About Jack Bruce

Jack Bruce (born John Symon Asher Bruce on 14 May 1943 in Bishopbriggs, Lanarkshire, Scotland; died 25 October 2014 in Suffolk, England) was a Scottish musician and composer, known as a founder member of the seminal British psychedelic rock power trio, Cream, in the mid-to-late 1960s. Widely considered to be one of the greatest bass players of all time, Bruce maintained a solo career that spanned several decades, and also played in several musical groups. Known as a vocalist and bass guitarist, Bruce was also a songwriter. Though trained as a classical cellist, and while he considered himself a jazz musician, much of his catalogue of compositions and recordings tended toward blues and rock and roll. Beginning in 1962, Bruce started as double bass player with Graham Bond in the Graham Bond Organisation, which played a mixture of jazz, blues, and R&B. It was at this time that he met drummer Ginger Baker. After stints with John Mayall and Manfred Mann, he formed Cream with Baker and guitarist Eric Clapton. Cream had numerous hits during its existence, most of them written by Bruce with lyricist Pete Brown. In the years since Cream's breakup in 1968, Bruce has released a number of solo albums, mostly in a more experimental vein, and worked with a wide variety of musicians in many genres. The list includes Robin Trower, Tony Williams, John McLaughlin, Carla Bley, Allan Holdsworth, Ringo Starr and Frank Zappa. He was also a member of the band West, Bruce And Laing. In 1994 he had an album under the band name BBM (Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Gary Moore) called Around the Next Dream. Bruce released a new studio album Silver Rails in March 2014 on the Esoteric Antenna, his first solo studio album in over a decade.