{"id":11643,"date":"2023-11-23T18:50:07","date_gmt":"2023-11-23T22:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/?p=11643"},"modified":"2023-11-23T18:50:07","modified_gmt":"2023-11-23T22:50:07","slug":"nick-mason-collaborator-carla-bley-dies-at-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/2023\/11\/nick-mason-collaborator-carla-bley-dies-at-87\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Mason collaborator Carla Bley dies at 87"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-11644\" src=\"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/carla-bley.jpg\" alt=\"Carla Bley conducts her band at the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland, July 1978\" width=\"346\" height=\"447\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/carla-bley.jpg 1276w, https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/carla-bley-232x300.jpg 232w, https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/carla-bley-792x1024.jpg 792w, https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/carla-bley-768x993.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/carla-bley-1188x1536.jpg 1188w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 346px) 100vw, 346px\" \/>Avant-garde composer <strong>Carla Bley<\/strong>, who wrote<strong> Pink Floyd<\/strong> drummer <strong>Nick Mason<\/strong>&#8216;s 1981 album <a href=\"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/pink-floyd\/albums\/album.php?id=32\">&#8220;Fictitious Sports,&#8221;<\/a> died Oct. 17. She was 87.<\/p>\n<p>A prominent figure in the &#8220;free jazz&#8221; movement of the 1960s, the California-native released more than two dozen albums from 1966 to 2019.<\/p>\n<p>She might best be known for her jazz opera &#8220;Escalator Over the Hill&#8221; (1973). Originally released on three LPs, it featured <strong>Jack Bruce<\/strong> of <strong>Cream <\/strong>and vocals by <strong>Linda Ronstadt<\/strong>. Melody Maker magazine named it Album of the Year.<\/p>\n<p>Her collaboration with Mason easily could have been called &#8220;<em>Carla Bley&#8217;s<\/em> Fictitious Sports.&#8221; It was she who wrote all of the album&#8217;s numbers, played keyboards throughout and co-produced the effort with Mason. But as a member of the Floyd, Mason was guaranteed a hefty advance for any solo album, perhaps one reason his name graced the cover.<\/p>\n<p>Bley was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018. She succumbed to the illness at her home in Willow, N.Y., outside Woodstock. &#8220;Fictitious Sports&#8221; had been recorded at Bley&#8217;s Grog Kill Studio in that home&#8217;s basement in October &#8217;79.<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: Carla Bley conducts her band at the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland, July 1978.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Avant-garde composer Carla Bley, who wrote Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason&#8216;s 1981 album &#8220;Fictitious Sports,&#8221; died Oct. 17. She was 87. A prominent figure in the &#8220;free jazz&#8221; movement of the 1960s, the California-native released more than two dozen albums from 1966 to 2019. She might best be known for her jazz opera &#8220;Escalator Over [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nick-mason","category-passings","category-personnel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11645,"href":"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11643\/revisions\/11645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.floydianslip.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}