Heart 'N' Soul - 1969 - Lazy Life @320

Lazy Life/Good Things Come To Those Who Wait/Who Could Be Loving You/Shes Got The Time



Heart'n'Soul started out as a dinner-suited club/cabaret band in Sydney in 1967 but it soon evolved into Australia's first -jazz-rock 'big band' and the first local group to perform what has become known as jazz-rock fusion. Like several other larger outfits of the period, they were strongly influenced by 60s soul acts on Motown, Stax and Atlantic, and probably also by the soul-jazz-rock excursions of American band Blood Sweat & Tears, as well as more experimental outfits like the UK bands The Graham Bond Organisation and Colosseum.

 H 'n' S were early local experimenters with the trend for large-scale, jazz-oriented brass-augmented pieces, a style that was continued by later groups Nova Express, SCRA and Kush and the Daly-Wilson Big Band. But for most people Heart'n'Soul will be best remembered for their single Lazy Life, which was a Top 20 hit for them in Sydney in 1969.

They were a fixture on the vibrant inner-city club and disco circuit ca. 1969, and according to Ian McFarlane, they also "enthralled festival audiences with rock versions of the 1812 Overture, Bach's Brandenburg Concerto, Also Sprach Zarathrustra and MacArthur Park." Glenn A. Baker notes that they were also renowned for the concert piece The Music Will Screw, a free-form conga/flute sexual sound-effects suite, and they also began employing costumes and props -- this proved so startling for some that they were in fact thrown out of a dance at Hornsby by the police after making a dramatic entrance complete with chains and a coffin!

  H'n'S were also very similar to some other groups of the period (e.g. Levi Smiths Clefs) in that the group was a training ground for many musicians who went on to bigger and better things. Around thirty musos passed through the ranks during the band's brief life; it started as a seven-piece by by the time they recorded their only LP it had expanded to twelve; eventually the financial strain of keeping such a large unit on the road was to become untenable.

The original line-up consisted of the Willington brothers, Phil Prideaux, Percy Ohrling, Rory Thomas, Graham Lewis and Leith Corbett. Among the noted musicians who passed through the ranks were Keith Barr ( ex-Nutwood Rug Band), session stalwart Bobby Gebert (paino), Eric Cairns and Les Gough (ex Somebody's Image), jazz legends John Pochee and Bernie McGann, the late Larry Taylor (aka Larry Duryea) who later joined Tamam Shud and Arthur Eisenberg, ex-Dr Kandy's Third Eye and later of Company Caine. Keyboard player Peter Sheehan, who joined during 1970, had come from NZ band Freshwater, for whom he had co-written the A-side of their controversial single "Satan" / "Satan's Woman", which was about the Charles Manson murders.

Heart 'n' Soul issued three jazzy pop Singles on Festival; their second, " Lazy Life", initially broke in Brisbane and became a Top 20 hit in Sydney in May 1969. A rare clip of the band performing the song on TV has recently been posted on YouTube. The first two singles were combined on the rare Lazy Life EP and their third single "Let Me Sing in Your Band" / Lights of Cincinatti" came out during 1970.

Heart'n'Soul -- by then renamed "The Heart'n'Soul Hot Boogie Band" -- was one of the first acts signed to Festival's new progressive label Infinity, which was launched in January 1971. When they recorded their ambitious Hot Boogie Band album in late 1970, the group had expanded to twelve members, but sadly it had split by the time the album and its accompanying single "Hot Boogie Band" / "Earthrise" were released as part of Infinity's inaugural issue in January 1971. According to McFarlane, the album combined up-tempo R&B ("Hot Boogie Band"), classical elements ("Earthrise"), percussion-driven rock ("Yeah Go-1-2 Are You Ready?") and pure jazz-rock fusion ("Dance of the Pigs")".