GARY WINDO | CUNEIFORM RECORDS

GARY WINDO

from WIKIPEDIA [with small corrections added by Pam Windo]:
Gary Windo (November 7, 1941, Brighton, England – July 25, 1992, New York City) was a jazz tenor saxophonist.
He came from a musical family in England. By age six he took up drums and accordion, then guitar at twelve and saxophone at seventeen. He lived in the United States during the 1960s but returned to England in 1969 when he married Pam Windo.
In the early 1970s, his career grew as he worked with Carla Bley, Brotherhood of Breath, Centipede, Matching Mole, The Running Man, and Nick Mason.
Sonny Stitt heard Windo play at the Berlin Jazz Festival and asked him to join the band, which he declined. He worked outside jazz, with the Gary Windo Quartet with Steve Swallow, the Psychedelic Furs, Robert Wyatt, and NRBQ. He taught music lessons with his friend Eric Peralli.
Windo could play any reed instrument, including soprano sax and bass clarinet. His time in America exposed him to all types of jazz, and he was at home in any idiom. He used harmonics often and could split a note into its components using his prodigious technique and a metal mouthpiece with a wide lay and a hard reed. He suffered from asthma and died of an asthma attack in 1992.

ANGLO AMERICAN

RUNE 189

Anglo American, the second retrospective of the late saxist Gary Windo's work to appear on Cuneiform, was compiled by Michael King and features liner notes by Pam Windo, as well as rare photos supplied by her. While Gary recorded in an amazing number of situations over several decades of work, he is probably best known for his crucial involvement on Robert Wyatt's classic albums "Rock Bottom" and "Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard". Consisting of over 70 minutes of previously unreleased and rare recordings from 1971-81, it not only highlights a decade of Windo's work but also that of numerous other prominent avant garde musicians on two continents. Anglo American includes 35 minutes of early 1970s recordings featuring Wyatt, including the only recordings by the legendary WMWM band (Windo, Monkman, Wyatt, MacRae); several tracks featuring Brotherhood of Breath members, including Mongezi Feza, Dudu Pukwana and Louis Moholo; and appearances by Hugh Hopper, Steve Swallow, Laurie Allen and numerous other notable artists.

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HIS MASTER'S BONES

RUNE 89

Gary first came to prominence in the early 70's, via his work with Canterbury progressive musicans as well as his free jazz work. His style on tenor sax & bass clarinet was very much his own & immediately identifiable. This retrospective, His Master's Bones, looks back on the work of this late sax giant, annotated & curated by Mike King ("Wrong Movements") contains well over an hour of unreleased material from 1971-84, including duets with Carla Bley, an outtake from Hugh Hopper's "1984", tracks from his own, unreleased "Steam Radio Tapes" lp [featuring Pam Windo, Hugh Hopper, Steve Hillage, Bill MacCormick, Nick Mason, Julie Tippetts, & many others], "rock-a-bop-a-metaldelic" versions of Albert Ayler & the Psychedelic Furs & much, much more. Includes a full 24 page booklet crammed full of photos, biographical & discographical information.

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