Carla Bley hears Sgt Pepper

1967: Number 34 in our series of the 50 key events in the history of dance musicCarla Bley's 1971 triple album Escalator Over the Hill still stands as one of the grandest, oddest and most spectacular creations in jazz history. This two-hour jazz opera started in 1967 when Bley heard Sgt Pepper and decided to create a jazz response. She asked her friend Paul Haines, then living in India, to write some lyrics, and spent a year setting them to music. The next three years were spent enlisting jazz a...

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