In the mid sixties, Ray Russell was the lead guitarist in the John Barry Seven, later becoming a leading light on the British progressive jazz scene, where ‘he seemed the most excitingly experimental of them all, a wild, clever presence who combined the intellectual challenge of the avant-garde with the waist level thump of rock and roll’ (Cook/Morton, Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD). His later career took him into the world of session work, for artists as diverse as Tina Turner, Scott Walker and Heaven 17, to name but a few; he was also a highly successful soundtrack composer for TV, notably for programmes such as A Touch of Frost and Bergerac; and he was very active in the sound library field. He continued to play and record original music, and played for Gil Evans on his European tours. In the 2000’s, his career in music for TV culminated…