Mike Gavin presents: Jazz Progression (28 October 2025)

Mike Gavin, label manager at Cadillac and Ogun Records, looks at the growth of community music in the 1970s – the DIY ethic forced on musicians by the social, economic and cultural changes at the beginning of the decade (sound familiar?), and plays music gems which maybe aren’t getting played so much elsewhere.

When we think about jazz singers we imagine the torch singing improvisations of Billie, or the scatting of Ella, or the hip beats of Mark Murphy or associate them with the middle of the road, easy listening productions that tended to predominate in the 60s and 70s. But there was a separate strand, based on improvisation and sound making that entered the vocabulary in the 1960s and came to some interesting conclusions in the 70s.