Chick Churchill

Chick Churchill was a keyboardist in Ten Years After and without a doubt his only solo album (released by Chrysalis in November 1973) is an unfairly forgotten rock gem with quite strong, progressive influences. And what a great line-up played on that record! Martin Barre, Cozy Powell, Leo Lyons, Rick Lee, Roger Hodgson, Bernie Marsden, Gary Pickford-Hopkins - it’s really hard to imagine a better configuration on one record! LP was dominated to a certain extent by the keyboards (organ, piano & mellotron), but also offered a lot of space for other instruments. This nicely sounding and very professionally produced album contained quite powerful, but very stylish tracks similar in style to the music of Wishbone Ash, Procol Harum and Wild Turkey.

Ten Years After was a British blues-rock quartet consisting of Alvin Lee (born December 19, 1944, died March 6, 2013), guitar and vocals; Chick Churchill (born January 2, 1949), keyboards; Leo Lyons (born November 30, 1944) bass; and Ric Lee (born October 20, 1945), drums. The group was formed in 1967 and signed to Decca in England…

SSSSH is one of Ten Years After's best studio albums, although like its predecessor, "Stonedhenge" (albeit to a lesser degree), it's something of a period piece. It's not a straight blues album, by any means; "If You Should Love Me," for example, is an attractively watery re-write of the Beatles' "Hey Jude," while the opening "Bad Scene" is (unsurprisingly) a cautionary piece of acid rock, heavy on the fuzz guitar and sound efffects…

This is their third album, prepared for CD from the original master tapes.
Ten Years After's third album is one of those artifacts that simply screams late '60s, which is to say its production is more than a little trippy, and it's also all over the stylistic map. "I Can't Live Without Lydia," for example, features keyboardist Chick Churchill making vaguely Brubeck-ian noises on up to four overdubbed pianos simultaneously. The next track, "Skoobly-Ooobly-Doobob," is a brief scat blues improvisation with guitar hero Alvin Lee playing and singing in unison, as Ric Lee's drums, just barely audible, putter about in both stereo channels seemingly at random…

"I'm Going Home" from Ten Years After's previous release put them on the charts, at least in the U.K. (the band's U.S. breakthrough was at Woodstock a year after its release), but the four-piece was already experimenting with ways to expand their basic boogie rock template. Stonedhenge was the result, as producer Mike Vernon helped steer the band into a more jazz- and blues-oriented direction…

Ten Years After is a British blues-rock quartet consisting of Alvin Lee (born December 19, 1944), guitar and vocals; Chick Churchill (born January 2, 1949), keyboards; Leo Lyons (born November 30, 1944) bass; and Ric Lee (born October 20, 1945), drums. The group was formed in 1967 and signed to Decca in England.

After recording a string of fusion records in the late '80s with his Elektric Band, Chick Corea returned to acoustic jazz with this trio date. Enlisting Elektric Band sidemen John Patitucci and Dave Weckl, Corea swings through ten tracks with noticeably mixed results. The leader is as romantic as ever, playing with bravado even on ballads, flawlessly executing complicated ideas, reveling in drama and melodrama. Patitucci's upright playing clearly betrays his electric pedigree; listen quickly to his solo on "So in Love" and you might mistake it for a Jaco Pastorius spot. Weckl has been accused of being a soulless technician serving questionable music in the past, and those who are predisposed against him will find nothing here to change their minds.