Ian Cruickshank

ChrisMartin

I heard today that Ian Cruickshank has passed on; he was only 70. Every Brit, and many others, who love the Django style owe him a huge thanks for everything he has done over the years, his books were my first introduction to the style. Here is a link to a Samois jam;



I guess I'll be watching Django Legacy again tonight. RIP Ian.

Matteo

Oh yes, that is sad. 70 is too young. His book "Django and the gypsies" was the first introduction I had to this style. It literally contained everything I knew about jazz manouche back then.

Buco

Oh no, such sad news.
His was the first instructional book I ever got.
He must have led a quiet life because I haven't heard much about him other than the book he's written.

BillDaCostaWilliams

Very sorry to hear Ian has passed away - a pioneer figure on the UK gypsy jazz scene.
First learnt standard gypsy diminished arp runs from an article of his decades ago.

Jazzaferri

RIP He will be remebered

Jojo

One of the very few times the comments under a YouTube clip are good:

paperbacknovel

Hi -- your dad is a Great guitar player! In RecordCollectorMagazine, he mentioned a book he wrote "I wrote a book about my extremely bizarre experiences, which included encounters with Hendrix and George Harrison." -- I can't find the name of this book or any place to buy it. Could you tell us the name

Bonnie Church

Thanks - I will tell him that. He wrote this book some years ago but has not published it, due to illness. There's only one copy of it in manuscript form & I have it. He called it 'Brown Skinned Boy' in reference to his tanned arrival in the UK from Hong Kong, where he went to school. But I'd like to do something with it, as he's had quite an interesting life. He has a great collection of Django legacy type photos too, so one day, I will collate it all & find a way to share with the people that are interested.

janbrouwer

hi, i am writing an I.M. for the dutch Quintette magazine and I am looking for Ian's date of birth and the specific date of his passing. Don't want to be wrong about either of them, but don't want to leave them out either. Could anyone help me?

mandocat

So besides writing some of the first instruction books, wasn't Ian a gardener or something for George Harrison and gave him CD's of Robin Nolan, resulting in Robin being hired for George's birthday party?

MichaelHorowitz

Very sad....I remember buying Ian's Django and the Gypsies book decades ago. It was a wonderful introduction into the living tradition of Gypsy jazz. He was a pioneer at a time when this style was mostly unknown outside of the Gypsy camps.

ChrisMartin

Buco wrote: »

Oh no, such sad news.
His was the first instructional book I ever got.
He must have led a quiet life because I haven't heard much about him other than the book he's written.

Not such a quiet life; as I said, he was very well known to us Brits, maybe not so much in the USA. He started playing professionally in the late '60s blues boom with the Keef Hartley Band under the pseudonym 'Spit James' but later did more than anyone to promote the Django style through his books, teaching and gigs with his own trio and many others. A regular at Samois, he was involved with (as well as playing in) the film Django Legacy.

scot

Ian was a good and generous guy. Over the years he sent me many VHS tapes and cassettes of things you just couldn't find anywhere else. He made important contributions to this music. The first was the little book on technique he first published back in the early 90s. Instead of showing chords for a bunch of tunes, he simply showed good (usually three note) and pretty accurate chords for two of Django's tunes, and chords for major and minor blues. Armed with this limited amount of information, you had to figure out for yourself how to apply this knowledge to all the tunes you wanted to play - a very good way to learn. Today this book seems very simple, but playing nowadays really is much more sophisticated than it was in 1993, when this book was pretty much all there was.

And of course he had everything to do with the "Django Legacy" documentary, which was the first exposure most guitarists in N America had to the modern style, the first time anyone here could see how this music was actually played by living guitarists.

These two things were significant in getting the whole gypsy jazz movement rolling in N America.

He also made a fine CD with Pearl Django in the mid 90s.

RIP, Ian