In their seventies heyday, Back Door were once described as ‘Robert Johnson meets Ornette Coleman.’ Reformed in the eighties for a special Jazz Services tour, the unique delta blues and free jazz fusion remains the immediately striking feature. Their sound steers close to the well established jazz-funk and fusion of the present, but with a much greater depth through the inspiration of Coleman and the Mississippi blues.
This was evident in the very first number, Back Door. Drummer Tony Hicks’ rhythmic impetus was thunderous and rocky but in combination with Colin Hodgkinson’s superb rumbling bass chords and polyrhythmic surprises and Ron Aspery’s blues-saturated alto and soprano saxophone excursions, it was clearly a very superior form of fusion.
Instrumental and vocal items alternated, and Colin Hodgkinson again established himself firmly in the front ranks of white blues singers, with a fine selection drawn from Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Jesse Fuller and Arthur Crudup. Ron Aspery wailed in sympathy behind Hodgkinson, and in his own solo spaces, took some exuberant free form saxophone journeys.
It has always been hard to accept that Back Door are only a trio. The huge sound generated is much more a matter of musical organisation than of amplification. Back Door was a pioneering jazz-funk band, and this night it was clearly a case of ‘first and best’.
