The Keith Emerson Trio
The Keith Emerson Trio
Emersongs Ltd.
2015
Keith Emerson is a legendary keyboardist & composer. He’s the co-founder of The Nice and Emerson Lake & Palmer (ELP), which is one of the most influential prog rock acts of all time. Thus having said, I do not think that he needs any further introduction.
“The Keith Emerson Trio” contains 7 tracks from the early 60s, when Keith was a teenager, and were recorded at his parents’ living room. What a time huh?! The Keith Emerson Trio was his band’s name at that time and the other two guys (of the trio) are: Godfrey Sheppard on bass and David Keene on drums. Only four acetates were cut at the time, as Keith explains, since he didn’t have more money to cut more. Each of the trio got a copy and one was spare. That was probably the copy, which fell into the hands of the avid collector of rare records, David Gaylor. This is where it all started.
Those recordings were meant to stay private, Keith says, but they were first released by Record Collection, in early 2015, as a limited edition vinyl release. Now they have also been released on CD and download. The recordings have been mastered by Tim Debney at Fluid Mastering and the sound is somewhat OK, even though it’s more than obvious that these are some truly “old recordings”.
The early 60s was an era when rock & roll music was very popular in the US and in the UK. Keith and his buddies were fully influenced by that kind of music and that’s reasonable for a bunch of teenagers. These recordings only have a historical importance since none would have cared if Keith hadn’t been that great musician afterwards. They have nothing to do with Keith’s further musical career but they are the starting point of this significant keyboardist & composer.
“The Keith Emerson Trio” contains 7 tracks from the early 60s, when Keith was a teenager, and were recorded at his parents’ living room. What a time huh?! The Keith Emerson Trio was his band’s name at that time and the other two guys (of the trio) are: Godfrey Sheppard on bass and David Keene on drums. Only four acetates were cut at the time, as Keith explains, since he didn’t have more money to cut more. Each of the trio got a copy and one was spare. That was probably the copy, which fell into the hands of the avid collector of rare records, David Gaylor. This is where it all started.
Those recordings were meant to stay private, Keith says, but they were first released by Record Collection, in early 2015, as a limited edition vinyl release. Now they have also been released on CD and download. The recordings have been mastered by Tim Debney at Fluid Mastering and the sound is somewhat OK, even though it’s more than obvious that these are some truly “old recordings”.
The early 60s was an era when rock & roll music was very popular in the US and in the UK. Keith and his buddies were fully influenced by that kind of music and that’s reasonable for a bunch of teenagers. These recordings only have a historical importance since none would have cared if Keith hadn’t been that great musician afterwards. They have nothing to do with Keith’s further musical career but they are the starting point of this significant keyboardist & composer.