MINOR WORKS

INFO


Jack the hipster. A musician's musician. The whit e negro from the docks. Jack Sels has been given many nicknames throughout the y ears. The Antwerp saxophone player who died at the mere age of 48 in 1970, remai ns Belgium's most mythical jazz musician, both to those who knew him during his lifetime and those who only know him from the stories - and there are quite some stories to be told about Jack Sels. Throughout his career, he would play with j azz legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, Lou Bennett and Lucky Thopmso n, but he remained virtually unknown outside Belgium due to his reluctance to le ave Antwerp.

Almost fifty years after his death, Jack Sels remains Be lgium's most intriguing jazz musician. Partly due to his limited discography, he is overlooked by a wider audience. Yet, his contribution to the development of the modern jazz scene in Belgium cannot be overestimated, and neither can his in fluence on his fellow musicians, to whom he was the embodiment of jazz. As vibra phone player Fats Sadi once said: 'I loved Jack. He had never studied music and didn't have the least bit of technique. But if Jack played, the gates of heaven opened. Jack was more jazz than jazz itself.'

'Minor Works' is a coll ection of rare, previously unreleased studio and live recordings paying homage t o the life and jazz of the enigmatic musician.