The Alan Bown!

I like any band that uses an exclamation point at the end of its name. That’s the grammatical approach Alan Bown took when he signed to Deram Records and released this 1969 self-titled lp, a horn-heavy platter of progressive jazz rock. After a couple of failed singles as the rhythm and blues-infused Alan Bown Set, this trumpet player turned band leader changed course and turned his blue-eyed soul into more experimental, brass-flavored pop. The shift in musical direction didn’t change Bown’s commercial fortunes, but his new approach did land him a young vocalist by the name of Robert Palmer. The pair’s initial collaboration, The Alan Bown!, is worthy of its emphatic punctuation mark. The driving “My Friend” kicks things off, followed by a series of well-crafted, jazz-oriented pop songs, most notably “Strange Little Friend” and “Children of the Night.” The album’s centerpiece is a 10-minute-long song called “The Prisoner.” With a nod towards the progressive, this extended number captures the group at its most ambitious, its varying musical passages highlighting the group’s musical prowess. Palmer left soon after to join a band called Vinegar Joe before pursuing a successful solo career; Bown signed to Island Records for two final albums: Listen (1970) and Stretching Out (1971).

Notes: I couldn’t find anything from The Alan Bown!, but did manage to locate an audio-only YouTube clip of the title track to Bown’s third and final album, Stretching Out (at this point Palmer had been replaced by singer Gordon Neville): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS6EdJDu-0Q.