“Considering that the Polish jazz scene is only eight years old (prior to 1956 the authorities ruled it as immoral) this record is a miracle…For to have produced such gifted, professional musi­cians, playing advanced music, in so short a space of time is almost unbelievable.”

So wrote Mark Gardner in the January 1965 edition of Jazz Journal about alto saxophonist Zbigniew Namysłowski Modern Jazz Quartet’s “Lola”, released on the English Decca label at the end of 1964. The first album by Polish jazz artists recorded outside of the Iron Curtain, “Lola” was produced at Decca Studios in West Hampstead by Mike Vernon who would make his name with acts like Fleetwood Mac and John Mayall. 

But how did the Warsaw group come to record an album in London for Decca in the same year as The Rolling Stones’ debut for the label, with one of the most famous rock and blues producers of the 1960s? The story is explored in great detail in Tony Higgins’ erudite liner notes to this beautifully presented reissue, down to the group’s purchase of M&S sweaters for the front cover photograph.

Drawing on extensive research, Higgins has sourced various interviews with Zbigniew Namysłowski, who passed away in February 2022, along with those of the British and Polish jazz artists whose cultural interchange created the conditions for this release. 

Under the new freedoms of the so-called Polish October in 1956 after Stalin’s death, the Sopat Jazz Festival and the more famous Jazz Jamboree in Warsaw became a platform for local artists and visiting jazz musicians from across Europe and America.

But the traffic wasn’t all one way and appearances at Newport Jazz Festival by artists like Zbigniew Namysłowski with Michał Urbaniak on tenor sax in the group The Wreckers helped build interest. At the same time Polish jazz had its first star in pianist Krzysztof Komeda, with whom Namysłowski would work in various formats. 

The most important development had been at the state-owned Polskie Nagrania Muza label, who started the famous “Jazz Jamboree” series capturing performances at the festival. Amongst the first releases in 1962 were two singles by Zbigniew Namysłowski’s Jazz Rockers, followed a year later by his Quartet’s “Jazz Jamboree 63 Vol. 3”. 

The Jazz Jamboree appearances and subsequent album led to offers from UK promoters. While on tour there, the group’s manager struck up a deal with the Decca label who’d followed the success of the Polish group in the UK closely. The music contained on “Lola” proved that the belief in these artists by executives at Decca was well-founded.

The musicians who entered Decca Studio No. 3 in August 1964 with Namysłowski were fellow stalwarts of the Polish jazz scene, drummer Czesław Bartkowski who had his own album “Drums Dream” on Muza in 1976, bassist Tadeusz Wójcik of Muza’s Andrzej Kurylewicz Quintet and pianist Wlodek Gulgowski. 

The album opens with one of five compositions by Namysłowski, a glorious modal jazz waltz called “Piekna Lola, Kwiat Polnocy” (“Beautiful Lola, Flower Of The North”) with the bandleader’s exotic horn soaring above Gulgowski’s sublime piano and Bartkowski and Wójcik’s serious rhythm section.

Drawing more deeply on Polish folk music, “Piatawka (In 5/4 Time)” further demonstrates Namysłowski’s compositional prowess and the very individual sound he got from his horn. And what a band he had behind him, powering this nine minute number into one of the most explosive Polish jazz recordings of all time. 

Elsewhere, in the complexity and angularity of “Rozpacz (Despair)”, Namysłowski brings to mind the advancements of his American alto contemporary Jackie McLean and other artists pushing post-bop forward at Blue Note. 

While the original sleeve notes by Roman Waschko sought to place the album next to those of the American greats, others still struggled with the idea of European jazz. In a 1965 issue of Gramaphone magazine a critic wrote in his review of “Lola”: “However good European jazz musicians might be, seldom if ever are they likely to initiate any new jazz directions. Poland’s Zbigniew Namyslowski MJQ comes close to an original sound.” 

Thankfully today, European jazz recordings from the 1960s are getting the respect they deserve and “Lola” is right up there with the best of them. An essential addition to any collection and a great starting point in an exploration of Polish Jazz. 

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Andy Thomas is a London based writer who has contributed regularly to Straight No Chaser, Wax Poetics, We Jazz, Red Bull Music Academy, and Bandcamp Daily. He has also written liner notes for Strut, Soul Jazz and Brownswood Recordings.

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