The 1971 jazz album that got Jeff Beck “out of the gutter”
The late Jeff Beck was an incredibly impactful guitarist with a distinctive sound that allowed him to carve out a unique space for himself despite the mass of other fretboard heroes his generation produced. A storied player living an equally unbelievable life, the Londoner established a tremendous legacy.
From flourishing in psychedelic rock pioneers The Yardbirds alongside fellow guitar legend Jimmy Page to creating the star-studded instrumental ‘Beck’s Bolero’ and being so good that Pink Floyd wanted him to replace Syd Barrett, these kind of instances were part and parcel of Beck’s life. More remarkably, they’re just the tip of the spear.
Beck’s career was defined by a constant refusal to stand still. While many of his contemporaries found a successful formula and stuck with it, he spent decades reinventing his sound, moving between blues, rock, jazz fusion and experimental music with remarkable ease.
It says all about Beck’s consequence that without his efforts, future icon Slash wouldn’t have established his signature style. After revealing that he learnt most of his tricks from the Jeff Beck albums Wired, Truth and Blow by Blow, Slash told Guitar Magazine in 1988: “Jeff Beck is the most amazing guitar player out of anybody that I can think of. He is the only guy that blows me away. So I would sit down and learn licks that hit me.”
Praise from a guitarist of Slash’s stature highlights just how influential Beck remained across generations. His playing was never simply about technical ability; it was his creativity and unpredictability that left such a lasting impression on aspiring musicians.
“This album got me out of the gutter after my split with Rod Stewart. I was working on a car outside my house when this amazing free-form shuffle came on the radio.”
Jeff Beck
Interestingly, Slash did caveat his point by explaining that Jeff Beck became too jazzy for him with the release of There and Back. However, it speaks to a more significant and vital part of Jeff Beck’s career: he always tried to push himself to new heights by experimenting with genres. Furthermore, his relationship with jazz did not start in 1980 as the Guns N’ Roses man suggested, but a decade earlier, after Beck split with The Jeff Beck Group, including vocalist Rod Stewart in 1969.
When picking his six favourite albums of all time for The Express in 2014, Jeff Beck named the album that “got me out of the gutter” following the end of The Jeff Beck Group. It also helped him jump headfirst into the world of jazz.
It was Miles Davis’ 1971 album and soundtrack, A Tribute to Jack Johnson. Consisting of two 25-minute-plus tracks produced from recordings captured on February 18th and April 7th 1970, at 30th Street Studio, although it might be overlooked in Davis’ oeuvre, it’s still a masterful effort.
“This album got me out of the gutter after my split with Rod Stewart. I was working on a car outside my house when this amazing free-form shuffle came on the radio,” Beck explained. “Davis’s trumpet comes in randomly with the melody and that freedom appealed to me. McLaughlin played on this as well and gave me my next career move,” he added.
At a time when Beck was reassessing his future, discovering the record provided exactly the kind of artistic spark he needed. It reminded him that music could be expansive, unpredictable and unconstrained by traditional genre boundaries.
Listen to A Tribute to Jack Johnson below.
