The Third Eye Carla Bley Connection

Carla Bley, the great jazz composer and pianist, is a figure who keeps coming up in my research. 

Yet she never performed at the Third Eye Centre. 

In fact, she didn't play a headline gig in Scotland until 1990, when she brought her Very Big Band to Aberdeen. She played Edinburgh's Queen's Hall the following year, and in 1992 was composer in residence at the Glasgow International Jazz Festival. For that project she premiered her composition Birds Of Paradise, working with violinist Alex Balenescu, regular collaborators such as Steve Swallow, Andy Sheppard and Karen Mantler, and a bevvy of Scottish jazzers including saxophonists Stewart Forbes and Bobby Wishart, and trumpeter Robert Henderson. She also worked with the Strathclyde Youth Jazz Orchestra, featuring such future Scottish jazz stars as saxophonists Laura MacDonald and Raymond MacDonald. The BBC Scotland documentary of Bley's Glasgow adventures is well worth a watch:

So what's her connection with the Third Eye? 

The first reference came up in an uncatalogued audio recording of the Tom McGrath trio (McGrath piano, George Lyle bass, Nick Weston drums) at the Third Eye. It's undated, but likely to be from the mid-to-late 70s - possibly197? when they supported Ken Hyder's Talisker. For their final tune (on the recording at least) they play Bley's 'And Now The Queen, taking it at a much faster clip than the classic Paul Bley version. Introducing the piece, McGrath mentions Bley passing through the Third Eye "on her way to somewhere else." For a long time, this had me stumped. I couldn't find any references to Bley playing in Scotland before 1990. But then gold struck. I discovered that Bley had toured with the Jack Bruce band in 1975 (the Scottish bassist and singer performed on Bley's 1971 epic Escalator Over The Hill. Glasgow loves Jack Bruce - in 1977 he played Strathclyde Union with local jazz-rock heroes Head - so surely he played the city on that tour? A quick Google confirmed that he did. 

                                      

   

There she is right on the ticket! The Third Eye opened to the public in May 1975, soo it seems likely that Bley dropped by when she was up for the Apollo gig in June.

Just as I was putting the finishing touches to this blog, John Gilmour, the Glasgow musician and photographer who has been an important part of this project, sent me a message, prompted by my posting a clip of Carla Bley and Steve Swallow on Facebook:

"When Below The Belt played their very first performance at the Third Eye, Tom McGrath was in the audience standing with a couple of pals, one of them being Carla Bley. I was the nervous piano player in the band. Every time I looked towards the audience I was aware of Carla's distinctive silhouette, taller than almost everyone else, square shouldered and with that amazing crop of hair."  

John dates that gig to summer 1975 - they played a second set there in early 1976 supporting Ron Geesin - so there you have it. It seems that Bley hung around for a few days, possibly staying with McGrath's family. Whether that was Bley's first meeting with McGrath is unclear. She may have met him in London in the 1960s, or on one of his trips to New York - perhaps 1974 when he sat in on a Mahavishnu Orchestra rehearsal. 

So we know Carla Bley visited the Third Eye in 1975. But the story doesn't end there.

When I first visited the Third Eye archive at the CCA I looked through the spreadsheet listing the contents to see which boxes to pull off the shelves. While the archive is well catalogued, not every single item has been listed. I quickly learned that any box featuring loose or unsorted material was worth a look. Sifting through a box of loose material, I was struck by a ring-bound A4 booklet with a bright red cover and hand-written text... 

As you can imagine, my eyes popped out of my head and I did a little dance around the room that I'm glad nobody was there to witness. But that wasn't all. Slipped inside was a letter on JCOA (Jazz Composers Orchestra Association, founded by Bley and Michael Mantler) headed notepaper from Bley to Tom McGrath! 

As you can see, McGrath and Bley had clearly been discussing the possibility of performing 3/4 - released on WATT records in 1975 - in Glasgow, presumably with local musicians. Bley even offered to help with rehearsals if she was in the country. Sadly, this never came to pass - one of the great Third Eye What Ifs! The letter is likely to date from McGrath's directorship. It can't be 1975, so it's likely May 1976. From the warm tone of the letter, McGrath and Bley seem friendly, and her humour and enthusiasm come across. 

As a coda, here's a letter from Tom McGrath in reply to the ECM label's enquiries about a Summer 1978 tour of the Carla Bley Band. For whatever reason - money, timing - the tour didn't make it to the Third Eye. So far, I've found no further correspondence, but who knows what else might be in the archive... 

The story of the Third Eye - like any artistic venture - is full of unrealised projects and paths untaken. It's testament to Tom McGrath's vision and energy that he was willing to take on the challenge of performing Bley's music with Scottish musicians. 

I'll leave you with this amazing clip of Bley performing her classic Ida Lupino with a band that includes Karin Krog and Third Eye regular Kenny Wheeler. I'd also recommend reading this extensive recent interview with The Quietus. Bley is an absolute legend - her arrangements and compositions for Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra have great personal resonance for me - so discovering that she played a part in the Third Eye story has been a wonderful surprise.