Paraphernalia Down: Barbara Thompson 75

Let's begin to wrap up July with a milestone birthday for a severely underrated player.

Surely one of the top female reedmasters on the planet, she is 75 today.

She first became known in the band of her husband, who I covered here last year when he passed after a 50 year career as the leader of one of the original Progressive Rock bands, Colosseum.

She guested on a whole bunch of records in the 1970s before going out on her own in 1978, leading two groups at the same time whilst still finding time to play in Wolfgang Dauner's United Jazz & Rock Ensemble, another of Joshy's favorite Euro-fusion groups.

A passel of solo records and guest honkings followed in the 1980s, with several platters from her main band, Paraphernalia, hitting the shelves.

More followed as the 1980s became the Nineties, until a Parkinson's diagnosis took her off the stage into a temporary retirement.

She gave a series of farewell concerts, but somehow she came back from what seemed like a career-ending medical crisis just a few years later.

She's collaborated on a handful of musicals as well, with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber on worldwide favorites like Cats and Starlight Express.

Often found blowing multiple horns simultaneously, her late Seventies/early Eighties fusion records are never far from my personal playlistings.

It's one of these LPs -- most of them have never seen the light of day in the digital reissue era -- that we'll fire up today, fresh from a lovely vinyl transfer that I meticulously declicked the other day.

Barbara Thompson

Barbara Thompson's Jubiaba

1978

01 The Funky Flunky

02 Seega

03 Helena

04 Cuban Thing

05 Black Pearl

06 Touch Of Blue

07 Slum Goddess

Total time: 37:09

Barbara Thompson - saxophones & flutes

Roy Babbington - bass & guitar

Trevor Tomkins - drums

Peter Lerner - piano & synthesizeers

Glyn Thomas - percussion

Henry Lowther - trumpet

Ian Hamer - trumpet

Bill Le Sage - vibraphone & percussion

  

24/96 LP rip of the long OOP album

converted to 16/44 and declicked by EN, July 2019

306 MB FLAC/July 2019 archive link

I'll try to get one more missive for July up before August augurs in.

Do enjoy this very rare and long out-of-print platter though... Barbara Thompson -- born this day in 1944 -- is sounding the clarion call, on multiple horns, for your attention.--J.