If a brass band album cover could be said to be iconic then this is it.

A simple portrait photograph of the finest cornet player of his generation: James Shepherd of Black Dyke Mills Band.

Dorian Gray

It is a timeless image; the banding world’s version of the portrait of Dorian Gray. And although it is we who have aged, Jim Shepherd remains forever the picture of principal cornet playing perfection: Every young cornet player in the land would have sold their soul to the Devil to be like him, sound like him... triple tongue like him. 

‘High Peak for Brass’ was released in 1970, and was an instant hit - not just because ‘The King’ performed one of his signature solos ‘Pandora’ with a brilliance that took the breath away, but as the LP also featured a brace of equally iconic test-pieces - ‘High Peak’ itself, and ‘Spectrum’ (although Dyke did not win either the National title or British Open on them).

These were the works that heralded the end of one generation and the beginning of the next.

Last frisson

Eric Ball’s masterful composition - a last, glorious frisson of energy from an increasingly weary compositional pen, opened side 1; a rhapsody, as he said of, ‘light, colour and cloud as one contemplates from below a great mountain.’ 

Much like ‘Journey into Freedom’, it could be taken as a metaphor of deeper spiritual meaning - vision, aspiration, ascent and attainment. Thereafter, Ball looked back. 

‘Spectrum’ was also full of light, colour and even metaphor - a remarkable piece of inventiveness and daring. Vinter’s choice of purple, with its association of mortality, rather than violet, was marked and questioning (he died in October 1969). It was the work that dragged brass banding, kicking and screaming into a new era.

Edwardian echoes

The ‘fillers’ were John Carr’s whimsical portraits of his four grand-daughters, ‘Four Little Maids’; a lovely little concert work of Edwardian echoes as he lovingly described their emerging personality traits and characteristics, and Vinter’s melancholic gem, ‘Elegy’  from his suite ‘Entertainments’.

However, it was James Shepherd and his performance of ‘Pandora’ that went on to command the LPs lasting legacy, with a performance that secured his place in the Pantheon of the true cornet playing ‘Greats’: The nuanced phrasing and fearless artistry – and above all else, the mind-blowing, pin-ball precision and brilliance of his triple-tonguing. 

No wonder we all wanted to be like him with our Besson International cornets in our hands...

Iwan Fox and Steve Jack

Play List:

Side 1:
1. High Peak (Eric Ball)*
2. Four Little Maids (John Carr)**
a) Serious Miss
b) Dainty Miss
c) Miss Unpredictable
d) Miss Chatterbox

Side 2:
1. Pandora (E. Damare)**
Soloist: James Shepherd
2. Elegy (from Entertainments for Brass) (Gilbert Vinter)*
3. Spectrum (Gilbert Vinter)* 

Conducted by Geoffrey Brand *
Conducted by Roy Newsome**