Ted Heath

Ted Heath (1900-1969) was one of the U.K.'s best bandleaders during the 1940s and '50s. The culmination of his career brought him into contact with the producers of the magnificently overstated London Phase 4 Stereo series. With mod arrangements by Heath's trombonist Johnny Keating, the new sound of Ted Heath caught on so successfully that it outlived Heath himself, after failing health forced him to retire from active bandleading in 1964. In 2007, the Dutton Vocalion label reissued two of Heath's Phase 4 Stereo albums dating from the beginning and the end of the '60s. Big Band Percussion, originally released in 1961, is a genuine latter-day Heath production using jazz standards and popular melodies but tending more towards the Dick Schory style in accordance with the prevailing space age pop preference for exaggerated percussion and occasional novelty effects. (Big Band Percussion was first reissued on CD in 1999 in tandem with Big Band Bash on the Collector's Choice label.) The Beatles, Bach & Bacharach album, on the other hand, is characteristic of the Ted Heath band's output during the decade following the erstwhile leader's demise, and is quite typical of late-'60s and early-'70s big band easy listening albums that fed off of pop culture in strangely sugared ways. Some jazz-based orchestras -- the Ernie Wilkins big band, for example -- managed to cover Motown and rock hits with perhaps a bit more soul and believability than what the band operating under Heath's name achieved shortly after his passing. ~ arwulf arwulf, All Music Guide