we decided as all the albums we’d made were out of print that we’d like to make a new CD with the best of the old tunes plus some brand new ones. Apart from a brief re-union tour in 1986, we hadn’t played together since the band broke up. It was brilliant to play with my old pals again, it just felt like an old shoe, like the old days and the music turned out really well, and it was a laugh a minute. Just like the old days we couldn’t get a release but we did eventually on the Blakey Cult label entitled ‘Askin’ the way’ This came out in 2003 and we played a couple of memorable gigs up at Blakey Ridge, where I saw a lot of the old crowd for the first time in 30 years!
Ron’s health was not good and sadly, he died in September that year. I thought that was the end of the band but Tony had played with a saxophonist from the North-east who was a fan of the band and said he knew all the tunes! I didn’t believe it but he came to my house and he did know all the tunes, Rod Mason, a really big guy nicknamed ‘The Room Darkener’ We played some shows and then Tony had to return to Australia, his home for quite a few years. He intended to go back for a few months, but it was not to be, not long afterwards he died too after a short illness.
After a while I spoke to Rod and we decided that as we’d both written new tunes for the band that we’d like to record them. I called an old friend of mine, Paul Robinson who’d spent the past fifteen years playing with Nina Simone and he was really keen to get involved. We exchanged CD’s , discussed the music over the phone and I booked some studio time for two days. It was a crazy situation, two people who’d never met, about to make a CD together! I needn’t have worried, they were great and just about every tune was a first take. This came out the following year entitled ‘Colin Hodgkinson’s Back Door Too’ We played a few shows together and it was a great feeling, keeping that music and spirit going. Gigs are hard to get right now but hopefully things will pick up and we can play some more.
In 2003 I went out on tour with another of my favourite singers, Long John Baldry, with another great band, Zoot Money, Colin Allen, Ronnie Johnson and Gary Foot, lots of laughs! In 2006 I got involved with a new project, BBQ (the British Blues Quintet). This was fronted by the wonderful Maggie Bell who after quite a long time away from the business wanted to come back. She , Colin and Zoot went back to the 60’s and it was fun right from the start. We had 3 really good singers, Maggie, Zoot and Miller and for me it was great to play again with Colin Allen on drums, the ‘Time lord’ as we call him!
In 2006, I went up to Middlesbrough for the memorial service of my old pal Tony Hicks. Like Ron Aspery he’d died tragically young, only 57 and I’d been devastated to lose two people who I’d shared some of the best times of my life, musically and personally. At the service I met Mark Rea, Chris’s brother who told me Chris wanted me to get in touch. I’d known him since the early Backdoor days when he used to watch the band at Blakey Ridge, even then he’d written some great songs and we thought with a bit of luck he’d do well!
I went down to his studio for a play and it sounded good, he wanted to make a CD of 50’s and 60’s style instrumentals. I ended up making 3 CD’s with him in 2007 and was then offered a tour in 2008. Maggie and the band very kindly let me put a replacement Bass-player in for the 7 or 8 shows I’d miss so I went out at the end of January on a tour that would take me to places I’d never been before like Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Baltic states, all over eastern Europe plus the west and the UK.
So now I’m back with BBQ, having fun again. In 2010, Dave Kelly joined us. I’ve always been a fan of his, great slide guitarist and great singer. Miller had been playing a lot of gigs with his own band and decided to leave BBQ to concentrate on that, so this year Frank Diez joined us and has had some rave reviews for his playing.
Last autumn, I played at the Lahnstein Blues Festival in Germany, a really famous one that’s been running for around 30 years. This was an all-stars band that featured Jon Lord, Pete York, Miller Anderson, Maggie Bell, and Zoot Money. We had a great reaction from a sell-out audience, and Jon asked us all if we’d like to be involved in a blues project that he’d been thinking about. Everyone was very enthusiastic about the idea so we played the first show last month in Germany in April, another sell-out, and we have a lot of shows coming up in the autumn.
OFFICIAL SITE
TO THE TOP
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